There is one young and perhaps immature world wide religious organisation, the name of which I am going to keep a great secret. In that religious organisation, there is an aspiring member of the international board of directors, whose name I am going to keep a great secret as well. This man ( Yes, I can reveal that much: its a male, not a female, although there are females sitting on the international board of directors) has unsuccessfully cultivated this particular aspiration for many years. In that religious organization great devotees are honoured with the title “Bhakta” such as Bhakta Prahlada etc. etc……

So Bhakta X personally and privately owns one of the premises used and leased by this religious society as the main function premises in that particular city.

At least partly, He is also responsible for the colossal multimillion corporate land sale and land bungle and disaster. Whether any illegal activities have taken place during the sale of the land is still unknown. The land was sold quickly by the organization, at below costs-price, whereas successive owners thereafter pocketed legitimately millions of dollars of profit from the sale of the same land.

These types of proceedings are highly irregular and in stark contradiction to the very best interests of the said organization.

For the purpose of my article, let me present some of the basic doctrinal tenets of this religious organization.

1) God is the supreme owner and landlord of everything.

2) God is absolutely non-different from His authorized statue-representations. (“Statue-representations” is plural because God has got many different varieties of statue representations, just as He has thousands of names, including Allah and Jehovah.)

3) The constitutional position (dharma) of the living entity is to be servant of God.

Now if God owns my house, and everything else for that matter, and if I am servant of God, then how can I invite Him to my house and charge Him a fee for staying at my house? This is most foolish and contradictory!

I should instead be extremely honored that the great God, the supreme being in His authorized statue form, has accepted my invitation to stay at my house and employ my intelligence and wealth to serve Him and make sure He is well cared for and absolutely pleased with my presentations, so that He may be pleased to stay at my house for a maximum amount of time.

My house will then become God’s house, just as my body is the Lord’s temple as well. God in His expansion as the Supersoul lives in my heart at all times. No just my heart. He very kindly agrees to lives transcendentally in the heart of all living entities at all times, including dogs and pigs and others…. He is waiting for the day when we shall turn towards Him again and redevelop and cultivate our love for Him. In the present stage, we  have unfortunately turned our back to Him, just like a crazy and rebellious son rejects the connection with his well-to-do father.  Just imagine the benefits derived from closeness to God. It is not that I have been scheming for these benefits. But even if I did, its all right to scheme for God’s association, especially through the constant chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra:

HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA

KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE

HARE RAMA HARE RAMA

RAMA RAMA HARE HARE

I suppose my accountant will call them fringe benefits. They come automatically with the presence of God. I will then benefit from God’s “umbrella” and prestige, just like in the cold war times the European countries benefited from the nuclear umbrella of the powerful United States of America. Besides that God is also called Madhava, the husband of the Goddess of Fortune, Laksmi.

It is a kind of religious cheating as well. In Sanskrit it is called “kaitava dharma”. SB 1.1.2. It is firmly rejected by grantha raja Srimad Bhagavatam (SB) as a contaminated form of religion.

It is however not possible to cheat God!

To the cheater, God is the greater cheater, because He is supreme in all respects.

How can the servant demand and exact rental payment from the landlord? This is the world upside down! There is a confusion here about who is the servant and Who is the Lord and it needs to be eradicated!

Suppose I invite Prime Minister Turnbull to my house and out of his kindness he accepts my invitation.

But my hidden and actual plan and petty agenda is to charge Prime Minister Turnbull and his entourage for everything they do and require as soon as they step into my house. I am so hopelessly profit oriented that if I could, I would charge them for the air they breath in my house. It’s my house, it’s my air! Business as usual, right?

So the questions will then be: “What kind of a discourteous and stupid fool I am?”

“What will be the consequences for me for such an offensive behavior towards the best and leading man in the country?”

It will be a catastrophe and will have far reaching negative consequences for my own life!

The newspapers will publish plenty of derisible and sarcastic articles about my uncouth behavior.

This is the overall situation at this particular branch of this religious organization.

I have personally asked Bhakta X to please change this wrongful policy and breach of protocol. ”This is not going to happen.” was his final reply.

What can be done?

The future will show.

What is more is that the kitchen at this branch of this religious institution sits exactly on top of the septic tank. The septic tank concrete cover is right in the middle of the kitchen. YUK YUK YUK !!! And they cook a LOT. I mean a REAL LOT. They are known as the kitchen religion. Not sure whether this type of arrangement will satisfied X City Council’s food hygiene requirements. A case to be tested….. No wonder one gets immediate (with a few hours) gastroenteritis after taking one’s meal at some food outlets of this particular organisation. Over the year, I personally had this unpleasant experience several times, not less than at three different outlets of this particular organisation across the nation. To be followed…..

And what is absolutely intolerable is that the head of this particular branch obstinately quibbles and refuses to display a full set of constitutional books of the Founder in the main assembly hall, for everyone to consult freely. This is standard policy throughout the organisation.  But this particular individual strongly and stubbornly objects. Perhaps He plans to introduce his still non-existent own writings instead. If that is the case, let him go elsewhere and found his own organization. We don’t tolerate sedition. Neither do we tolerate those kind of corporate raiders. We fight them vehemently! Aggressors must be punished, as explained in Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, (BGAII), chapter 1, text 36. Any sane person,  with good common sense, in any organisation, would take the open and free display of the Founder’s constitutional writings for granted.

The Founder of the organization Himself absolutely insisted on the propagation of His writings in the hard copy book form. It is an open secret that the institution’s Founder  wants to see a set of His books in each and every home, what to speak of in His each and every establishments around the world!!! When someone employs one, one had better follow the directions of the owner of the concern; otherwise one is foolishly endangering one’s own position and future. This is especially true for someone in a leading position. Such attitude represents a kind of betrayal and deviation and would not be dissimilar to a leading politician, who openly defies the nation’s constitution and minimizes and disrespects the constitutional book itself: disrespects the book or disrespects the flag of the country for that matter. What will happen to him?

So far I have been unable to pinpoint the actual reason for such a grotesque refusal and opposition. It will be more than a mere clash of egos, because his original plan was to have no bookshelf at all. He had to be repeatedly and firmly prompted over a long period of time to even purchase a bookshelf. It’s probably just plain ignorance, whence the title of this article. Or would it have to do with the books’ content? In those books there are some candid assertions by the Founder that in this organization not everyone is a devotee of God. Opposite number imposters are present as well and one should strictly ignore them.

The test for being a PURE DEVOTEE OF GOD is very simple. It is as follows. One must strictly follow the rules and discipline of Bhakti-yoga as enunciated by the Founder of this organisation.

That is:

One must rise from bed everyday no later than 4 AM.

One must chant the Hare Krishna Maha Mantra a minimum of 1728 times every day without fail, with the help of some counting device such as beads or tally counter. If one fails, one has a chance to make up the difference the next day, in addition to the regular 1728 daily mantras.

One must strictly follow the four regulative principles, which are as follows:

No illicit sex.

No meat, no fish and no egg eating whatsovever.

No gambling.

No intoxication of any kind including tea and coffee.

We are not saying that meat-eating devotees of God are not devotees of God. They are some kind of devotees. My own mother was a very good example. We are saying that meat-eating devotees of God cannot be PURE DEVOTEES OF GOD, unless we renounce this nasty and bloody (Meaning full of blood. This is not some kind of an offensive adjective!) killing of poor defenseless animals and meat eating business. All living entities are sons and daughters of God. How can one son or daughter claim the right to kill and / or eat one’s sisters and brothers? What kind of a son and daughter is he /she? The comsumption of meat is not only primitive but is definitely sinful!

The animal flesh eater will generally express disgust at the idea of eating human flesh. But if humans are just another species of animals, then we may clinically ask the questions:  “Why not eat human flesh instead?” “What is the difference?”At least from a theoretical point of view, there will be no difference. Other questions will follow such as: “ Who will be my next meal?” And finally we shall have to confront the more frightening question “Whose meal I am going to be next?” The poor animals are constantly facing this question:”Whose meal I am going to be next?” It is a fact however that the predator may be non-human in that case. It is also said that under extremely harsh conditions of war, soldiers sometimes eat human flesh to survive, the flesh of the dead fighters from one side or the other.

Sadly according to Vedic Shastra (Sanskrit scripture), this is what the world is coming too in some thousands of years. But please don’t worry. This is only one negative perspective. Everything is cyclic. The seasons are cyclic. Days and nights are cyclic. Weeks are cyclic. Birth and death are cyclic. Similarly, according to Vedic Shastra, the cosmic evolution is cyclic as well. After the current Kali-yuga age, the age of quarrel and hypocrisy, the golden age of Satya-yuga will automatically be ushered in again by arrangement of the supreme commander, Sri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The cycle will start fresh again by degenerating order: Satya yuga, Treta yuga, Dvapara yuga and Kali yuga, the current age, all up some 4 million something years. The important thing is to realize one’s existential position as confirmed in Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, (BGAII) 13.8-12: to develop “the perception of the evil of birth, death, old age and disease”. And consequently make a firm and determined plan to extricate oneself from this unpleasant situation. We are not these bodies. We are spirit souls. BGAII 2.12:” Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.” Our present prospects of happiness are about as ample as the prospect of happiness of a fish out of his natural environment: water. There is a fundamental dichotomy between our real spiritual identity and our present material atmosphere of existence. The solution of this dilemma is given in the books of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder of the International Hare Krishna movement. It is given both in theory and in praxis. The better we follow His suggestions, the greater our success.

The process is called Bhakti-yoga and it is infallible. The question is: “How strong is our determination to achieve the designated goal?”

Here in Australia there is the surfing challenge, there is the marathon challenge, there are the iron person challenge and so many other challenges. We are presenting the PURE DEVOTEE OF GOD challenge. It is open to everyone. It looks deceptively easy, but “Although nondevotees declare that the path of bhakti, or devotional service, is very easy, they cannot practice it. If the path of bhakti is so easy, as the nondevotee class of men proclaim, then why do they take up the difficult path? Actually the path of bhakti is not easy. The so-called path of bhakti practiced by unauthorized persons without knowledge of bhakti may be easy, but when it is practiced factually according to the rules and regulations, the speculative scholars and philosophers fall away from the path. ” BGAII 7.3 P. Please take it up and you will be greatly and eternally benefited. Thank you very much.

“In this endeavor there is no loss or diminution, and a little advancement on this path can protect one from the most dangerous type of fear.” BGAII 2.40

HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA

KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE

HARE RAMA HARE RAMA

RAMA RAMA HARE HARE.

EPILOGUE.

We remember that when the great and enlightened Founder of this religious institution left his mundane family, the final trigger was his wife cashing in His holy books (SB) to enable her to purchase tea. When he learned about his wife’s misadventure, He simply uttered: “It’s the tea or me” and finally left his mundane family for the renounced order of life and execution of His glorious mission.

Similarly I am saying loud and clear to this communal family and especially to the leader(s) of the community:” No full set, no me.” I have indeed already implemented this policy. It is not only the leaders who are responsible. Every single members shares in the  responsibility for what happens in and to the community. So please anyone(s), stand up and take some proper initiatives on these issues. Thank you and Amen!

Om namah bhagavate vasudevaya.