BG 4.10 – Everything Comes from Hearing

Giriraj Swami: So, I’m very glad to be here with you all tonight on this festive occasion. I was based for many years in Bombay in India, and I remember one of the first programs we had with our spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, in Bombay. Some Indian gentleman had invited us to his estate, and he had a large garden and set up a dais for Srila Prabhupada to speak on a stage for us, and it was a very nice gathering under the skies of Bombay.

And when we arrived there, the host was very jubilant and he said, “Today is actually a holiday,” some Hindu holiday that we had never heard of. So, we were new in India and we wanted to confirm with Srila Prabhupada before we just accepted what the gentleman said. So, I asked Srila Prabhupada, “Is it true that today is a holiday?” And he said, “Yes, we are Krishna’s servants. So, for us, every day is a holiday.” So, coming here, I’m reminded of the holiday mood, that we are actually meant to celebrate every day in Krishna consciousness, or God consciousness.

So, Mother Urvashi, sometimes we have programs in Carpinteria and Mother Urvashi attended one. So, she suggested a theme for tonight’s talk based on a talk that she heard there. So, I will read one verse from Bhagavad-gītā. Mother Urvashi has already given a little introduction to Bhagavad-gītā, but basically, Gītā means song. It is said in the spiritual world, all speech is song, and all movement is dance, and the sound of Krishna’s flute is the constant attendant of all activities. So, Gītā means song, and bhāgavata means, “Of God,” or “In relation to God.” So, Bhagavad-gītā means the song of God.

Bhagavad-gītā was spoken or sung by Krishna originally in Sanskrit, and Srila Prabhupada has translated the Bhagavad-gītā into English with purports for the verses. The word purport really means the import, what is the import of the verse, what is the intention of the speaker. Sometimes people write commentaries on Bhagavad-gītā where they give their own opinion, and sometimes their personal opinions are actually different from the original intention of the original speaker, Krishna, or God.

Therefore, Srila Prabhupada has attempted to present Bhagavad-gītā as it is, just as Krishna spoke it, and as Arjuna, who was the first student of Bhagavad-gītā, understood it. And we accept the words of Krishna, who is the authority on the subject of yoga or Bhagavad-gītā, and if we accept the authority of Krishna in the same spirit as Arjuna accepted the words of Krishna, we will get great benefit.

So, I will read one verse and purport. This is from the Fourth Chapter, which is called, “Transcendental Knowledge,” Text Eleven. Actually, Text Ten.

TEXT 10

vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodhā

man-mayā mām upāśritāḥ

bahavo jñāna-tapasā

pūtā mad-bhāvam āgatāḥ

TRANSLATION

Being freed from attachment, fear and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me – and thus they all attained transcendental love for Me.

COMMENT

So, the goal here is to develop love for God, or love for Krishna. We have heard, “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy might,” and that is actually our goal. But how do we achieve the goal? In every endeavor, if we want to achieve a goal, there is a process. So, what is the process by which we can achieve the goal of love of God? Otherwise, we’ll just be speaking in theory, “Love of God,” but the actual love will not develop unless we adopt the process, which is called yoga, and especially bhakti-yoga.

So, vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodhā. Vīta means being freed from, and rāga means attachment, material attachment. Most people in the material world are attached. They are in the conception that they are the bodies. They identify with the body. If you ask someone, “Who are you?” He will probably reply in terms of the body, “My name is so and so. My parents are so and so. My wife is such and such. I am American, I am German, I am Russian, Christian, Jew, or Muslim,” whatever.

But our actual identity is not the body. Our actual identity is the soul within the body, and the soul is not Hindu, Muslim, Christian, black, white, yellow, or any designation of the body. The soul is pure spiritual energy, it is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, or God, or Krishna, and it is beyond any material designation. If we look at the world today and all the problems of the world today, we see that they can be traced to the false identification with the body. I mean, practically every conflict we find, the Muslims are thinking, I’m Muslim and you are Jewish, or, We are Jewish and you are Muslim. I’m not even sure, but sometimes even within the same general denomination, there is conflict.

Once, I had an experience in Mauritius, which is an island in the Indian Ocean between India and Africa, and I went to the office that dealt with charities, and the officer was an Ahmadiyya Muslim. He considered himself to be a Muslim, but his sect was being brutally attacked. And I don’t mean verbally, but physically. His sect was being brutally attacked in Pakistan, and he knew that we had centers all over the world. We had devotees all over the world. He asked if we could do something to help his people in Pakistan. So, we find such small points of difference and make such big things out of them. I won’t go into what distinguishes the Ahmadiyya Muslims from the Sunni Muslim, but it’s very big for them and they are ready to kill for it.

But the soul is not Hindu or Christian or Muslim, or what to speak of Ahmadiyya Muslim or Sunni or whatever. The soul within everybody is the same, and the soul has an eternal relation with God, or the Supreme Soul. And therefore, what we require is just a scientific method by which the individual soul can come into relation with the Supreme Soul, and the scientific method has nothing to do with being Hindu, Christian, Muslim, French, Greek, Italian, or whatever. It has nothing to do with being a man or a woman or young or old or learned or rich or poor or anything, because we already have a relationship with God, but we have forgotten our eternal relationship with God. So, in one sense, the process of bhakti-yoga is the process by which we revive our eternal relationship with God, or we awaken our dormant love for God.

So, the example is given that just as fire is within a match in potential form, and if you strike the match, the fire will come out. In the same way, love of God is there within the heart of every living entity, and all we have to do is strike the heart, and the love will come out. And how do we strike the heart? That is the process of bhakti-yoga, and that begins by hearing. Just like you are sitting here and hearing, even I was also sitting here, I was also hearing. So, the beginning is hearing.

Once, Srila Prabhupada, after Gorakhpur, went to Calcutta, and the devotees arranged a huge program for him in the park in Calcutta, and about twenty or thirty thousand people were coming every night. But to accommodate them, the devotees had erected a huge tent called the pandal in India. And at the time, there was a communist group, a youth group of militant communists called Naxalites, and they were against the establishment. They were against religion. They were against everything. And so, the whole city was surcharged with tension because they would kidnap the children of rich people and hold them for ransom. Sometimes, they would explode bombs in people’s houses and kill people on the street.

I guess now we would say they were terrorists, and they were, and some of the journalists were sort of leaning towards the communist side. And so, one journalist came to meet Srila Prabhupada before the program began. It was a little press conference, and he asked Srila Prabhupada, “What is the purpose of all of this, spending so many rupees to make this big pandal and making publicity and inviting people? What is the purpose of all this?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “The purpose is to give people a chance to hear. That’s all. We just want to give people the chance to hear.” And then, Srila Prabhupada said, “All the big arrangements that you are seeing here have come from hearing. I went to America and I spoke and I sang, and some young people heard me, and just by hearing me, now all of this has followed.”

So, hearing is the first process in bhakti-yoga, śravaṇam, and that is what strikes the heart. Śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ, hearing and chanting. We hear, and then we repeat what we have heard, either in the form of singing, chanting, speaking, or whatever. And that will purify our heart. That will awaken the dormant love for God within the heart. And when we hear the chanting. . . I mean, I know I felt and I am sure all of you felt it, when Kaushalya and the other devotees were singing, there was some change in the heart. It touches the heart. And if we continue to hear and chant, then the heart becomes more and more purified, and the eternal love for Krishna within the heart becomes more and more revealed. It is not an artificial process. It’s a natural process to awaken the love of God that is already in the heart.

And when we awaken our love for God, then automatically, we will have universal love for all living entities, not even just all human beings, but all living entities, because they are all part and parcel of God. They are children of God. If we love the father, then naturally, we will love all of his children. I mean, yes, some of them may misbehave, but we still love them. Out of duty, we will try to correct them just like the father tries to correct his errant children, and sometimes the older children or the more well-behaved children try to help to properly educate the younger children or discipline the younger children. But still, we love them. Just like Krishna loves them, we also love them.

As Jesus Christ said, “We hate the sin, not the sinner.” So, when we develop love for God, then automatically, we develop universal love for all of His children, all of His created beings, and then all the problems are solved, all the fighting between different castes and communities and sects will disappear.

So, although the practices of Krishna consciousness can be individual, we can chant Hare Krishna in our homes. I mean, we can actually chant anywhere when we are walking. Ohio is such a beautiful place that you can walk in the mountains and chant, or you can sit by the lake and chant. But the implications are capable of changing the whole society and solving all the problems of the world, actually.

Now, someone might say, “Well, I have been chanting for a while, but I haven’t felt so much of a change.” And of course, there is a gradual development of Krishna consciousness. First of all, we may not experience the change so dramatically, but generally, after chanting for a while, one’s life does begin to change for the better. And here, Srila Prabhupada gave the example that a person may get on an airplane and be absorbed in reading or talking to the person next to him or her or whatever, and not notice that he is really gone anywhere or she is really gone anywhere, but then when he looks out the window, he sees, “Oh! I began on the ground and now I am way up and the ground way down there.”

So, we may not experience the difference in a dramatic way at first, but I will tell you in a few minutes how dramatic the experience can be, but we can experience it in terms of the change in our lives. It’s like looking out the window and saying “Oh! Before I began to chant, I used to, whatever, get drunk.” Well, we don’t have to discuss what we might have been doing, but after we chant for a while, it’s like looking out the airplane window and saying, “Oh! I used to be down there doing all those things and I’m not doing those things anymore.” So, that’s the beginning. We give up bad habits, we become free from material attachments. And as we progress further, we begin to actually relish spiritual bliss from the activities of bhakti-yoga.

Of course, even just coming here tonight and chanting or getting together with your friends and chanting, you feel transcendental happiness, but it’s not continuous. It could be continuous if we were chanting all the time, but in the beginning, we don’t chant all the time, not just because we don’t have the time but because we don’t have the taste. We chant and we enjoy it and we may actually experience that we are happier chanting than doing anything else, but even then, we can’t sustain it. We divert our attention to other activities. But as we continue to chant and develop taste, then we want to chant more and more, and the time there is. You can actually experience the time is there, and that purifies the heart, and it gladdens the heart more and more.

And then one becomes more attached to chanting. And again, chanting really means associating with Krishna, with God. As Urvashi said, the name of Krishna and Krishna Himself are the same. In the material world or the relative world, the name and the object are different. If you are thirsty and you chant, “Water, water, water, water,” well, just chanting water will not quench your thirst because the word water and substance water are different. But in the spiritual world or the absolute realm, the name of the thing and the thing are the same. So, if we chant, “Krishna, Krishna, Hare Krishna,” Krishna is actually present, dancing on our tongue.

And therefore, great devotees, when they develop so much attachment for chanting and for Krishna, they pray, “Just chanting with one tongue and two ears is not enough. If I had thousands of tongues and millions of ears, then I could begin to chant.” In the beginning, we make an effort as we have to chant, we have to go to the program, and chant with the devotees. But when we actually develop attachment, we can’t stop chanting.

In fact, there is an interesting story. It may seem a little exotic in American terms, but there was a great devotee of Krishna. He was actually considered. . . Well, anyway, he was a great devotee of Krishna and He was named Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and in Vedic culture, and I think it’s sort of common sense anyway, but in Vedic culture, the place where one evacuates is considered dirty. And therefore, we don’t take sacred articles into the bathroom.

So, one day, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was going to pass stool and He was holding His tongue. So, one young boy, about eight years old, asked Him, “Why are You holding Your tongue?” And He said, “Well, My tongue cannot stop chanting Hare Krishna and I’m going to pass stool, which is a very dirty thing.” I mean, not in the sense of guilt or shame, but it’s just considered unclean, “And so, how can I take Krishna into the place where I’m passing stool?”

So, the young boy, whose name was Gopal, said, “Death can come at any moment, and we want to chant the name of Krishna at the time of death. Because if we think of Krishna and chant the name of Krishna at the time of death, we will enter the kingdom of God. We will go to the kingdom of Krishna, and death could come at any moment, even when we are passing stool. So, You should allow Your tongue to chant Hare Krishna.” And then, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said to the boy, “Yes, you are right. You are My guru.” And therefore, the boy got the name Gopal Guru, and he grew up to be a great teacher of Krishna consciousness.

So, as we chant more and more, we develop more and more taste, and then we want to chant more and more, and as we chant more and more, we become more and more purified, and we develop more and more taste, and then we come to the stage of bhāva. Srila Prabhupada translated bhāva in the translation of the verse as transcendental love. And at the bhāva stage, one actually has a direct perception of Krishna. Of course, we are chanting and we are hearing the holy name of Krishna and we are associating with Krishna, but there is still some covering. Our senses are covered with material contamination.

When we come to the stage of bhāva, our senses are purified because again, the body is just the covering of the soul, the actual original sense organs belong to the soul. As long as the soul is in the body, we see through the eyes; we hear through the ears; we smell through the nose; we taste through the tongue; we feel through the skin, but as soon as someone pinches us, “Ow! Why did you pinch me? Why did you step on my toe?” But when the soul leaves the body and we say the body is dead, you can cut the body into pieces and the person won’t say anything because the actual person or the soul has left the body.

So, the actual ability to sense, to perceive things through the senses belongs to the soul, and the soul perceives things through the sense of the body. Just like I am looking at you through the lens of my eyeglasses, but my eyeglasses are not seeing you. It’s me who is seeing you through the eye glasses. Similarly, the soul perceives the world through the senses of the body, but the soul doesn’t actually need the senses of the body to perceive. It’s just because we are in the stage of conditioned life that we perceive through the senses of the body. But when we are completely purified, the spiritual senses of the soul can perceive independent of the senses of the body, or we can say that the senses of the body become purified. And therefore, there is no coloration or interference with the pure perception of the spiritual senses.

So, in the bhāva stage, the senses become so purified and one’s heart becomes so full of love for Krishna that Krishna actually reveals Himself to the devotee directly. And therefore, books explain. . .

Hare Krishna. We have a very. . . Words cannot even explain, we have a very special visitor here, His Holiness Sri Dayananda dasa Goswami. Please comment. He is also a very senior disciple of Srila Prabhupada.

So, sometimes people say, “Have you seen God?” It’s a common challenge. “Have you seen God? Show me God. Where is God?” But the question is do you have the qualification to see God? Even if you want to see an important person in the material world, like the Queen of England, I mean, it’s not so easy to get to see the Queen of England. So, what to speak of God? So, by chanting and developing love for God and serving Him, when He is pleased with our service, He will come and see us. And therefore, Srila Prabhupada used to say, “Don’t try to see God, but act in such a way that God will want to come and see you.” And that happens at the bhāva stage.

But there is one stage even beyond bhāva, or you could say it is a maturation of the stage of bhāva, and that is the stage of prema. In bhāva, one will get a glimpse of Krishna or Krishna will come, visit the devotee for a while, and then disappear. And then the devotee is really feeling separation from the Lord. And sometimes the Lord will purposely remove Himself from the sight of the devotee just to increase the devotee’s eagerness, just to make the devotee’s bhakti more strong.

And in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Krishna gives the idea that if a poor man gets a great treasure and then loses it, he’ll be thinking of it all the time. Sometimes we even have a friend or a relative that we may take for granted a little, but then when the person leaves, we think, I didn’t realize how much I loved the person until the person was gone, and then we think of the person all the time. So, sometimes Krishna will reveal Himself to the devotee, and then after a while, He’ll remove Himself from the devotee’s vision so that the devotee’s eagerness for Him increases. And then, when the devotee’s bhāva matures fully, the devotee comes to the stage of prema, and then he is fully absorbed in the love of God.

So, the beginning of Krishna consciousness is easy enough, hearing and chanting, and the beauty of the process is that the same process continues from the beginning to the end. We hear and chant in the beginning, and we hear and chant in the end. But as we continue hearing and chanting, our appreciation of the hearing and chanting increases, our taste for the hearing and chanting increases.

There are so many stages. Vedic scholars have analyzed nine stages beginning from the first time one hears to the final stage of pure love of Godhead, and one can see how one is going from one step to the next, but the beauty is that the process remains the same. On the absolute platform, the means and the end are the same, and therefore, the Bhāgavatam says bhaktyā sañjātayā bhaktyā, that bhakti comes from bhakti, that the advanced stage of bhakti comes from the preliminary stage of bhakti. You don’t need to add anything, just go on with the same activities.

And there is one other process that’s very important. Of course, everything comes from hearing and chanting, but the other process that I’ll mention tonight is offering one’s food to God before one eats. And of course, many of you have probably come to programs and noted the special quality of the food. And of course, many devotees are expert cooks. Urvashi herself is an expert cook. But there is another secret to why the food tastes so special, and that is that the food is prepared with love and devotion for God, for Krishna, and offered to Him.

Again, we talked about the spiritual senses of the soul, but what is the origin of the spiritual senses? The origin of everything is God. The origin of the individual souls are the Supreme Souls. So, God must have all the faculties that we have. If we can perceive through the senses, God can also perceive through senses. But of course, in conditioned life, we tend to identify with the body as being material. It’s difficult to understand that there can be a spiritual body.

But anyway, God has a spiritual body, and therefore, He can do everything that we can do and more, and therefore, we offer our food to God first before we eat, and therefore, we prepare the food in the mood of service to God. We offer the food to Him, and then we take the remnants as prasāda, and the prasāda is very special. It’s not like ordinary well-prepared vegetarian food. It’s very special.

I had one godbrother named Tejas dasa, godbrother means he was also a disciple of Srila Prabhupada, and he had served in India as a peace corps worker, and he had visited some temples of Krishna there and he had taken prasāda. Then, when he returned to New York and he visited the Hare Krishna temple, he had prasāda there, and as soon as he had it, he recognized, “Wow! This is the same special taste that I got from the food in the temples of Krishna in India.” It’s not because the cooks were the same or even the style of preparation was the same, but because it was offered to Krishna and Krishna accepted it. He, you could say, blessed it and infused it with spiritual energy.

And therefore, taking prasāda is a very important part of the process of bhakti-yoga, a very pleasurable part, and a very powerful part. Sometimes, you’ve heard you are what you eat. So, if you eat animals, you become like an animal, but if you eat food that’s offered to God, if you eat godly food, then you become godly.

So, the whole process is actually very easy; hearing, chanting, singing, and eating. Things that we like to do anyway. And when we do them in relation to Krishna, they become especially pleasing and beautiful and satisfying, and we want to do them more and more. So, that’s why many of us here have been chanting.

See, I met Srila Prabhupada, well, that was a while ago, more than thirty years ago. I met Srila Prabhupada and I’ve been chanting ever since then. I mean, I had favorite songs before I met Srila Prabhupada. I would buy records, rock records, even classical music, but if I listened to them too much in a short period of time, I’d get sick of them. If I’ve had enough of this one, I would get another one. But chanting is not like that. I have been chanting for thirty years. And we want to chant more and more, and that’s why we came here—to chant with you.

So, of course, eating, it has its limits at any particular time, but the principle of eating kṛṣṇa-prasāda hasn’t changed over thirty years, but we just can’t eat continuously. But when we get our spiritual bodies, we can. So, that’s also something to look forward to, if you want. So, that’s the basic idea, and if we chant and dance and take prasāda and associate with devotees, every day will be a festival. Every moment will be a festival. And therefore, I think the purpose of the holiday festival here is to make every moment a holiday festival. Thank you.

Devotee: How come you didn’t speak on the glories of Krishna’s pastimes?

Giriraj Swami: Yes, that’s a good question, and I almost mentioned it earlier, that there is a progression of revelation; nāma, rupa, guna, līlā. First is the revelation of the name, then from the name comes the revelation of the form. I mentioned that in the stage of bhāva-bhakti, one can actually see the Lord. Then there is revelation of the Lord’s qualities, and then there is revelation of the Lord’s pastimes.

So, generally, we begin more with the, you could say, glorification of the name, because when we take to the process of chanting, then gradually, all the other aspects of the Supreme become revealed. But this is also the Lord’s pastime that He comes as the holy name. It’s also the Lord’s pastime, and one devotee prayed to the Lord, “My dear Lord, You are so kind that as Your holy name, You are my constant companion.”

But if you want to say something about the Lord’s pastime, then we sure would be happy to hear. Everyone will be happy to hear. All right. Well, maybe after the other questions or in the course of them.

Devotee: Well, I am sort of new to all this. So, when you talk about chanting, do you find a particular chant that resonates just with you in particular? I mean, do you have a particular chant that you like more than other chants?

Giriraj Swami: Yes. Well, as Urvashi mentioned, the maha-mantra, consisting of three words; Hare, Krishna, and Rama, arranged into sixteen, is the great chant, especially for the present age. And we also follow Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who I mentioned earlier, and holy books that have told us. We chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare as our primary mantra, but we chant other mantras as well. And if one has no other mantra that he or she is already chanting, then we would probably suggest they begin with Hare Krishna. Even if they are chanting other mantras, they can also chant Hare Krishna and it won’t conflict with any other mantra.

Yes?

Devotee: How can we experience the spiritual body as we are right now? Is it through chanting only, or do we get visions of the higher states, or is it something that you suggest that we do to get that spiritual experience and realize it in a conscious body?

Giriraj Swami: Good question. How do we realize our spiritual body?

Well, the soul is already there and the soul is the spiritual body, but it’s just in seed form. And when the soul develops in Krishna consciousness, it manifests the full-fledged spiritual body. So, we don’t really have to do anything except chant and hear and follow the process, and then the soul will naturally manifest the full-fledged spiritual body.

And as far as how one perceives it? One perceives it in the same way that one perceives the Supreme Soul. It is a process of revelation, and the two go together; God realization and self-realization. The example is given that if you are in the dark and then the sun rises, you see the sun and you see yourself simultaneously. So, when we see God, at the same time, we see ourselves in our own eternal spiritual identity. But as we advance, we get more of a sense of it. And there the example is given of the coconut. When the coconut is immature, green, there is a little, I guess, soft part inside the shell. But as the coconut matures, the soft part becomes more hard, and it gradually separates itself from the shell. And when the inner part is completely matured, it separates from the shell and you can shake it and you can hear the coconut inside the shell.

So, that’s sort of how the spiritual body manifests. Right now, we are fused, the soul is so enmeshed in the body, entangled in the body, but as we make advancement, it gradually becomes detached from the shell of the body, and in an internal state of meditation, we can actually experience our spiritual self within the shell of the body.

Devotee: Can you have any out of body experiences?

Giriraj Swami: Well, yes, it is a type of out-of-body experience. I mean, you can. I mean, yogis leave their bodies and they can look down on their body, and that’s the type of out-of-body experience. People, if they are in an accident or sometimes, they are in surgery and they are looking at their body on the operating table. This is out of body, but in a different way. It’s more of an internal state of meditation that leads one into the spiritual realm that is beyond the body. But when one is in the spiritual realm, one is not looking at the body because that would really bring one’s consciousness out of the spiritual realm and into the physical realm, which is not the state that we are talking about.

Devotee: Thank you.

Devotee: Could you speak of the nine stages that you referred to?

Giriraj Swami: I can, briefly.

Ādau śraddhā—first is faith. Now, faith develops from hearing. So, you meet devotees and you hear from them, and then you develop sraddha, which is faith, or attraction.

Next is sādhu-saṅga. Sādhu-saṅga means associating with devotees. Now, to develop faith, you’ve had some preliminary association with devotees. Either you’ve heard them speak or one of them has given you a book directly or indirectly, but sādhu-saṅga means that you make a conscious effort to regularly associate with devotees.

Then comes bhajana-kriyā. Bhajana-kriyā means after regularly associating with devotees, one thinks, Well, I want to practice the way they do. I don’t want to just chant when I come to the programs or sort of occasionally or sporadically. I want to practice the way they do. So, that is bhajana-kriyā. Then, one approaches a spiritual master and begins to practice in a systematic way.

Then comes anartha-nivṛtti, that means becoming free from unwanted habits.

Then ruci, taste. I mean, there is always taste from the beginning there, there has to be taste. Otherwise, we wouldn’t come back and do it. But the taste, the definition of ruci is that the taste for chanting and hearing is greater than the taste for anything else. In the beginning, we might be chanting and then we overhear in the corner someone saying something about someone we know, “Oh boy! I want to hear about that. That can really be juicy.” But when one comes to the stage of ruci, one’s taste for chanting is greater than one’s taste for anything else. So, even if one hears in the corner, “Oh! I’d rather just chant. I’m not going there.” So, that’s ruci. 

And then āsakti. That’s attachment. Everything is just a further development of the previous stage. It’s like a fruit becoming more and more ripe. So, āsakti means that one is so attached to Krishna consciousness that one feels one can’t live without it for a moment. Every moment one either wants to be chanting, hearing, remembering, doing some service, doing something in Krishna consciousness.

So, those stages all form part of what is called sādhana-bhakti, devotional service and practice, but it’s the same process, just maturing. And then bhāva-bhakti. That’s when the fruit becomes ripe, and that’s when we have our first glimpses of Krishna and our own eternal spiritual identities. And then when bhāva matures more fully, we come to prema, and that’s the perfect stage in the material world. That’s the goal.

It’s like a plane. The plane is a good example. It’s not like climbing a mountain. We are like, “Oh God! Are we almost there? How much longer?” It’s just the same thing. There is chanting and hearing. We just keep chanting and hearing, but the quality improves, the taste increases. And in the end, it’s the same thing, and then one day, “Whoa! There is Krishna.”

Okay. Oh! One last question.

Devotee: Do you think when we are eating, will you. . .?

Giriraj Swami: Yes, I will be available.

Devotee: Thank you very much. Okay. We are going to do the prices now. Everyone pay attention.