Deity is not the idol. BRSwami and BVGoswami
Бхакти Вигьяна Госвами · Лондон · 2012
Главы
Opening prayers and mangalacharana
Avadanyaya Krishna Pramadayati, Krishnaya Vishna Chaitanya Rami Bowatus Nama Panchatatva Makam Kasam Bhaktarupaswarupakam Bhattavataram Bhatakyam Namami Baktashatam Aradyuhagavana Vrajayas Tadamavindhavanam
Ramyaka Chitupassana Vrajuwatu Varikinayakalpita, Shri Madhhagavatam Pramaramamatam, Premahapamarto Maham, Shri Caitanyamahaparmatamidam
Tatradarahnaparaha, E Krishna Karana Sindhob Vinambuja Katpate, O Bisha Kobikakanta, Radhakanta Mosthi, Taptakan Chanakorangi, Radhirta Paneshari, Vishavano Sudetevi, Pradamami, Haripri, Jai Shri Krishna Chayatanya, Prabhupada, Shriapitakadha, Шри Садгуру Батам, Харе Кришна Харе Кришна, Кришна Кришна, Харе Харе, Харе Харе Рама, Харе Рама, Харе Рама, Харе Харе. Hare Krishna.
It's a great pleasure to be here for this deity welcoming ceremony at the house of the Agalab family. Deity welcoming means that we are welcoming a person. God is also a person.
And that's something that may be very astonishing to many people in this world. What to speak of those who are atheists who will find it definitely something strange.
But even surprisingly, most theologies in the world have a conception of God as being some impersonal light or a force or something like that.
And therefore, when we have a ceremony where we welcome the Lord as the supreme person, it is likely to raise so many questions.
Generally this murti puja or worship of the deity is dismissed as being idol worship by those who do not know really what the Supreme Lord is and who He is and how He can manifest for our convenience and for our upliftment and our deliverance in this world.
It is not idol worship. It is ideal worship. I D E A L. It is idol worship when we worship someone who is not God or we worship a concocted form of God.
Scriptural revelation as the source of knowledge
So how do we know that God looks like this? Because we hear from those who have seen and those who know. The source of our knowledge is the scripture.
The Vedic scriptures give us such a detailed and clear understanding of who God is, what he looks like, where he lives, who are his associates, what are the different activities that he performs? What kinds of clothes does he wear? Everything about the Lord is given in the scriptures. The scriptures are known as the revealed scriptures, which
indicates there is much that is not revealed, and that will be revealed to us only when we are ready. All scriptures of the world actually talk of revelation.
Every religion, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and what to speak of Vaishnavism and many others, they all rely on revelation.
Which means that the absolute truth. In other words, knowledge comes from a superior source. It is never something that is a product of research of ordinary mortals, however brilliant they may be.
Real knowledge can never be understood like that. We may endeavor for years and years, millions of years, trying to understand this creation.
But so long as we labor under the weight of our own intellectual abilities, we will never be able to understand truth and reality. We will only be able to understand certain aspects of it.
But the material nature itself is so bewildering. We hardly can understand even a very small portion of God's creation.
What then to speak of the spiritual world, which is beyond our senses, beyond our science and mathematics, there is a world out there which is ultimate reality, which doesn't change, which is never destroyed.
We are accustomed to this temporary world which is full of suffering, which is temporary, full of ignorance. And based on our experiences here, we are wont to ascribing or superscribing our conceptions upon God.
And because we think, or rather, we know that all of us are limited, we are all defective in some way or the other, none of us is perfect as living beings of this world, and we have a form.
Therefore, we assume that God, being perfect, should be devoid of form. That is the logic, that is the reasoning that people give.
Everything in this world is defective in the sense of all the living entities like us, and we have form. A form is limiting by nature. Therefore, God being unlimited cannot have a form.
QED, for those of you who are familiar with geometry and you proof your theorem. But the fact of the matter is that God has a spiritual form.
He's called sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha. Vigraha means a form, but his form is not a form like our form.
It is a form made of spiritual substance. Just like our body is made of material substance, bones and flesh and blood and so on, which can be broken down into chemicals and molecules and atoms and so on.
At the end of the day when this body is destroyed, the elements of this body will crumble and mix into the elements in the earth. But God's body is not like that. God's body is completely spiritual. It is imperishable.
Ajo 'pi sann avyayātmā bhūtānām īśvaro 'pi san, prakṛtiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya sambhavāmy ātma-māyayā. Sambhavāmy ātma-māyayā.
In the Bhagavad-gītā Lord Krishna explains that when he descends into this world from time to time, he descends with his original spiritual body.
Even though he is unborn, ajaḥ api, even though he doesn't have a birth, but still he appears in this world. And we being conditioned by the everyday language of our world, call it the birth of God.
So we say Janmashtami is the birthday of Lord Krishna. Of course we know also that Lord Krishna is never really born. He eternally exists. He just appears in this world and then he performs his various pastimes
which we call līlās and then he departs from this world. And all his activities and his so-called birth are divine, transcendental. They are not like our birth and our activities.
Therefore, Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gītā, janma karma ca me divyam evaṁ yo vetti Please know that my birth in this world and my activities within this world are all divine and transcendental.
And anyone who knows this in truth will never have to take birth again in this material world. Rather, he will come back to me, to my abode, the kingdom of God, the Vaikuṇṭha world. This world is called Sa-kuṇṭha.
The word kunta means suffering or misery. Sa means with, endowed with. So this world is Sa-kuṇṭha. But beyond the Sa-kuṇṭha world is a Vaikuṇṭha world.
A world which is full of joy, full of bliss, full of knowledge, which is never destroyed. That is the kingdom of God.
And the Supreme Lord resides there eternally in his sac-cid-ānanda form, and from time to time as per His sweet will He descends into this world out of his causeless mercy for us conditioned souls of this world.
If the Lord did not descend here, it would not be possible for us to know about Him.
The scriptures like the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam give us such an elaborate and wonderful description of the Lord's beautiful form, of his activities, of his qualities, of his loving dealings with his devotees.
So, based on these descriptions from the scriptures, we understand what the Lord looks like.
Apart from that, in history, there have been many great devotees of the Lord who have actually realized the Lord, who have seen the Lord even face to face.
Standardized guidelines for carving scriptural deities
And their descriptions are also additional evidence for us on the same level as the scriptures.
In addition to that, there are various upavadas, subsidiary scriptures which deal with many other items of knowledge like say architecture, the sthapatyaveda.
And sthapatyaveda gives us indications or gives us information of different types of deities. It is very precise.
The carvers who gave the deities are not supposed to carve whimsically according to what they think Lord Krishna looks like.
But they're very, very elaborate and precise descriptions, including the proportions of the limbs, the size of the limbs, and so on and so forth. The ratios of the different parts of the body, it's all described there.
So when a deity manifests or deity appears so, to speak, then we know that it is an authorized form of the Lord. We cannot whimsically imagine the Lord to be something. So the God, the Supreme Lord, that is a person.
As we saw him up, we saw him now during the abhiṣeka, yes, he looks like that.
He has a blue complexion, surprisingly. We don't experience anybody with a blue complexion. We have blacks and whites and browns and yellows and we have all kinds of complexions. But we don't have a blue complexion.
But the Lord has a blue complexion, and when Śrīla Prabhupāda went to the went to America for the first time and he proclaimed that God was a blue cowherd boy.
This really got people astonished in America because they were accustomed to the cowboys you know were there. They are certainly not blue and they are not God.
So this was something that was very astonishing to the people of the West.
First of all, that God is a person. And secondly that he looks like this and he grazes cows, he plays the flute, he enjoys dances with the gopis. Rather strange behavior for someone who we think is God.
We associate God with activities like creating the universe, punishing the wicked, and so on and so forth. But actually, that is the those are the official activities of God.
The personal activities of God are in the Vaikuṇṭha world. There Lord Krishna resides with his dear devotees and performs wonderful loving pastimes with them.
So when the Lord descends like this, very kindly into matter then we say this is the deity. So the deity is different from an idol an idol is a statue an idol can be of anyone in this world.
Like you have Madame Tussauds? Tussauds? Tussauds, right? Madame Tussauds, you have so many wax, you know, likenesses of many famous people or celebrities. That's an idol. But that is not to be confused with a deity.
Direct manifestation of Krishna in deity form
The deity is not an idol.
Pratima na hi tumi sākṣāt vrajendra-nandana in the story of Sākṣī-gopāla. We hear the story of the young brāhmaṇa telling the Lord. O Gopāla, you are not a pratīk, you are not a statue, you are not an idol. You are sākṣād vrajendra-nandana, you are directly Kṛṣṇa, who is the son of Nanda Mahārāja and Vṛndāvana.
There is no difference between you and your deity. So this is the deity form. It is directly the Lord. There is no difference between the deity and the Lord Himself. This is the causeless mercy of the Lord.
He advanced himself in matter just so that we can offer him service. Otherwise we wouldn't know how to serve him.
Now that He comes in a deity form, we can offer ārati to him, we can decorate him, we can offer him various kinds of good foodstuffs,
for His pleasure, we can take darśana, we can offer prayers in his presence, we can meditate upon his beautiful form. So very kindly the Lord gives us an opportunity to serve Him and to meditate upon Him.
And that is why He takes the form of the Deity. There are different substances out of which a deity could be made like jewels, paint, mud, stone, wood, even in the mind.
So Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam says the deity form in the mind, if someone is contemplating the form of the Lord in the mind, that's also a deity. So the Lord very kindly appears just to accept our services.
Many times the forms of the Lord are quite unusual, like Narasiṁha, half lion, half man. Sometimes He appears in the form of a śilā. A Śālagrāma-śilā or Govardhana-śilā. Śilā means stone.
One time I remember there was one devotee who was carrying his śilā, Govardhana śilā and Śālagrāma-śilā. And they're stones, as devotees we all know. And devotees like to decorate these stones with eyes and they make something for the nose and they have a smile and like that. So at the customs or immigration or someplace like that, you know, at the airport, they wanted to see what was inside his bag. And he had just landed in America.
So they opened up and they saw all these śālagrāmas and they were suspicious: What's that? So this devotee didn't know what to say: He's God. So what? They were so astonished. This is God.
You know, how can some stones be God? So this theology, the Vaishnava theology is so intricate. It needs a lot of association of devotees, it needs hearing, it needs uh contemplation, it needs service.
Logic and scripture supporting personalism
And then we understand all the different ways in which the Lord can manifest within this world. So, yes, God is a person, but he is not a limited person like us. Even though he is of medium height, Prabhupada says.
But nevertheless, he can become Mahāviṣṇu, who is so huge in size that from the pores of his skin universes emanate. We can just imagine, or perhaps we can't even imagine, how big Mahāviṣṇu is.
And he comes originally then from Lord Krishna's transcendental body. So Lord Krishna is the supreme transcendental person. Personhood is superior to impersonal hood or non-personhood.
Behind every impersonal thing there is a person. When we say, for example, that the government has levied taxes or the government has done such and such, the word government is rather impersonal.
But we know that behind the word government there are individuals, there are people. So behind the impersonal word government are people, are ministers, are bureaucrats or whatever.
So ultimately, we may talk about the force of creation, the force of nature, light, and so on, but behind this force, behind this light is a personal source. That is Krishna.
So in the Īśopaniṣad the devotee prays: Hiraṇmayena pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham. My dear Lord, this blazing effulgence of your impersonal dear Lord, this blazing effulgence of your impersonal aspect is blinding me. Please remove this blinding effusion so that I can see your beautiful form, I can see your beautiful face.
So many spiritualists they are attracted more to the impersonal light than to the form that is the source or the origin of this light.
In the Bhagavad-gītā, Lord Krishna says: brahmaṇo hi pratiṣṭhāham, that I am the origin of this impersonal light. So personhood of God is something that is very simple in logic. But if one has been conditioned to believing that God cannot be a person, it's something very hard.
I saw once a movie of an ISKCON Gurukula, and there was one small child who was interviewed, a devotee child. And then the interviewer asked, Does God have a form? Is God a person? So the child replied yes.
And this was an interview by someone who came from outside. So how can you say that God has a form and that God is a person?
So the child replied, I have a form, you have a form, I am a person, you're a person, so why should God not have a form? Why should God not be a person?
The logic behind this is that God is the complete whole. He includes within himself everything that is in our experience and outside of our experience.
We see form in this world, so God must have form. We see formlessness in this world, so God must have a formless aspect as well. But the form being superior to the formless aspect is the original worshipable Lord.
So we understand that there is no contradiction, there is no conflict in accepting the Supreme Lord as a person.
A person who has feelings, a person who can sometimes get angry, a person who loves and who wants to be loved. We are minuscule, infinitesimal portions of God.
Just like when you go to a laboratory for a blood test, they just take a few milliliters of blood from you, and then they can understand everything about your blood.
What kind of viruses or germs are there or whatever? They don't need to take the entire blood. So similarly, the individual soul, that is you and me, we are all part and parcel of Krishna.
So when we understand the quality of the individual living entity, we can understand what the qualities of the Supreme Lord are. We love, we want to be loved. So Krishna also loves and wants to be loved.
We have feelings, so Krishna has feelings. We have abilities, Krishna has abilities. So this is very sublime logic, very simple logic.
So for the devotee, there is never any question of doubt about the personhood of God and the existence of the deity form of the Lord.
Story of the deity personal senses
I remember one story by His Holiness Sachinandhan Swami, which he mentioned in a class one time.
There was this person who was worshipping Krishna and he had a deity of Krishna in his house. And he was worshiping every day. He was expecting some material benefits to come, but somehow the other Krishna was a little maybe late in giving those benefits.
So he heard from someone that you give up the worship of Krishna and you take up the worship of Durga because she gives your material benefits very quickly. So it's a good idea.
So there are many people who worship different deities like that. I know one gentleman in India, he is a worshipper of Lord Ganesh. And then he he gave me a whole lecture on the different
Ganeshas in the different parts of India and he said, you know, I've tested them all out and I my research is that this one particular deity in this place is the most powerful.
Because when you go there you get your results, you you you get your boons very quickly.
So most people in this world approach some deity, whether it's the Supreme Lord or someone who is not the Supreme Lord, for some material benefit. So then he started worshiping Durga.
And now he offered an arathi and he had his incense, the frank incense and then he saw that the smoke from the incense was moving naturally automatically towards Krishna, the deity of Krishna and not Durga.
So this man got a little annoyed and he tried to shift the position of the incense in this way and that way, but whatever he might do, the smoke would move towards the deity of Krishna. So then he got really annoyed.
So he said I must do something about this. Then when everything else failed, he got some cotton. And he went to the deity of Krishna and put it in his nostrils so that he should not smell the incense that is being offered.
And that night Krishna appeared to him in a dream and said, Son, I'm very pleased with you. Pleased with me, he replied, Well actually I offended you today. Why do you say that I have you I have pleased you?
He said look, there are many people who worship me.
Even though you gave up my worship, but at least you accept me as a person who can smell, who can see, who can feel. You wanted to hurt me. You didn't want me to smell the fragrant incense that you were offering. So he put some cotton into my nostrils to block my nostrils so I wouldn't smell.
So you have faith that I smell. You have faith that I have a person with senses. So this is a nice story which illustrates that yes, God is a wonderful person.
He is endowed with all kinds of wonderful spiritual qualities, devotional qualities. And when the devotee serves the deity, there is a transcendental reciprocation of love.
It's not something that is concocted or imaginary, it's something very tangible. Of course, sometimes someone may get sentimental and imagine things, that's a different thing.
But for serious devotees, there is genuine reciprocation between the deity and the Lord and the devotee. It is one of the very important ways of invoking the dormant devotion that is in our heart for the Supreme Lord.
This archana paddati, this process of worshiping the deity, is an important element of sādhana-bhakti, the process of devotional service in practice.
By doing this practice sincerely with devotion, actually the devotion for the Lord is invoked in the heart.
And then no longer does the deity remain just stone or marble or wood, but he is actually directly the supreme person in front of us. That is our aspiration.
Welcoming Radha Vrindavan Bihari into the home
We want to relate to the deity like that.
So when we welcome the deity, we do it with the understanding that the Supreme Person very kindly has consented to enter into our temple or our house, and now we are so privileged that we have an opportunity to serve him, it's a great privilege actually.
Even the creator of the universe, Brahmā, is looking for such opportunities. King Ambarish was the emperor of the whole world. But when it came to serving his deities, he didn't allow anyone else to serve.
He would mop the floor. He would do all the other menial services for the Lord. Because this is a direct relation between the devotee and the Lord.
So today we have in the Aghabala family's home Sri Sri Radha Vrindavan Bihari who have advented.
The house is named Vrindavan and Vrindavan Bihari means one who enjoys in Vrindavan. In other words, he's a proprietor of the house. So it's an important point that you no longer own this house.
Whatever your legal documents may say. But we don't believe you. This house belongs to Radha Vrindavan Bihari. This is their abode and they have given you a chance to come here and live very kindly.
And they also give us a chance to come sometimes here for some satsangs to glorify them. So it's truly very, very fortunate. It's a nice opportunity.
We'd like to pray to the lotus feet that they may bless the whole Aghabala family with pure devotion to their lotus feet, engage them always in their devotional service.
And we hope and pray that all of us who are present here will also be blessed by the lotus feet of Sri Sri Radha Vrindavan Bihari. Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Share Krishna, Share Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Hare, Hare Hare.
Hare Krishna. Just before Maharaj speaks, there is a citron Picasso. Uh anyone it's dried on the grass and it can be throwed away very soon Right zero three.
But see if anybody has that big up, you'll be towed away if you don't go and move it away.
Explanation of deity reciprocation and Sakshi Gopala
Bavadatu Sankirtanaikitaro Kamama Daksham Vishwambaru drichawaro and deja katamarataru dentat pradishamamavajam pra su sangivaya takila sakti dara sala anjamcha hasta charana Stavanatva Gadi Ranandamo Bhagavati Purusarubya. Sri Krishna Chachana Brabanda Sriva Srivata Sabi Gora Rataminda Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Krishna, So
his wholeness Bhakti Rasamritamaraj told us how the deity is not idle. This aspect of Hinduism or Vedic culture is greatly misunderstood by most of the people in the world.
And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu specifically was very emphatic on this point. He loved the story which Maharaj mentioned, the story of Sakshi Gopal,ere Sakshri Gapal reciprocated with the
sincere desire of a poor young Brahman It was a it's a long story, but ultimately this young Brahmana wanted Sakshigapal to become Sakshi, to become a witness in his argument with uh old Brahman.
He came to me down and said, You're witness. I swear to you and he sweared in front of you that he would give And now he wants to go back at his word. You please come and testify that he gave this promise. And you know, Gopal.
Young Brahman was very innocent, so he was pleading him with all sincerity, you please come, you must come, you have to come. This is your duty. You're the witness, you're God.
So Saxon Gopal very gently tried to correct him. He said, how do you explain the statue of ghouls? Statues they don't walk usually. And to this the young Brahman very aptly said status usually don't talk either.
You're talking so and at this very moment he said this phrase which Maharaj was quoting, Pratimanautame, Saksat Prajantrananda, you're not studying, you're not Pratima, you're not just idol, you're Saksat Brajandranandan, you're God.
So this principle of reciprocation is extremely important because if you look at the uh um image of God as stone. He will remain stone.
Because your heart is stone-like and you are trying to impose your material conceptions upon him, he will remain stone. It's no problem for him.
Materialistic vision of seeing the deity as stone
It doesn't take him much to remain stone.
But Padma Purāṇa also explains that somebody who archary Visnau Sivadir that somebody who looks at the Archavikraha or the image of God of Vishnu has a stone, Shivadir. He is Naraki. He is dwelling in hell.
Why he is dwelling in hell? Because his mental makeup is hellish. He is just completely, totally, grossly materialistic in his approach to world. And he can see the most subtle and higher reality which is also there.
He is blinded, and because he is blinded, he sees only the superficial appearances without seeing deeper. And that means that he is dwelling in hell.
Because you know he will not only look at God, at the image of God as a stone, he will try also to exploit other people.
Those people who don't accept God and don't accept that God can manifest himself in anything he wants, they end up in looking at other people as objects as well.
The point is that in the eyes of God, when we come to God and when we look at God and try to reciprocate with God, we have to understand that He is the subject, we are the object.
He is the supreme subject, He is the Supreme Consciousness, and in His eyes we just objects.
But if we look down at him, thinking that he is object of our observation, that we know better who he is and we can judge him and estimate him and impose our conceptions upon him, then basically we are trying to be God.
And it will inevitably bring the similar relationship with other people. We will not be able to recognize other people as subjects, as personalities. And as a result of this we will exploit them.
As a result of this, we will try to inflict pain to them. As a result of them, there will be so many different problems which we will create and we will live in hell.
This very vision, the impaired vision, improper vision, which does not reveal to us presence of God in His image will inevitably bring about unlimited consequences which will ultimately make us miserable.
So therefore, this verse in Padma Purāṇa very emphatically states that somebody who doesn't want to reciprocate with God, who kindly manifested himself in the image as God, he is dwelling in hell, he is naraki, he has the hellish mentality, and ultimately he will suffer.
Krishna response to different levels of devotion
So this very important point of reciprocation we have to understand clearly. Krishna Himself says in Bhagavad-gītā, ye yathā māṁ prapadyante As much as how the person looks at me, how the person
deals with me, I deal with him accordingly. If he thinks that I am stone, he will be stoned in my eyes. Because he feels that I don't exist, it means that he will not exist in my conception of world.
I will not care about him because he can care less about me.
But if he tries to care about me and do something for me, I will reciprocate with him accordingly and uh I will manifest myself uh to him and he will ultimately understand that I am a
person and the highest point of human evolution is to relate with God.
And therefore, this deity worship is such an important aspect of Vedic culture, the aspect which ultimately can elevate one's consciousness from this limited plane to the plane of unlimited.
Unlimited becomes limited for us so that we can reciprocate with him. But he remains unlimited. And what he does, by this reciprocation, he makes us unlimited in one sense.
Of course we always remain limited, but in this verse which uh Maharaj yesterday quoted that we are just uh one ten thousandth parts of the tip of a hair, very small insignificant soul
and the same verse it is said anantāya kalpate that the same spirit soul has the potential to become unlimited by the dint of association with unlimited.
Coming in contact with unlimited God, we change our constitutional position. We also become completely spiritualized and that means no limitations anymore.
Human beings, when they are constantly in contact with limited world, limited conceptions of this world, limited everything, limited resources, there's suffering.
Everyone in the psyche of every human being there is a desire to become unlimited. And people in different ways are trying to realize this desire.
Some people are trying to realize this desire by accumulating uh unlimited amounts of money. You know, you ask them why do you need so much money? They don't know.
But the reason is simple their spirit soul and spirit soul has the potential to be unlimited. That's why they want to have unlimited money. They don't need unlimited money.
They only need, you know 500 pounds a month to live happily. But still psychologically there is a need. You know, they want to expand, expand everything, this expansion.
Well some people they have the power and they want to have unlimited power. The more power the better. Why? You know, it's such a headache to have power.
But still, because by nature they are spiritual, there is this craving to be associated with something which is unlimited.
But ultimately, this craving for this desire is only realized when we come in contact with real unlimited God, unlimited world, unlimited spiritual realm.
And that's why unlimited God takes limited form to bring us to His level to help us to reciprocate with Him and change our status and that's in essence the deity
worship and as Lord Brahma says in the Skanda Purana Yatyaddio Taurugay Vibavayanti Tatadva He says that the Lord He reciprocates with our desire to serve Him and in which form we meditate upon him, he takes this form.
Yatyadhiyo, taurugaya vibavayandi, he's arogai, he is multi-glorious, he is all glorious. So he can take any form.
And if we meditate on a certain form, Yad Yaddiyo, Tavarugaya Vibhavayanti, Tat tatvapu vibaya se sada nu grachaya because of his mercy, because of his anugraha, because of his desire to please his devotees, he takes the particular form so that we will be happy.
Miraculous stories of deity carving and appearance
There are so many stories how it works. I recently was in Jaipur where there are so many sthapatis who carve the deities.
And one of them told me an interesting story from one ISKCON temple, they ordered him to create the deity of Rādhā and Krishna. And he told me that we never know in which form Rādhā Krishna will appear from the stone.
We basically worship the stone and we meditate upon God, but we never know what will be the ultimate result of our sculpturing endeavours.
And he said in this particular case, Rādhārāṇī she appeared from the stone with slanted eyes and we were trying to do something but the eyes were slanted and Krishna also was slanted ice and we were very afraid because according to the agreement which they have with their customers, you know. If the customers don't like the final result, they can just say, just forget it, do it all over again.
And so they were little afraid. So there are ultimately the devotees who ordered this form of the Lord came
and when they saw this they said that's exactly what we need because all people in our country have slant? Because they have slanted eyes. It's a perfect form of the Lord.
So it it basically shows that the meditation brings about the particular form of the Lord. The same thing which is written there in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is proven in this way.
That's the meditation which forces the Lord to take a particular shape and form so that we can reciprocate with him.
Therefore, again, if we really understand what is going on and take this reciprocation very seriously, we can be rewarded, rewarded by the greatest treasure, which is love.
And if we neglect this opportunity to serve personally to the Lord, then the result may not be that glorious. We will remain in our limited box in this world. And we will remain stressed because of this condition.
Ultimately we are imprisoned. The unlimited potentially unlimited spiritual soul which has the potential to love unlimitedly, to increase his love unlimitedly to what the Lord is suffering in this limited world.
And I will tell another little story which recently happened how it works. Recently we I was also present in one installation ceremony in one city of the former Soviet Union Tallinn. It's the capital of Estonia, and they
have a small ISKCON temple there and they decided to install Jagannātha deities in this temple.
And Śrīla Prabhupāda said that the most essential part of installation ceremony is actually kīrtana. When we sincerely beg the Lord by invoking his holy name to come.
So the Temple President He decided to have a lot of kīrtans for this installation ceremony. There was a kīrtana mela, there was non-stop 12 hours kīrtans for several days in a row.
And every time he would say, just please call Jagannātha, call Jagannātha, call Jagannātha to come, please, please, please. He's actually a very sincere person and he wants to give mercy to all the people and he wants to take Jagannath in constant travel all over the country and in other countries.
So he was really very eager and he was begging everyone else, please ask Lord Jagannath to come.
And you know, the installation ceremony was over, the festival was over, all devotees went to their particular cities and places. And um and as usually you know after so much festivities
the kind of you know the intensity of reciprocation went a little down and There was a pujārī who was doing some pūjā.
So a couple of days after this installation ceremony they got a call and somebody is calling, some lady was calling from India. And this lady asked, you know, yes, is this ISKCON temple? They said, yes, this is ISKCON.
And she said, do you have Jagannath there?
She said, I looked in the internet and there is no mention that you have Jagannath, but Lord Jagannath, You know, he's telling me that you don't feed him properly there in Estonia. Do you have Jagannath?
I said, Yes, we just we just yeah, we just installed Jagannath. What happened? She said he came to me in my dream.
She said I have Jagannātha at home and I give him a lot of prasāda and he likes it so every now and then he comes to me and complains if somebody doesn't fit him properly.
And she didn't know, she didn't know where Estonia is. She didn't she didn't know what is what is this place. She just, you know, was trying to fulfill the order.
So she said, Lord Jagannatha came to me and she said they just, you know, they was nice, they were calling me and calling me and calling and now they don't feed me properly.
And then she said, you have some mangoes in the fridge. Why don't you give these mangoes to Lord, he he told me that some mangoes is there.
So the this person who was speaking with her was so he ran to pūjārī and uh she said, yes, there are some mangoes, but they are green. And I thought how I can give these green mangoes to you? She said, but Lord wants them.
So they they cut the mangoes. The mangoes were totally completely ripe, but uh you know they feed and know all the devotees knew about this so they brought a lot of fruits and everything.
So a couple of days later she calls again and she says he says it's fine but what do we give him at night?
They give him some fruits and some minutes said no no no Jagannatha he likes grains, you know, you can give him some milk, you know. He complained to me.
He said it's now it's better but still they're then this should very amazed so they started cooking some some grain, some cookies, everything. And then you know some pujari again a few days passed and some pujari he had an idea.
So he decided to give some sandwiches to Lord Jagannātha that night. So he he took some paneer, some cheese and he fried the cheese and put it on the bread and he put something and you know made it very nice and things like this and you know he offered his love to him.
She calls next day. She said he came to me and he said this cheese was very good, excellent. So this is what it is.
If there is And that's that just happened a few days back, you know, in April there was this installation ceremony and Lord Jagannātha manifested this leelā.
If we reciprocate with the deity with real love and devotion, there is no doubt about it that we will get the most precious reward as a result that is the pleasure of the Lord.
The whole point of bhakti is stop worrying about ourselves. Stop being self-centered, selfish, ego-centric living beings. And try to become lovers of God means putting His interest on the first place in our life.
And if we succeed in pleasing Him by our little attempts to do something, then there's no doubt about it we will become very happy ourselves because it is explained by also
by Prahlāda Mahārāja that if we please the Lord we will be automatically pleased as much as if we put some decoration on ourselves, then the reflection will be decorated and beautiful.
We don't have to beautify the reflection separately. In the same way, we as living beings, just a reflection of God. So if He is pleased, if He is decorated, we will be pleased, we will be happy, we will be decorated.
And if we try to decorate separately the reflection, it will be pretty ridiculous, you know.
You may put something on the reflection, but it doesn't really work. You have to really decorate the real person. And the real person is God.
And if you put him in the center of our life, we will become happy. We will get everything we need. Because we are His reflections, made for His pleasure. So thank you very much. Was that lady an ISKCON devotee? She was.
How did she find the telephone number?
Oh she went on the internet because in a dream there was in the dream that was said that's Estonian so she didn't know what she tried to search and she was eluded because in the internet in the site there was no mention of Waterland If you get any phone calls from India beware.
Look at the caller ID, before you answer them. That proves God lives in India now. His his voice is coming through. We still have they're just beginning the offering, so we still have ten fifteen minutes to go, Maharaj.
History and progress of the Moscow temple project
So Maharaj you we were going to have a summary of Russia as well so for everyone what is happening and if we can have that. And then if there is any questions we can take as well.
First of all I would like to thank Shridharma Prabhu and Avanda Prabhu Gauri Prabhu. From the very beginning in 2004 the delegation of Patron Council of Bhaktivedanta Manor came to Moscow. Dilip Prabhu was there. Dilippai.
And that was at that time we just we were just evicted from our temple and we were practically out on the streets and at that time we had this vision of Moscow temple.
And the idea of this temple is to invite God in Moscow. This is a very godless place and it needs the presence of God.
And there are so many devotees there, so many sincere Russian people who are becoming Krishna devotees and worship Krishna.
Every Sunday we have around thousand people coming for Sunday program during fifth days we have so many people coming and uh uh we saw that it's very appropriate if we have a proper temple for Krishna in Moscow.
And potential is also practically unlimited because so many people are disgusted with the material way of life in Russia. But at that time we didn't have any resources, nothing.
Uh and this this whole project was totally unrealistic. It was just a nice idea, but we didn't know how to tackle it, how to approach it, from which angle to approach it.
And uh at that point Krishna kindly sent uh Sudidharma Prabhu, Gauri Prabhu, Pranapandu Prabhu and the whole Patron Council. And they came to Moscow and they saw it for themselves. It was a miserable autumn in Moscow.
October, right? Was it October?
You know, it was something was drizzling from the sky, was gloomy, but they saw the devotees, they saw the deities, they saw the conditions and from their blessings and help and support this whole history of Moscow Temple project started from that point on.
I personally was very encouraged because I was a lone warrior there and there are of course many Russian devotees who were there, but none of them was you know capable of doing this kind of project.
Anyways, so from 2004 till 2012,
it has been already eight years, and even before that, when we launched this Moscow temple project, and ultimately after so much struggle, so much opposition, so much problems which we had to overcome, and recent problem you probably all aware, this Bhagavad-gītā case.
We got the permission to build the temple in Moscow. And for me the whole story was very instructive because practically on every you know on every stage of the story when the story was unveiling or was revealing itself.
I could feel the presence of God. Even uh this last episode of this story was purely, completely hundred percent arranged by God, I mean this Bhagavad-gītā controversy.
It's amazing because we had our own idea how it should be done, what should be done, what should not be done, but Krishna has his own plan.
You know, he inspired from the heart some fanatical Christian people to file the case against Bhagavad-gītā. If they file the case against Caitanya-caritāmṛta, you know, I don't know. Life comes from life.
Nothing would happen. But he particularly inspired them to file the case against Bhagavad-gītā.
And uh they started fighting with us and uh initially I I thought you know when I heard about this, I thought it's too stupid to be true. I couldn't I couldn't believe it. It's just too stupid.
I didn't take it seriously, but then when our lawyers explained to us the possible consequences if we lose the case, I became really I became really scared about this whole thing.
So then we tried in our way to you know bring attention of Indian people towards this case, look what is going on in Russia, please do something.
We wrote a letter to some governmental officials, to the prime minister, to the foreign minister, to this and that. Nobody, absolutely nobody. Everyone was totally, completely indifferent. Nobody could care less.
You know, they all they all said, you know, it's your business, don't worry, we didn't know and I became desperate. Totally, completely desperate, because uh it looked very serious.
And then you know but Krishna arranged. It was very interesting to watch how Krishna very minutely manages the whole story.
So just three days before the court hearing, the court hearing was little postponed, just three days before the court hearing, the timing was perfect. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India, went to Moscow.
And just before he went to Moscow, I spoke with one journalist who was there in his delegation from a news agency. And this journalist asked me what's going on. I told him, I told him an update, I gave him this.
And before we tried, we tried so many newspapers, Times of India, this and that, nobody was interested in this to me.
So this one unknown journalist went with Manmohan Singh, he spoke with our people there, he spoke with me, and he put out a story, and this story next day was in all big newspapers of India.
And the next day after that, exactly on the day of hearing in the court, you know, there was a whole explosion in the parliament of India.
They said that this was the only issue in the history of Indian parliament which united all the parties who can unite them. They were all different.
But when they heard that Russian government is trying to ban Bhagavad-gītā, all of a sudden they all unitedly stood. And it was so interesting to watch how it works because ultimately
it became very clear that Krishna wants and I was the first one I was saying please let's do it low profile, let's not do it let's do it quietly.
I don't want this publicity, you know, we went through it. Let's do it quietly. But Krishna had his plan. He said, no, let's do it big way.
Let's make a big noise about the whole thing because you know and when I first heard
that the whole Indian parliament is adjourned because of this Bhagavad-gītā case. I almost had a heart attack because I didn't know where where it will bring us at the end of the day.
Because you never know with this politics and everything but what and time and again Krishna showed us that he is personally present.
And he did it exactly when he did it, when the time is there for us to start construction of the temple. He just created the awareness about this temple and Hare Krishna.
Before everything was quiet, then all of a sudden he just inspired these Christians to file the case against Bhagavad-gītā and here we are, we got the publicity which we never dreamed about.
Somebody said, you know, how much you paid to these Christians to get this book? The most amazing thing it was all free. We didn't pay them because
uh to build this project. It's good, it's a good idea, it's a beautiful project, there is a lot of sacrifice and in this project and uh but we also need resources and the resources can only come if there is a public sympathy.
And this whole case created a wave of public sympathy in Russia towards this project to ultimately help us realize it. So what I wanted to say is that Krishna is reciprocating.
If we want to do something for him, he will help in all uh respects.
And uh now we are you know about to start the project and the awareness has been created so hopefully we will be able to complete this and I you know wholeheartedly invite all of you to come for the opening of this temple which probably will mean a couple of years we will let you know.
But uh you know, and if you can somehow rather help or take part in this project, it will be definitely a reciprocation of service which will be accepted by Krishna so thank you very much