This perfect knowledge can be achieved by a person who is already engaged in devotional service with faith, steadiness and full detachment, and who is always absorbed in thought of the Supreme. He is aloof from material association

If dedicated transcendentalists are compared to swans, it should come as no surprise that committed materialists are likened to crows.

Before I encountered the Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement, I was engaged in graduate religious studies in a university. One day a professor remarked: “The issue is not whether or not God exists. The issue is whether or not God is available.”

No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. Not only is it unpleasant; it can be dangerous. Kings routinely used to kill on the spot hapless messengers bringing word of defeat.

No honest, well-informed person can find any such attempt at centralization in the current undertaking. We all understand and accept Prabhupada principles of management and fully realize the need for local empowerment and autonomy. At the same time, we also understand that Prabhupada ordered the GBC to exercise certain spiritual and managerial authority over the temples.

One needs to become acquainted with two contrasting social ideals, or models, transmitted to us by Srila Prabhupada. The first is that of a society of Vaisnavas, of transcendental, liberated devotees who conduct themselves spontaneously in accord with the principles called sanatana-dharma. The second is that of a society of materially conditioned human beings who strictly conduct themselves in obedience to the injunctions of the Vedas under the system called varnasrama-dharma.

Some time later, Michael Stein told me that he had concluded–from his talk with Maharaja and whatever else he’d gathered from the government’s investigation–that Radhanatha Swami was not implicated in any of the criminal activities in New Vrindavan.

When I first began to associate with devotees, in Philadelphia in 1970, I was married, with one child and another on the way. I owned my own house — actually very near the temple — I was a graduate student in Religious Studies, and it looked like I had a good career ahead of me.

Selves are beings that experience, centers of consciousness, subjects. Matter does not experience; it is without subjectivity, it is completely an object. Selves live; matter is lifeless.