When
you look at the religious stats on the TV and everywhere else, 1.6
billion people in the world are Christian, 1.4 billion are Moslem, 1.2
billion are Hindus. I can remember 15 years ago when Hinduism was the
highest in the listing of religion, and Christianity was third. The only
reason they have taken the lead is because you don’t know your book –
your Bhagavad Gita. Forget the other books. You don’t need to know them. We’re starting classes so you can learn the Bhagavad Gita and
when you are confronted about the Hindu religion, don’t tell them they
are right and that our religion is complicated. It is not complicated if
you follow it properly.
But
the problem is that we don’t follow it properly. We are always shopping
at Hari Krishna and then at the Gayathri Peedam; we go from Drift
temple to Sri Gopala temple. We should not be shopping. We should
believe that God is one and the same in any of these temples.
Christianity tells you that. Hinduism tells you the same thing in a
complicated way: that all these forms we see are just names given to the
different energy levels we want to access God on. For our education we
call God 'Saraswati'. For prosperity and wealth we call God 'Lakshmi'.
But the Bhagavad Gita teaches us that total surrender to God is all that is required. Forget the name Krishna. It doesn’t mean God – it means soul.
When
we follow Hare Krishna we think that’s the only god and we become
fanatical like Manchester United fans. We’ll even say the wrong things
to protect our religion. We shouldn’t have that situation. You must be
able to see Krishna in Lord Shiva and vice versa. If you can do that
then you can see God – just as I must be able to see God in each one of
you. I must see some of you as Kali, some as Duruga. I must see you as
God and once I can do that then I don’t have any problems in this world.
We are not seeing that and therefore we are having a high rate of
conversion.
Christianity
is not a bad religion. It doesn’t teach wrong. It is a beautiful
religion of love. It’s just that some of the people teach it teach it
wrongly. But what happens to our Hindu people? They follow the preachers
not the religion. You need to stop that and follow the religion. As we
say: in the radiance of Babaji, the light of our gurus, and the glory of
Christ, if you can be universal like that then you can call your
organization a religion. If you are going to separate yourself into Hari
Krishna, Christian, Moslem, then we have a problem. When the Christians
come to you with their black book and tell you it’s the only book, then
you can show them the eternal book, the Bhagavad Gita, the Song of God, the DIY of man forever.
We
were sitting outside a temple yesterday to visit the priest and I went
over to the banyan tree where they tie the cotton around. I could see
that it had been maybe 5 years since anybody put cotton around it. That
means we don’t have any Hindus there anymore. The white cotton is
actually black – that’s how long ago cotton was tied around the tree.
The Bhagavad Gita is your DIY manual for life.
