With spiritual fasting, you may not make headlines, but you'll make headway on the path back to Godhead. What do Mahatma Gandhi, Dick Gregory, Jane Fonda, Norman Mailer, Bolivian dissidents, British suffragettes, and Irish revolutionaries have in common? Well, for one thing, at one time or another and for one reason or another, they've all fasted. Materially their fasting was somewhat successful, whether it was undertaken to free India from British domination, turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, lose weight, win amnesty for political prisoners, get the right to v...

Is There A Conscious Self distinct from the physical mechanism of the body? Is there a mind distinct from the brain? Those who answer yes to such questions are called dualists, and they are rare in contemporary science and philosophy. Dualistic solutions to the mind/body problem are perhaps hampered by, among other things, inadequate analogies and allegories on the topic in Western thought. Whether we turn to Plato's cave, to the formulations of Descartes, or to the proverbial little green man in the brain, there is apparently not enough substance to inspire the modern ...

And especially what was also very, very satisfying to me was seeing that not only we are preserving the parampara by manifesting these three symptoms but that these events are also wonderful opportunity for distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books. For me that is the icing on the cake. That makes it so sweet. These events are very, very good opportunities to inspire people to want to know more about this. And therefore these are very, very, good opportunities for making Srila Prabhupada’s books ...

As we entered the Pacific Coliseum, Mahesh Prabhu and I headed for the floor, our saffron bags filled with books, magazines and incense. The crowd was obviously excited as we gradually walked to the front of the stage distributing our spiritual goods along the way. "Hare Krishna" people shouted. Many of George's fans knew that he had an affinity towards our movement, so they were very friendly and supportive. When the concert began, George appeared on stage wearing a number of badges with spiritua...

ISKCON farms have some great successes, and some great failures too, but with the money ISKCON now has, and the large congregation of young devotees, it has tremendous opportunity for self-sufficient farms. The idea that the modern age has changed the opportunity for simple living and high thinking on farms is not true. Self-sufficiency as it was on 1950's farms could be easily replicated today by any young and very hard working devotee couple.

There’s a particle more important than the Higgs boson, and we should be investigating it. Does ‘the God particle’ disprove the existence of God?” a young man asked me after a recent talk, referring to the discovery of the Higgs boson. “The so-called God particle,” I answered, “has zero charge, zero spin, and a near-zero lifespan; it exists for less than a trillionth of a second. Does that sound like God to you?” “No, not really,” replied the questioner, taken aback. “Exactly,” I said. “Its discovery ha...

Devotees often quote a lecture by Srila Prabhupada where he said that even if they were seventy percent surrendered; Krsna will still take them back to Godhead. During this lecture, Srila Prabhupada was speaking on how one has to be one hundred percent surrendered. At the end of the class, he noticed the devotee’s disappointment that they will not be able to make the standard