20071117 Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.20.18-20

Following is a class given by His Holiness Jayapatākā Swami Mahārāja on November 17, 2007 in Śrī Vṛndāvana, India. The class begins with a reading from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam canto three, chapter twenty, text eighteen to twenty.

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānandaṁ mādhavaṁ śrī caitanya iśvaram
hariḥ oṁ tat sat

Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.20.18

sasarja cchāyayāvidyāṁ
pañca-parvāṇam agrataḥ
tāmisram andha-tāmisraṁ
tamo moho mahā-tamaḥ

Translation: First of all, Brahmā created from his shadow the coverings of ignorance of the conditioned souls. They are five in number and are called tāmisra, andha-tāmisra, tamas, moha and mahā-moha.

Purport: The conditioned souls, or living entities who come to the material world to enjoy sense gratification, are covered in the beginning by five different conditions. The first condition is a covering of tāmisra, or anger. Constitutionally, each and every living entity has minute independence; it is misuse of that minute independence for the conditioned soul to think that he can also enjoy like the Supreme Lord or to think, “Why shall I not be a free enjoyer like the Supreme Lord?” This forgetfulness of his constitutional position is due to anger or envy. The living entity, being eternally a part-and-parcel servitor of the Supreme Lord, can never, by constitution, be an equal enjoyer with the Lord. When he forgets this, however, and tries to be one with Him, his condition is called tāmisra. Even in the field of spiritual realization, this tāmisra mentality of the living entity is hard to overcome. In trying to get out of the entanglement of material life, there are many who want to be one with the Supreme. Even in their transcendental activities, this lower-grade mentality of tāmisra continues.

Andha-tāmisra involves considering death to be the ultimate end. The atheists generally think that the body is the self and that everything is therefore ended with the end of the body. Thus, they want to enjoy material life as far as possible during the existence of the body. Their theory is: “As long as you live, you should live prosperously. Never mind whether you commit all kinds of so-called sins. You must eat sumptuously. Beg, borrow and steal, and if you think that by stealing and borrowing you are being entangled in sinful activities for which you will have to pay, then just forget that misconception because after death everything is finished. No one is responsible for anything he does during his life.” This atheistic conception of life is killing human civilization, for it is without knowledge of the continuation of eternal life.

This andha-tāmisra ignorance is due to tamas. The condition of not knowing anything about the spirit soul is called tamas. This material world is also generally called tamas because ninety-nine percent of its living entities are ignorant of their identity as soul. Almost everyone is thinking that he is this body; he has no information of the spirit soul. Guided by this misconception, one always thinks, “This is my body, and anything in relationship with this body is mine.” For such misguided living entities, sex life is the background of material existence. Actually, the conditioned souls, in ignorance in this material world, are simply guided by sex life, and as soon as they get the opportunity for sex life, they become attached to so-called home, motherland, children, wealth and opulence. As these attachments increase, moha, or the illusion of the bodily concept of life, also increases. Thus, the idea that “I am this body, and everything belonging to this body is mine” also increases, and as the whole world is put into moha, sectarian societies, families and nationalities are created, and they fight with one another. Mahā-moha means to be mad after material enjoyment. Especially in this Age of Kali, everyone is overwhelmed by the madness to accumulate paraphernalia for material enjoyment. These definitions are very nicely given in Viṣṇu Purāṇa, wherein it is said:

tamo ’viveko mohaḥ syād
antaḥ-karaṇa-vibhramaḥ
mahā-mohas tu vijñeyo
grāmya-bhoga-sukhaiṣaṇā

maraṇaṁ hy andha-tāmisraṁ
tāmisraṁ krodha ucyate
avidyā pañca-parvaiṣā
prādurbhūtā mahātmanaḥ

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.20.19

visasarjātmanaḥ kāyaṁ
nābhinandaṁs tamomayam
jagṛhur yakṣa-rakṣāṁsi
rātriṁ kṣut-tṛṭ-samudbhavām

Translation: Out of disgust, Brahmā threw off the body of ignorance, and taking this opportunity, Yakṣas and Rākṣasas sprang for possession of the body, which continued to exist in the form of night. Night is the source of hunger and thirst.

Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 3.20.20

kṣut-tṛḍbhyām upasṛṣṭās te
taṁ jagdhum abhidudruvuḥ
mā rakṣatainaṁ jakṣadhvam
ity ūcuḥ kṣut-tṛḍ-arditāḥ

Translation: Overpowered by hunger and thirst, they ran to devour Brahmā from all sides and cried, “Spare him not! Eat him up!”

Purport: The representatives of the Yakṣas and Rākṣasas still exist in some countries of the world. It is understood that such uncivilized men take pleasure in killing their own grandfathers and holding a “love feast” by roasting the bodies.

* * *

Jayapatākā Swami: Hare Kṛṣṇa. [Aside: The class is given today at Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Mandir, Vṛndāvana. What is the date today? Seventeenth November, two thousand seven, Gaurābda, second half of Lord Brahmā’s life.]

Sometimes, the mahā-tama is also called mahā-moha. You know any people in this world that do not know about the existence of the spirit soul? Many... few people like that, they are under tamas. [Aside: There is also text nineteen which does not have a purport, might as well also read that.] Okay, so.. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty. So there is the five kinds of coverings of ignorance of the conditioned souls. We hope that everybody who becomes Kṛṣṇa conscious can get freed from these coverings. Maybe you can remember a time when you were somewhat covered by these conceptions of life. At least those who were not born in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We are born in this kind of ignorance where we think we are the body.

So, this body of ignorance, this ignorant body was covering Brahmā. We will discuss how He dealt with that later. So, the first thing is our enviousness, our anger against Kṛṣṇa. This is like the original reason we come into the material world. We want to enjoy like Kṛṣṇa. We cannot enjoy like Kṛṣṇa because He is the Absolute Truth. But something… like a little bit in the material world we get a minute ability to enjoy. Gaura-Nitāi kī Jaya! Guru-Gaurāṅga kī Jaya! Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma kī Jaya! Śrī Rādhe-Śyāma! So, this idea that wanting to enjoy like the Lord, this is the ignorance, this is the tāmisra, somebody who wants to get spiritual realization. Then Śrīlā Prabhupāda, explains that the danger is that they may also want to be spiritually one with God. If you go walking on the road here, there are so many pictures of different lectures — bābās and ṭhākuras and paṇḍitas.

And most of them, they say bhakti, jñāna-yajña. When they say jñāna-yajña, usually it means that at the end of the lecture they all want to merge. They use bhakti to attract the bhaktas but the jñāna means that they want to become one with God. Once I was at, I think it was some Janmāṣṭamī festival in Patna, in Bihar, and they hired one drama troupe. So, the drama troupe was showing the drama of Mīrābāī, the great Rājasthānī devotee who had accepted Kṛṣṇa as Her husband. And she went through many trials and tribulations. And she was.. Śrīlā Prabhupāda said she is a great devotee. So, we may not agree exactly with her methodology. We follow the Six-Gosvāmīs, a slightly different approach. But anyway, she was a devotee. But somehow at the end of this drama, they show that she meets with Kṛṣṇa and then they had something like a spinning wheel and some strobe lights. And then they said, “Now she is merging with Kṛṣṇa,” spoiling the whole thing. She never wanted to merge with Kṛṣṇa. She wanted to be Kṛṣṇa’s wife, but like this. So, people getting their brains spoiled.

I was sitting in Bombay in the airport, and then one lady came up to me. She is dressed in white. She is an elderly lady, maybe sixty-five. And she said, “I am your life member but I have one question. Why you devotees, why you in ISKCON worship the Deities? I mean, after all, God is formless. So why are you worshiping Deities?” Here is one of our life members, you know, I think she did not read the books that she got. (laughter) Otherwise she would know that Prabhupāda has explained how this impersonalism is bewildering people. So, big calamity. What is that? Now, I cannot remember.

What is that poem Prabhupāda wrote in Vyāsa-pūjā? “Absolute is sentient, Thou hast proved; impersonal calamity, Thou hast moved.” Lord Caitanya said, māyāvādi-bhāṣya śunile haya sarva-nāśa [Cc. Madhya 6.169] that you get all the difficulties, destruction by listening to the Māyāvādīs. So, I wonder one or two had two tulasī-mālās, but so many advertisements for the big lectures but everyone says jñāna. We say bhakti-vedānta. But our conclusion is that we should surrender to Kṛṣṇa. We should be Kṛṣṇa’s eternal servant. By serving Kṛṣṇa, you actually get the maximum happiness but this ignorance makes us want to enjoy the material world or even to enjoy the spiritual world.

Śrīlā Prabhupāda once said that Māyāvādīs and sahajiyās are two sides of the same coin. That sahajiyās… Māyāvādīs means you want to become God or be one with God, merge with God and the sahajiyā means that you just imagine that you are a great pure devotee. You are one of the eternal associates of the Lord, just by imagining it. Do not have to preach, do not have to do sādhana, do not have to do — you just find some bābājī who will tell you that this is what you are and bas, there are many there waiting on the path to tell you “Your sampradāya is not good, I will give you your ekādaśa-bhāva, your eleven.” But we do not want someone to just tell us, “You are a cowherd boy,” or “You are a peacock,” or “You are a cow.” We want to realize that. We want Kṛṣṇa to reveal in our heart that we see who we are.

We see Kṛṣṇa in the perspective of that relationship, not just something of, you know, from a third party that someone can say anything and say “You are an American” or “You are a Russian.” We want to know, “What I am?”, spiritually by realization that we get by practicing bhakti-yoga, which is the process that Śrīla Prabhupāda gave us. So, that process is the opposite of this tāmisra. So, we have to be very careful about the different forms of tāmisra, material, māyāvāda and sahajiyā. Then we can see here, we go from tāmisra to under andha-tāmisra, blind ignorance. That is the people that think that death is the ultimate. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we will die.

Once one of these publishers or one of these men’s magazines, he wrote that there is no ultimate higher reality and the goal in life is to accumulate as many toys as possible – Cars, jewelry, different machines and whoever dies with the most toys, he wins. So, it seems they never grew up. So, these are under andha-tāmisra, blind ignorance, deathly ignorance. So, they think that death is the end. So, they are trying to squeeze out from this body but in Kṛṣṇa consciousness we know that this body anyway has got very limited happiness. There is only a certain amount of happiness you can get from the senses. We hear during the period of the Roman culture, people were also trying to enjoy life so much that they would eat and then they would put a feather down their throat and vomit out the food and eat again. This is called Hedonistic society, just meant for enjoying. This is what many people are after. This is a danger.

Yesterday Devakīnandana Prabhu in our meeting was telling how he met. He got the contact for one Indian who was a multi-millionaire, made one hundred and twenty million dollars and he wanted to get an interview to cultivate him. But he said, “I do not believe in God, I do not believe in culture, I do not believe in any of these things. So, what will we talk about?” So, somehow he convinced him and then they were talking and then he got. Now apparently he has become more favorable and he is chanting and everything, or he is liking prasāda. There are people like that, even some modern Indians, although they are born in this great culture.

All over the world there are people who are simply after sense gratification. Maybe they have a higher purpose. Maybe mix it with a little more of goodness. Help humanity be an ecological favorable something, but simply a material concept of life but they need.. it is not a satisfying point of view, but somehow of course, this official stance of the communists, “Religion is the opium of the people,” things like that. So, we had to deal with all this. But sometimes by giving good association, by people seeing that you are genuinely happy in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, they may hanker for your association. They may hanker for your positive vibration.

I remember once in Guwahati we were establishing the new temple there, building it. We had to get all kinds of government approvals and things. There was one life member who helped us a lot. He had a very good service attitude but he was in the tāmisra mode. He would meditate in his closet on a deerskin, wearing a loincloth and he was trying to merge into the light. Once he came by with a book called “Merge in the Light.” That is something jyotipāta. We told him this book is not really suitable for our temple. I remember I had a discussion with this life member. He liked the devotees a lot but then.. So, I had a discussion, I showed him the 14th chapter, Bhagavad-gītā. It says, brahmaṇo ’pratiṣṭhāham,  “I am the basis of the impersonal Brahman.” [Bg. 14.27] And when he saw that and he read the purport, he got “Oh no, no. What is happening to me? My whole life I have understood that the impersonal Brahman is the basis of everything.” And how is it he went through this? Like he was going through really withdrawal symptoms or something. So, I cannot talk anymore. This is too much for me.” So, anyway, I left him that night.

Next night came, he was happy and smiling and I wondered what happened to him. So, I asked him what happened and then he said, “I called up my professor friend at the University of Assam and he told me that brahmaṇo ’pratiṣṭhāham [Bg. 14.27] means that four-headed Brahmā — ‘I am the basis of four-headed Brahmā.’”

Oh no, but Śrīla Prabhupāda in all the purports says that this is specifically not discussing the four-headed Brahmā; this is talking about the impersonal Brahman. So, then I remembered that once Prabhupāda said, “Do not try, you know, if you see that someone is really bad Māyāvādī, then better to engage them in service than try to just unendingly discuss with them.” So, then we continued to engage him in service and he came. We did not talk anymore about the philosophy.

After a few years of doing service, maybe his puṇya, his sukṛti had increased. Then he approached me one day, “You know, I am starting to understand about the personal concept. It is starting to make sense to me.” I was so blissful, you know. Haribol! So, you can study. When you see people who are in māyā, are they in the andha-tāmisra level or the… Let us see, what is the next one? We got a few, five levels here. Then we have the tamas level. The tamas level: not knowing anything about the spirit soul — totally bodily concept of life or mental concept of life, tamas. There are some people called tamas, right? (laughter) Thomas. (Śrīla Guru Mahārāja joked about Thomas being tamas) So, one of Kṛṣṇa’s names is Tamoha — He cuts the tamas.

Actually even some of you, like even Hiraṇyakaśipu was a great rākṣasa, demon, asura, but he knew that there was a spirit soul. There is that lecture he gave to his relatives when Hiraṇyākṣa had died. So, some of these demons, they know about the soul, but they are very powerful. You have to watch out for those ones. But generally here, this is just a bodily concept. This is the problem of the modern world — that it is completely a bodily concept. Even in religion they say, “You have a soul, you are the body, you have a soul”, like the soul is some kind of abstract thing there.

So, then from this tamas idea, you have home, motherland, and you have all the increasing sexual attachments. So, from those different attachments comes moha, or the illusion of the bodily concept of life. Somehow, they always say that this year we are having… the next year we are having the Olympics in China. And they always say, “The Olympics improve World Peace.” But not exactly sure how that works but we see that recently in Russia there was a news — I think I was watching and they said that they are following in the footsteps of the British football hooligans, that the British football hooligans, they admire them. And so now they have Russian football hooligans who like to attack people and beat them up after football. If you win, it is a good cause to have a fight. And if you lose, you have a good cause to have a fight.

So, this is the moha and tamas. What does the football team have to do with anything eternal? But they are willing to die just for the ignorance of this identification. They showed that the huge street battles, fighting. I remember once in London, our devotees were doing Harināma in — what is that called?—Oxford Street. And then the football game had let out and there was a group of hooligans came down. They attacked the devotees. So, after that the devotees had to do Harināma with flags on thick sticks so, in case they were attacked, they could have some defense.

But I remember once in Calcutta, they also have some of this in India. They told us we had to do our Ratha-yātrā an hour earlier because the football game would get out at four o’clock and whichever team lost would go around and take razor blades and slash people’s faces and cut tires and do crazy things. So, I mean, not that this tamas and this moha is not there.. also in India; we have to move out. So, they said you should get way ahead before these football people get out.

So, this kind of moha, where you create this… here you have societies, families, nationalities. They create football fans and football hooligans. Things like that is another kind of moha. But even all this — it is like you read about how there was one world government under some of these Vedic kings like Ambarīṣa or Parīkṣit Mahārāja or Yudhiṣṭhira Mahārāja. And once they had established the world rule, there was no more war. Almost unimaginable. Because now we have United Nations, but still there are something like forty-two wars going on around the world. So, it has not been successful to stop the war.

Śrīla Prabhupāda explained that every country has its own interests. So, one country’s interest may compete with another country’s. So, then they do not agree but if you have one world government, then there is only one country and then everybody can agree. You have no choice. (laughter)

Anyway, then if we go from moha, which is this bodily concept of life — whatever this, my body, my body’s property, my body’s country, my family, my society — the sectarian violence that goes on in the world, my sect versus your sect… so, that grows more intense into mahā-moha, mahā-tama, mad after material enjoyment, increasing the fever. Now it is a.. very fever to enjoy more and more. So, that is very…

So, Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, He was giving people spiritual bliss. We find that people chant,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

they get spiritual bliss. They actually change their whole consciousness. When Brahmā, he was facing this difficulty — so, he was disgusted with this ignorant covering he had from his shadow body. All this ignorance that he gave up his body. So, Brahmā is able to give up his body at will and then take on a new one.

So, whenever he gets a body he did not like — later, when he was being attacked for sex by some demons he created — then he went to Viṣṇu to save him. And then Viṣṇu said, “Give up that body.” So, he gave up the body which became the twilight. And then the demons went after the twilight, which they thought was a beautiful woman. So, Brahmā can give up his body when it is not favorable but we do not have that. If we give up our body, then we take a new birth again. It is not.. but we can change our body. We can change our body spiritually by purifying it, by chanting, ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanam, cleansing the consciousness, the mirror of the consciousness by chanting,

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

Jagāi and Mādhāi were born in a brāhmaṇa family but they were totally in all of these — they were tāmisra, andha-tāmisra, tamas, moha, and mahā-moha. They were in all total ignorance. So, they were trying to enjoy life. And they did not care how much suffering they caused other people. It says that in Yamaloka they were designing a special hell just for them. The twenty-six  normal pre-formed hells they had, were not good enough. So, there is some job for architects in the next life. You can design hells also. So, they are designing a special hell. I do not say exactly what were the features of that hell, but it was on the drawing table.

But somehow, by Nityānanda Prabhu’s mercy, they surrendered and then Lord Caitanya forgave them for all of their sins. So, Caitanya-bhāgavata explains that there was a big commotion in Yamaloka that all the accountants, when they saw that Jagāi-Mādhāi’s account was wiped clean, they approached Yamarāja and told him. And he said, “How much sin did they have? How much karma did they accumulate?” vikarmas. And they said, “It is so much that it would take, you know, like warehouses after warehouses just to write.” Then that is why I found it. They said, “We were designing a special hell just for them.”

So, we do not know. Now there are some pretty heavy demons in the world today. We do not know how many, what kind of future awaits them. But then Yamarāja, he fell unconscious when he heard how such a sinful persons were  delivered by Nitāi-Gaura. So, they were fanning him and trying to revive him, but he was not reviving.

So, then it so happened that Śiva appeared and he saw that Yamarāja was unconscious. He asked what happened. They explained that he fainted when he heard how these two sinners had been delivered. He said, “No, he has not fainting. He is in ecstasy. He is in trance, hearing the greatness of Gaurāṅga! Nityānanda! Gaurāṅga! Nityānanda! So, get them to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and he will revive.” So, they started to chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. Sure enough, Yamarāja revived there. So, in Yamaloka, Yamarāja was rejoicing on Gaura-Nitāi doing the purification of the great sinners. They were all chanting and dancing in ecstasy.

Normally when you go to prison, the people come out and they again do crime. In fact, they say going to prison, you learn more bad association. You learn new tricks from the hardened criminals inside. In Malaysia, they have a drug-rehabilitation center. You have a choice if you are a user. If you are a dealer, it is the death penalty. If you are a user, you can go to the drug-rehabilitation center where they put you through the withdrawal symptoms, a cold turkey. They want you to remember how much hellish it is. I saw somebody screaming once going through the withdrawals. I said, “What is that?” They said, “He is a drug addict going through withdrawals.” So horrible. Unbelievable, the way he was screaming and grabbing his stomach.

So, we do programs at this drug-rehabilitation center where we teach the people. I mean, at least the Hindus and some Chinese that want to come, we give them courses in bhakti-yoga and chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and they said that normally 80% who go through that rehabilitation go back to drugs but 60% of the people who took the Hare Kṛṣṇa program did not go back to drugs. So, they were very thankful. I do not know how many places they are still doing, but this shows.. even in a short time, even under that kind of difficult situation, there is a visible change of consciousness.

Ultimately, our body... our consciousness is what is important, that gets changed by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa and following Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s program. So, we cannot change our body just on the spot and get a nice, fresh, new, clean body like Lord Brahmā does. So, we can purify our body. We can purify our mind and consciousness. That is like changing our body. It may take a little while – some days, weeks, months, years, or not so long but we have to concentrate and chant:

Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare/
Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare

By reading the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, that also purifies us. That will help to insulate. When we know all these kinds of ignorance, we become somewhat vaccinated from this. If we are reading every day – nitya-bhāgavata-sevayā [SB. 1.2.18] we get rid of the abhadreṣu, all the unwanted contaminations by reading the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and hearing it every day. So, this is very important. Now that when you are going to identify the disease, these five kinds of ignorance, these are our problems. These are the things we do not want to fall in. That is why when the devotees, Śrīla Prabhupāda said they love their.. the gṛhastha, they love their… Who was it? I think it was Mālatī. She asked, “Why do you want to take care of your daughter?” She said, “Well, it is my duty.” Prabhupāda said, “No, because you love your child and you want the best for your child. So, you want your child to be liberated, to be Kṛṣṇa conscious. That is the best thing for your child, because you love your child.”

So, we go with the flow. It is natural to love your child but then we also identify that a child is not this body, but it is a spirit soul. We want to purify, attract, somehow make Kṛṣṇa consciousness attractive for the children, for the youth. Recently when I was on a tour of South America, I was very pleasantly exposed to… There is like many, many young people, hundreds of young people who are taking up Kṛṣṇa consciousness very seriously. The Kind of a youth revolution in many countries there, at least like in Peru and Bolivia and a number of countries I saw this, you know, there in each place had a huge number of youth and the youth were also doing different programs and dramas. And it was very exciting for youth, which is usually… because sometimes places the youth do not take it up so enthusiastically. Even in Malaysia also, a lot of youth are taking it up. This is what we are hoping for: to make Kṛṣṇa consciousness very attractive for the young people, for the youth. Then in the future, hopefully they will be able to keep up this tradition. So, we want to avoid… it says bhakti-yoga means,

sarvopādhi‑vinirmuktaṁ
tat‑paratvena nirmalam
hṛṣīkeṇa hṛṣīkeśa‑sevanaṁ
bhaktir ucyate
[Cc. Madhya 19.170]

That we are free of all kinds of material designations, pure in consciousness. We are the servant of the master of the senses, Hṛṣīkeśa. This is bhakti, from the Nārada — what is it called? Nārada Pañcarātra. So, we hope that everybody… So, we may have our external identification as a particular party, a particular designation, as a nationality. But we know our real home is Vṛndāvana, Māyāpur. That Kṛṣṇa is our real relative. He is our mother, He is our father, He is our guru. He is our everything. That was that Nāma-haṭṭa  song, kṛṣṇa mātā, kṛṣṇa pitā, kṛṣṇa dhana-prāṇa. Yes, He is our treasure. He is our life. So, the devotees, they develop this kind of consciousness which is normally very tough.

How would somebody know this? tāmisra and andha-tāmisra, tama, moha, mahā-moha. But it is possible by the mercy of Lord Caitanya. Also here in India, they are doing prison preaching. Some of the prisoners who are doing things which are very much tamasic. So, they got put in prison and now they are also chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa. I went to some prisons and saw that, they are doing sixteen rounds or more. They know how to play mṛdaṅga, have regular Bhagavad-gītā classes. Haridāsa Ṭhākura was also preaching in the prison. He told the prisoners, “You are all fortunate.” They wanted to beat him. “You are fortunate because you think you know you are in the prison. But the other people outside, they think they are free. But they are actually the big material world is also a prison.” So, we want to orient ourselves to please Kṛṣṇa. Then we will be very easily freed from this prison.

I want to thank Kūrma Prabhu is here. And he was chanting for my Godbrother, all our Prabhupāda disciple – Nirguṇa Prabhu in Māyāpur. I saw him during the Rādhāṣṭamī. I was surprised his condition got worse. He had a cancer. Cancer is taking so many of our devotees now but I heard on the day that he left, he woke up in the morning. The devotees were chanting for him. And he raised up his arms and he was smiling and chanting. Kūrma Prabhu told me this morning he has a video. How many people leave their body smiling? Going back to Godhead!

Someone also told me someone else was passing away. Then he said, “Prabhupāda, you have come,” and then fell unconscious. Prabhupāda ki Jaya! So, unfortunately, we cannot also… Recently one of my disciples, Acyuta Gaurāṅga, he also got cancer and he was brought here to Vṛndāvana and He was also here and He just left with all the devotees chanting and reading for Him. He came to Vṛndāvana and He also left here. So, during the Govardhana-pūjā day in the month of Dāmodara. So, unfortunately, we do have to leave this body sooner or later. And we want to do it in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. We are aware that we are not this body. The body is a source of so much ignorance.

Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “This body is like an intoxication.” So, here in Vṛndāvana and Māyāpur and holy places, they are meant for.. they are the gateways to go back to Godhead. So, once Śrīla Prabhupāda came in Māyāpur, sat down in His seat and He took a glass of water in a golden goblet. He drank it without touching. (drinking water sound) He did like that. He said, “Māyāpur — living and dying in Māyāpur, it is all the same. You live in Māyāpur, you are in the spiritual world. You die in Māyāpur, you go back to Godhead.”

So, Vṛndāvana... like Māyāpur is Gupta-Vṛndāvana. The real Vṛndāvana is here – Living here, Dying here — it is all the same. Living in the spiritual world, doing back to the spiritual world. One thing of course, in Vṛndāvana you have to be careful. You get thousand times the benefit for any devotional service here and for any aparādhas a thousand times. So, do not do any aparādhas in Vṛndāvana. That way, Māyāpur, you do not get any aparādhas. I took shelter there, I am a very offensive person. (laughter) So, you have to be careful here.

Thank you for coming and serving Śrīla Prabhupāda. This is the place He left the world. He told He would leave in Vṛndāvana or Māyāpur — one of the two. Then He asked to go to Māyāpur just in October and maybe beginning of November. And then they sent out three Mercedes Benz to pick Him up and take Him to the airplane and then fly Him to Calcutta, in Māyāpur, so I went back to Māyāpur, “Wow! Prabhupāda is coming!” Of course, we were not thinking He is coming to leave His body. That was like unthinkable. We were hoping He would get better. We did not want Him to leave but anyways. But then all those cars broke down. Or maybe there was a plot, I do not know. But they were told they all broke down. Now I got a conspiracy. (laughter)

Anyway, they broke down and they did not make it in time. Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “So, it is Kṛṣṇa’s desire I have to stay in Vṛndāvana.” So, Prabhupāda had his līlā here and told us to make a puṣpa-samādhi in Māyāpur. So, hope you all come sometime — see the puṣpa-samādhi. We just had four thousand people there for the yātrā and we did a.. everyone offering lamps, Bhakti Govinda Mahārāja was singing beautiful bhajanas, saṁsāra prayers… and everything. Rādhānātha Swami was singing for Śrīla Prabhupāda’s disappearance.

So, this year normally we have a more subdued, beautiful, but subdued compared to here. But this year was something very special but we have to celebrate both the places. Remembering how Prabhupāda, he came to the holy dhāma, took shelter of Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma and went back to Godhead. So, this is what we do. We serve all our life. And then Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “Work now, samādhi later.” And then when in the last period of our life, we take shelter of the holy dhāma, or like Bhakti-Tīrtha Swami decided — taking shelter of Gīta-Nāgari — to show that also temples in the West are holy dhāmas.

And then I had a disciple in Italy. She went to the hospital and they said, “You have cancer. You only have about a week to live. What can we do for you? We can give you morphine, cut the pain. There is nothing — it is all over your body. You are finished.”

They said, “So, what do you want us to do?”

She said, “Give me an ambulance.”

They said, “What do you want an ambulance for?”

She said, “I want to go to the temple. You cannot do anything for me. So, I might as well go to the temple. Because there I can go back to Godhead. It is a special gateway back to Godhead.”

So, they gave her an ambulance. The ambulance pulled up to the Milano temple. The devotees were kind enough to give her a room. Somehow, she got relief as soon as she had darśana of the Deities. She heard Śrīla Prabhupāda’s lectures and everything for eight days. And the eighth day she started getting serious again. And all the devotees came into the room and were chanting for her. Even the GBC there, Mādhava Sevita Prabhu came and he also said he walked into the room and saw her open her mouth and say, “Hare Kṛṣṇa,” and leave her body. He was shouting out at the same time Hare Kṛṣṇa. And everybody was chanting.

So, our temples also are places, we may have like here in Vṛndāvana they are making a hospice. I do not know if it is made now. In Māyāpur we want to have a hospice too. Because people come there to leave — to have a little more facility for them. However, some people may come to the temple to die — even in other parts of the world because they know the temple is also holy, like embassies or consulates. They are also extensions of the spiritual world in a smaller sense.