Realizing God

Giriraj Swami: Yes, we’ll start at the beginning. Of course, the very beginning is that we are by nature spiritual beings, but somehow or other, from a very remote time in the past, we have come into the material world, and so, our original spiritual nature is covered. The example is given that when water falls from a cloud, it’s pure, but then, when it falls on the ground, it becomes contaminated or dirty. So, we are all originally pure, but having come into the material world, our original consciousness has been covered.

In our original consciousness, we all have an eternal relationship with the divine, with the Supreme, but again, when we come into the material world, we forget our eternal relationship. And the real goal of life is to revive our original spiritual consciousness and our relationship with the Supreme. So, we don’t know how many lifetimes we’ve passed in the material world.

Now, I have a book here called the Bhagavad-gītā. The Bhagavad-gītā is the essential Text on yoga, or on Indian spirituality in general. Bhagavad refers to the Supreme, and Gītā means song. So, Bhagavad-gītā is the song of the Supreme because when He speaks, He doesn’t just speak ordinary prose, but He speaks a beautiful song. And the Bhagavad-gītā explains that our identity is that we are not the body, but we are the ātmā within the body.

And the Bhagavad-gītā further explains that Krishna, the Supreme, has two energies: the material energy and the spiritual energy. And the ātmā is spiritual, and the body is material. And the body is a machine. Many of you are biology students. So, the body is actually a machine, and the ātmā is the living force that animates the machine, and when the ātmā leaves the body, we say that the body is dead, but actually, the body is always dead, it only appears to be alive because of the presence of the ātmā.

So, when the ātmā leaves the body, where does it go? Yes, that was one important point. I should have mentioned that the spiritual energy is eternal, which means it has no beginning and no end, that means we, the ātmā, have no beginning and no end. But material energy, although the totality of the material energy is conserved, but the, you could say, creations of the material energy are temporary, including our body.

Most likely in a hundred years, all right, two hundred years, depending on how the biotechnology goes, but probably a hundred, a hundred and fifty, two hundred years, these bodies that we are in now are not going to exist, but the ātmā is going to exist.

So, a very important question for us is, what happens to the ātmā after it leaves the body? And the Bhagavad-gītā explains that according to our thoughts, our activities during this lifetime, and our thoughts at the time of death, we will attain another destination or another body, because as long as we are in the material world, we will get a material body. But if our consciousness becomes completely spiritualized, then we don’t take birth in the material world again, but we go to the spiritual realm and join the Supreme in a loving relationship.

And that in one sense is the goal of life, to become free from this repetition of birth and death and all the miseries that accompany it. The Bhagavad-gītā mentions specifically birth, death, old age, and disease, these cannot be eliminated by any material means, and we should always be conscious of them, otherwise, we are sort of living in a fool’s paradise, “Oh, everything’s okay.” It’s not okay in the sense that we have to suffer in so many different ways.

So, Krishna is God, accepted as the Supreme, and He is the original guru. You’ve heard the word guru, guru means teacher, and especially spiritual teacher. I mean, there could be other types of gurus, but here, we are interested in spiritual teachers. And He gives us this knowledge in the Bhagavad-gītā.

And what we are celebrating, the appearance day of Lord Nityananda, Lord Nityananda is considered also to be the original guru in the sense that He not only teaches us about spiritual knowledge, but He exemplifies what He teaches. Because Krishna is the Supreme, He shows us what it’s like to be the Supreme, but that’s useful so that we know who we are developing our relationship with.

But Nityananda, He comes as a yogi, as a devotee, and He shows us how to realize our original spiritual nature and revive our relationship with Krishna. And in this present age, the recommended method is to chant a mantra. You’ve all heard the word mantra, can anyone tell me what you understand to be a mantra? What a mantra is?

Devotee: Chanting Lord’s names.

Giriraj Swami: Yes, that’s the best kind of mantra. Man means mind and tra means that which delivers. So, our minds in our materialistic life are enmeshed in many materialistic thoughts, which disturb us. People want peace of mind, it’s very common, everyone wants peace of mind, actually. So, mantra delivers the mind from this material entanglement. And how it works is this, specifically, we chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, Nityananda chanted the Hare Krishna maha-mantra, and the Hare Krishna maha-mantra consists of three names of God: Hare, Krishna, and Rama. Hare actually means the feminine aspect of God.

Well, if you look at the very top, there you’ll see in the oval frames on the left is Krishna, and on the right is Radha, and together, They are the most complete manifestation of the Supreme, both male and female. And when we chant Hare Krishna, the Hare refers to Radha, and the Krishna refers to Krishna.

Now, in the material world, the name of the thing and the thing are different, this is the relative world. So, if I chant, “Mango, mango, mango, mango,” well, just chanting, “Mango, mango” isn’t going to satisfy my desire for mango because the word mango and the mango itself are different. But if I want Krishna, Radha and Krishna, I chant, “Krishna Krishna, Hare Krishna,” because Krishna is actually present because in the absolute platform, there is no difference between the name of the thing and the thing. So, if you chant, “Krishna Krishna, Hare Krishna,” Krishna is actually present, He is dancing on your tongue. So, this is the method.

So, in a nutshell, Vedic knowledge is divided into three categories. One is called sambandha-jñāna, that means knowledge of who we are, what is the spiritual nature? What is the material nature? What is our relationship with them? Who is the Supreme? What is that relationship with Him? Then abhidheya, and then prayojana, and that means the goal, and the goal is to revive our eternal relationship with the Supreme, and ultimately, go to the spiritual realm and engage in a loving relationship with Him or with Them. And then, abhidheya means the process, what is the process by which we achieve that goal? And the process in general terms is bhakti-yoga, and in the various practices of bhakti-yoga, the most important is the chanting of God’s name.

So, Nityananda came and He taught that, and He exemplified that process, and He is very, very merciful. And I’m going to read, it’s quite an advanced book, Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, but you are advanced students, so we will read from an advanced book. So, it is said, yasya prasādād bhagavat-prasādo, by the mercy of the guru, one gets the mercy of Krishna, and Nityananda is considered the original guru.

So, the author of this book relates his personal experience, how by the mercy of Nityananda, he achieved Krishna, and I’m going to read this because it’s there and you are advanced students. But when one becomes very advanced spiritually, he does not consider himself to have good qualities, although he is full of good qualities, but one of those qualities is humility, and out of humility, he thinks he has no good qualities, and in that mood, one can attract mercy. If you think, I’m great, well, you are not going to attract much mercy because you are not humble. But if you are humble, you will. It’s sort of like the negative attracts the positive. If you are down here, then you attract the mercy from up there. So, the author here, he says, referring to Nityananda:

TEXT 208

Because He is intoxicated by ecstatic love.

COMMENT

Because He is in the mood of a devotee intoxicated with ecstatic love.

TEXT 208

And is an incarnation of mercy, He does not distinguish between the good and the bad.

COMMENT

Which is good for us because we are all bad to some extent, not you, but most of us, most of us. But it doesn’t even really matter because He doesn’t distinguish between who is good and who is bad, He gives His mercy to everyone. So, if you are good, that’s good, and if you are bad, that’s also not bad.

TEXT 209

He delivers all those who fall down before Him.

COMMENT

So, this is where humility comes. If you are proud, then you are not going to prostrate yourself and beg for mercy. That’s the real qualification, just to be humble. And then the author goes on and explains all the spiritual benefits he got by the mercy of Lord Nityananda.

So, coming to my story, someone asked about my story. Yeah, as I said, we could start a long time ago, probably billions of years ago, but we’ll start with this lifetime, we can begin in high school. In high school, I mean, I always had the idea of doing good for people, and in high school, my idea of doing good for people was to become a doctor. And there was a club, future doctors association, I was the president of the club.

And then, when I got to college, university, I went to Brandeis University, which is outside of Boston, I saw people who were suffering a lot, not because of physical ailments but because of mental torture. I had a friend, I didn’t realize it at the time, but later, I understood he was suffering from depression, but he was really suffering, but there was nothing wrong with him physically. So then, my concept of how to do good for others shifted, I thought, Well, someone could be healthy physically but mentally, they can be very tortured. And so, I became a psychology major, but that department of psychology was a little different.

The chairman of the department was named Abraham Maslow, and he was developing what he called a third force in psychology. Up until then, there were two predominant schools in psychology: one was behaviorism, which was stimulus and response, studied mainly rats or Pavlov’s dog, and then there was psychoanalysis, which studied diseased people. So, Maslow thought instead of studying rats or studying diseased people, he would study healthy people. And he had some good ideas and the whole department was sort of oriented towards what he called self-actualization, realizing your full potential, and they invited many swamis and yogis.

So, all right, I was a psychology major, but after a while, I started to see that within the department, there were the same sort of frailties that you would find anywhere else, there was sort of competition for positions, for budget, and appointments.

And then once, professor Maslow, it was a real nice thing, it was really nice that he said it, I mean, I really respect him, but what he described that once, he was having these different symptoms and he really didn’t know what was going on with him, so he consulted a colleague, and the colleague said, “You are having an anxiety attack.” And he told us, his students, that he had written chapters in books about anxiety attacks, but when he was having one, he didn’t recognize it. So, there is a difference between theoretical knowledge and realized knowledge.

So, everything put together, I thought that psychology is not the ultimate answer. So then, I started to explore spirituality, and at that time, I came to the conclusion or the understanding that I needed a guru, that in order to progress, I needed a guru. So then, my focus became how to find my guru, and most of the swamis and yogis were of the impersonal school.

Now, this is also a very important distinction. I’ve mentioned the Supreme, but within realization of the Supreme, there are actually three, you could say, degrees of realization: one is called Brahman, and that’s an impersonal spiritual light, and one is called Paramātmā, and that is the Lord within the heart, but the ultimate spiritual realization is Bhagavān, or the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna.

So, almost all the swamis and yogis, and then there were also the Zen masters, they all had an impersonal conception of the goal. In other words, their idea was to merge and become one with the light, or to sort of disappear into the void. And that was pretty much everyone.

So, I was going to see different swamis and yogis and masters, and I was looking for my guru, my perfect master, and I went through quite a long list, and I won’t tell you their names and I won’t describe my experiences with them only because of a lack of time, although I do feel those interactions were very constructive. But in each case, I felt, No, this is not my perfect master, this is not my perfect master, this is not my perfect master, to the point where I became almost hopeless, “I’m never going to find my perfect master.”

So, one evening, I had some friends over to my apartment for dinner. I was already vegetarian by then, so we had pasta, salad, soup, and bread. Then afterwards, we were going to go to see a movie, and in those days, there were theaters called art houses. Now everything is different, I mean, DVDs, I mean, they didn’t exist then. Yeah, it was very different. So, if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to a theater, unless by chance, they were showing some old movie on television, but for art movies, you didn’t get to see on television very much.

So anyway, we were going to Harvard Square to see a film, and just as we were about to leave, I remembered a poster that I had seen on campus, which read, “Lecture: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami.” But by then, I was so discouraged in my search, I didn’t even pay attention, “It’s just going to be another one, it’s going to be another one.”

But that night, I remembered that poster and I remembered that that lecture was coming up, and something inside of me was prompting me, “You must go.” So, I told my friends that I wanted to go to this lecture, and they said, “Well, we all said we were going to go to the movie.” So, well, “Okay, we can go to the late show, we’ll go to the lecture first.”

And one of them, a lady, she was really upset, somehow, all of them, she was really upset, and she said, “Why can’t you be like a normal person? Why do you always have to be running after these swamis and yogis?” And I didn’t want to upset anyone, didn’t want to upset her, and I sort of tried to acquiesce and go along with their idea. But something inside of me just was pushing me, and so finally, I told her, “Okay, this will be the last one I ever go to.”

And so, we went to the campus and Swami Bhaktivedanta was on the stage, it was in the auditorium actually of the psychology department. And because of all this discussion, we were late, but there was a kirtan going on. Do you know what kirtan is? Who knows what kirtan is? Yes?

Devotee: A rhythmic tune about God, singing songs about God.

Giriraj Swami: Yes, yes, there are two ways of chanting: one is called japa, that’s done quietly, mainly for your own self to hear, and the other is kirtan, and that’s done loudly, usually with musical accompaniment.

And so, in the auditorium, they were having kirtan, singing the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. And one by one, students from the audience were getting out of their seats and jumping up on the stage and joining the singing and dancing. So, I stood up, I also felt like going up and joining them, but I had all these friends on both sides of me and we already went through a lot just to get to the auditorium, and I thought, If I were to just jump up on the stage, that would probably be too much for them, that would probably be the end. So, I just stood up and sort of swayed in place.

And then afterwards, one of the devotees announced, “If anyone is going to Boston or Cambridge, Harvard Square, they should meet the devotees in the lobby.” Because the devotees needed a ride because they didn’t own any motor vehicles. So, we were going to Cambridge, to Harvard Square, and I had a Station Wagon. Do you have Station Wagons these days? Yeah, something like an SUV. So, there was some space, and so the devotees came in and I took them to Harvard Square, got the address to the temple, then went the next night.

And after the lecture, I asked Bhaktivedanta Swami, “I mean, this is really the question that’s burning within me that there are so many swamis and yogis, and each one says that his method is the best. Each one is teaching a different process and each one says that his method is the best. So, how do I know which is actually the best?” And Bhaktivedanta Swami, Srila Prabhupada, he replied very intelligently, “What is your goal?” I was asking, “What is the best means?” But there is a more basic question, “What is your goal?”

So, he said, “Do you want to serve God, or do you want to become God?” And then, he went on to explain, “If you want to become God, that means you are not God now, and how can not God become God?” He said, “God is God, He is always God, He doesn’t have to become God by yoga or meditation.” And then he said, “Krishna is God, He is always God. He is God when He is on the lap of Yasoda, He is God when He is speaking the Bhagavad-gītā to Arjuna, He is always God, He doesn’t have to become God.”

And then he said, “If you sow the seed of service to God and water it by chanting, God will give all the favorable elements, sunshine and everything, to make the plant grow. But if you want to become God. . .” So, he was saying, “If you want to serve God, God will help you, but if you want to become God, you are only cheating yourself because why should God help the competition?”

So, he said, “You can become godly, but you cannot become God.” And that was a revelation, that was a revelation, and then I knew I had found my perfect master, and then I surrendered, I submitted myself as his student, his disciple. And yeah, so that was in maybe March, span March-April, 1969. So, I’ve been attempting to serve him, serve his instructions, serve his mission ever since then.

Someone asked about my travels. Actually, every place is wonderful because the ātmā within everybody is the same. I mean, it’s individual, we are all individuals, but the same in the sense that they are all spiritual beings and they are all by nature divine. So, in that sense, it’s wonderful wherever. I mean, I remember going to Africa. The first time I got to chant with the Africans, the tribal, it was really blissful seeing them chant and dance. And some places were more dangerous than others, I think probably the most dangerous place for me was Pakistan. There was one time I really thought, This could be the end, but we survived, Krishna saved us. But even there, we found so many nice people, I mean, really nice people.

And Facebook is an amazing thing. I mean, I’m not recommending it, I’m fairly new to it myself, but it’s an amazing thing because we had a friend in Karachi, he was a poet, he was an intellectual, and he was translating this Bhagavad-gītā into Urdu language, which is the national language of Pakistan, somewhat akin to Hindi. So, he had a magazine, and in every issue of the magazine, he would run an installment from the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, and somehow, he was too liberal for some people, and one day, they just came into his office and shot him dead. He was a friend so that was a blow, and on top of it, he was very helpful.

But the reason I mentioned Facebook is because his grandson somehow saw me on Facebook and recognized me as being one of the Hare Krishna devotees who would visit his grandfather, and we had some exchange, and he is, as you can imagine, very, very open, and it was very nice to make that connection.

So, we are all sort of working towards some greater mission, and we are not going to see our mission completed in our lifetime, it’s a very big mission, but we can do what we can, and then the succeeding generations will carry on. So, I mean, there are so many places I visited, but I think it really comes down to that, that the ātmā is of the same nature within all the different varieties of bodies, different varieties of culture, and underneath it all, they are divine, they are parts and parcel of Krishna, and with the proper association, their original love for Krishna will be awakened. And you can see everywhere, there is not any place where people have not responded. And yeah, I’ve been to Russia, China.

So, this Godlessness is actually quite artificial, and it doesn’t satisfy anyone really. One of my colleagues said that the people who claim to be atheists, if you really speak with them, they are not really atheists, but they have issues with God, and so their way of dealing with their issues with God is, “He doesn’t exist, there is no God.” But if there is no God, why did they spend so much time talking about Him and arguing about Him?

Say Tinkerbell, you know who Tinkerbell is? I don’t even know if I remember, but she is a fictional character in Peter Pan, the story of Peter Pan. So now, okay, let’s say Tinkerbell doesn’t exist, but nobody’s making it on a campaign, “There is no Tinkerbell.” But there are people who are on a big crusade, “There is no God,” but why? And I think the psychology is that underneath it all, they have some issues with God, and that’s how they express themselves in not a very positive way.

So, but this struggle, you could say, between theists and atheists, goes back to the beginning of time. And I mention it because today is a special day, although tomorrow is a very special day, actually, today is also a very special day because it’s called Varaha-dvadasi, it’s a day when a very big atheist was vanquished by one of the forms of God. But that’s the absolute nature of God, even if He kills someone, they get liberated. So, anyone who comes in touch with the Supreme, with the Absolute, in any way, he gets a very wonderful result. So, this big atheist, he was killed by this incarnation called Varaha, and by being killed by Him, he was liberated, it means freed from the cycle of birth and death.

So, somehow or other, come to Krishna, come to God. Of course, He is known by different names and different cultures, but it’s the same Supreme. But the beauty of Krishna consciousness is there is more detail, there is more information. Any bona fide religion will say you should love God, I mean, that’s true, that is the goal of life, to love God. But if you ask them, “Who is God?” They don’t have a clear conception and you can’t really love someone if you don’t know the person. I mean, you can have a vague sense of appreciation, but can’t really love someone unless you know them.

So, it’s advanced literature, it begins with the Bhagavad-gītā, there is a lot just in the Bhagavad-gītā, and then there are even other books with more details, and then you can really learn about how kind He is, how merciful He is, how loving He is, and how you can develop your loving relationship with Him. And that’s the goal of life. And then at the same time, it’s also service to God to help others come to Him; it’s a service to them, and it’s a service to the Supreme.

And I asked that question to Srila Prabhupada because as I mentioned, I was interested in doing good for others, and after meeting him, I came to understand the importance of serving God. So, after one of the talks he gave, because he was in Boston for about two weeks, so every night, I would go. And so, I asked him, “I’ve understood the importance of serving God from you, but where does service to man come in?” And he replied, “If you give something to someone that makes that person so satisfied that he doesn’t want anything else, is that not service?”

And he gave one example from Vedic histories. There was a young boy, He was actually only five years old. His father was a king, but his stepmother was saying he couldn’t become the king because he wasn’t born from her womb. So, he went to his mother and told her what happened, and he wanted the kingdom, and his mother said, “Well, your father favors your stepmother and I don’t think there is anything I can do.”

“Well, who can help me?”

“Well, only God can help you.”

“So, where is God?”

“Well, many people look for God in the forest.”

So, he went into the forest, and in the way of a five-year-old, he was looking for God; looking in the bushes, looking behind the logs, looking in the trees. But God is in everyone’s heart. He saw that this boy was very sincere to find Him, so He sent a guru, and from within the heart of the guru, He sent the guru to the forest to meet the boy.

The guru gave him a mantra, and by following the guru’s instructions and chanting the mantra, by chanting the name of God, eventually, God came to him, came to see him, and at the end, God asked him, “I want to give you some benediction, what do you want?” And he said, “I don’t want anything.” And God said, “But what about your kingdom? You came, you did all this for your kingdom.” And the boy replied, “Yes, that’s true, but that kingdom was like a piece of broken glass, and now I’ve gotten You, who are the most precious jewel. So, I’m a million times satisfied, I don’t want any benediction from You.”

So, Srila Prabhupada said that to give someone that, that he is so satisfied that he doesn’t want anything else, is that not service? And he also told the story of Alexander the Great. You heard of Alexander the Great?

So, he was conquering everywhere, and he came to the precincts of India and he saw a yogi in meditation in the hot sun, and he was very impressed, he never saw anyone like that before. So, he got down from his carrier and he approached the yogi and he said, “I’m very impressed with you and I want to give you something. I’m Alexander the Great, I’m the conqueror of the world, I’ll give you whatever you want.” And he said, “I want only one thing, please, move aside, you are blocking the sun.”

Now, that sun was beating down on him, it was very hot, but that was his austerity to realize God. So, who was Alexander the Great? He couldn’t give him anything, he just didn’t want him to get it in the way of his yogic practice. And then, Alexander the Great sent a message back to his troops that were following behind, “These people are very special here, don’t mess with them.”

So, Srila Prabhupada was saying, “To give someone that, is that not service? They are so satisfied they don’t want anything else.” So, I mean, he elaborated more, but that was the idea, and I realized yes, this is the best service. Well, of course, we are benefiting, but sharing it with others, they will also benefit, and that will also please the Supreme because ultimately, He wants everyone to be happy, and He knows this is really the only way they can be completely happy and satisfied.

So, thank you very much. Do we have time for questions? It was part of the program. Yes?

Devotee: You said that you want to help others, how is it that you do that?

Giriraj Swami: Well, if they come to understand, first of all, that they are not the body. See, this is a problem, that most people think they are the body. And if you ask anyone, “Who are you?” They’ll say, “I’m so and so, I’m American, I’m Chinese, I’m Indian, black, white, male, female.” They identify with the body, and because they identify with the body, their concept of their self-interest is in relation to the body.

So, Srila Prabhupada gives the example if you are doing a mathematical calculation and you make a mistake in the first step, then even if you perform every other step perfectly, you may end up further and further from the final solution because you made a mistake in the first step.

So, people, if they make a mistake in the first step of who they are and they think they are the body and then they do everything for the body, they may end up getting further away from the real happiness that they want. So, if we can help people to understand they are not the body but they are the ātmā within the body, and that the ātmā is part of the Supreme related to the Paramātmā, then they can become happy. And we can give them a book, we can invite them to a discussion. There are different ways that we can interest them.

That was a very good question. Does that answer it?

Devotee: Another question, kind of a comment. So, you are trying to say that you help other people kind of in a way of helping them realize who they truly are, not just that appearance, or like you said, the body [Unintelligible 01:02:08].

Giriraj Swami: Yeah, in fact, one of the books of our teacher’s writings is called A Journey of Self-discovery. Yes?

Devotee: Kind of binding that to my original question. When you give us an example of water in a cloud being so pure, and the moment it touches the ground, it becomes contaminated, similar to how we are, we are ātmā. When we are in the spiritual body, we are pure, and when we enter into the materialistic body or the body itself, the physical body, we kind of go in search of what is the spiritual, what is purity, and how we can elevate this spiritual soul, and pray to God, and the mantras, kirtans, shlokas, and all those things. My question is, if the ātmā itself is pure, then why does it have to enter into a physical body and go in search of a Paramātmā if it’s a soul?

Giriraj Swami: That’s a very good question, it’s a very good question. It’s very hard to trace when the living entity comes into the material world, and it’s very hard to know why the living entity comes into the material world. But somehow, we got here, and some of our teachers have said that how the living entity becomes conditioned by the material nature cannot really be understood by the conditioned soul, but when you are liberated from the material conditioning, you can get a sense of how the soul became conditioned by the material nature.

But Srila Prabhupada also said it’s like someone is drowning in the ocean and a boat comes to rescue that person, and the person says, “Well, wait a minute, how did I get here?” Well, that’s not such an important question, the thing is you are here and you are floundering, you are subject to this birth, death, old age, and disease, and so many miseries, so you want to get on the boat and be taken to safety.

A very sort of simple or basic answer is that the living entity has minute independence, free will, because love is voluntary, if there is force, there is no love. Love is voluntary. Voluntary means there is free will, there is choice, and free will means you can use your free will properly or misuse it. So, somehow, we have misused our free will and come into the material world. So now, we want to properly use our free will just to serve the Supreme, which is what we are meant to do, and get out of the material world.

And I should also clarify that getting out of the material world doesn’t necessarily mean that you leave it physically. The example is given of the lotus, that the roots are in the mud but the stem goes through the water and the flower is above the water. So, a pure devotee like Srila Prabhupada, he was in the material world externally, but internally, he was not in the material world. So, we are here, somehow, we made a mistake somewhere along the line, we are here.

Devotee: Can I ask another question?

Giriraj Swami: Okay.

Devotee: One last question.

Giriraj Swami: Ok, last.

Devotee: I kind of refer to when you say that we kind of made some mistake enough or deviated from when we were in the free will and we got into materialistic realm in wandering ourselves to or wondering ourselves in search of elevating our spirituality. My question is, how can we go or deviate from free will when we are in the spiritual realm? Because all we know is ultimate God or ultimate love, unconditional essence of love when you are in favor.

Giriraj Swami: But what is the meaning of free will if you can’t misuse it?

Devotee: The question is, how can you misuse it when we are [Unintelligible 01:09:18] love?

Giriraj Swami: Because we have free will. There is a very fine point, which is envy. When we become envious of God and want to take His position, then we come into the material world and suffer. Now, how could envy appear there? I don’t know.

Devotee: Very well.

Giriraj Swami: It’s interesting that Srila Prabhupada said you can ask who, where, why, but you can’t ask how. If I ask you how, I mean, of course, we are in the company of biology students, but still, if I ask you how is your hair growing? I mean, they can describe it, but they don’t exactly explain how, they might even have mathematical calculations, it doesn’t exactly explain how. I think, this is my personal recommendation, you should go to the temple tomorrow, are you going?

Devotee: I don’t know [Unintelligible 01:11:29].

Giriraj Swami: Anyway, either there or here or anywhere, you should fall down at the feet of Nityananda Prabhu and tell Him what your dilemma is, what your perplexity is, what your doubt is, and ask Him to help you.

Devotee: [Unintelligible 01:11:55].

Giriraj Swami: Okay.

Devotee: I ask that every day.

Giriraj Swami: What do you ask this every day?

Devotee: I ask this question every day because I’m so confused and [Unintelligible 01:12:09].

Giriraj Swami: Okay, okay, I understand now. So now, we are adding something to the formula, and that is to fall down at the feet of Nityananda Prabhu and ask Him. Because you’ve been going around in circles in your mind, so now we have to go beyond that, you need some special mercy.

Devotee: Yeah, I definitely need that.

Giriraj Swami: So, that’s why Nityananda Prabhu came, to give that special mercy.

Devotee: Thank you.

Devotee: That’s inherently part of achieving [Unintelligible 01:12:50].

Giriraj Swami: Yes. Any success requires two ingredients: our effort and Krishna’s mercy. If we think, I can do it on my own, I can figure it out on my own, we can’t. But if we think, I’m not going to do anything, I’m just going to sit and wait for Krishna to do everything, that’s also not. So, our effort is a necessary component, but it’s not sufficient, we need both our effort and God’s mercy.

Yes, Radhika?

Devotee: I had a question coming back to the point of free will. So, we often hear that we have the free will to make our decisions, and then we also hear that we should just surrender to God’s plan. So, does God have a plan for us, or are we following His plan based on what He wants us to do, or do we have the free will to be responsible for our own actions? Because there is the idea of fate and destiny, that we are destined to do something with our life, but then as you mentioned, we have the free will to make that decision because we were envious of God, we came to this material world, and because of that, we have the free will to choose our path.

But then, you hear devotees telling others, “You should just surrender to God’s plan because He knows best.” So, do we have free will, or do we not, or how does that really work?

Giriraj Swami: Well, surrendering to God doesn’t mean we give up our free will, it just means that we give preference to God’s desire. Just like it happens quite often with parents, that they may have one desire, but the child may have another desire, and they give in to what the child wants. That’s why we have Sunday school. The children want to come to Sunday school, so then the parents have to come. I mean, they don’t have to, they have the free will, but out of love, they come because that’s what the child wants to do.

So, surrender is based on love, it means we love Krishna so we want to do what He wants us to do. We still have our free will but we consider His happiness more important than our so-called happiness, and by making Him happy, then we really find our own happiness. But we always have free will.

Devotee: I have a question. Why is God always termed as He and not She?

Giriraj Swami: It’s a convention. As I mentioned earlier, the complete conception of God is both male and female. But we don’t want to say It because that sounds impersonal, and we don’t want to say Them because it could sound like we are worshiping many Gods. But we are not actually worshiping many Gods, we are worshiping one God that has a male and a female aspect. So, it’s just a convention that we say Him, because we don’t want to say It, and we don’t want to say Them. We could say Her if that makes you happy. But it’s Radha and Krishna, the two of Them together are the Supreme.

All right, I guess we can. . . Did you have. . .?

Devotee: No.

Giriraj Swami: Okay, so we can proceed.

Devotee: Sure.