Discussions about the relationship between science and religion usually end in a stalemate: Scientists accuse religionists of relying too much on faith, which they say is experimentally unverifiable, while religionists accuse scientists of relying too much on physical and chemical laws, which they say fail to measure the emotions and sentiments of a conscious living entity. The scientists fail to address or even acknowledge consciousness and its attendant needs; reli...

"I have another story; this one was told by my father. My father's elder brother was running a cloth shop. Before closing the shop my uncle would put out a basin filled with rice. Of course, as in any village, there were rats. But the rats would take the rice and not cut even a single cloth. Cloth is very costly. If even one cloth had been cut by a rat, then it would have been a great loss. So with a few pennies' worth of rice, he saved many dollars' worth of cloth. This Krishna culture is practical. They are also part and parcel of God. Give them food. They'll not create any dist...

Arjuna was a warrior, a ksatriya. A warrior is so by intrinsic quality, not by external denomination. For him, to desert an important battle and take the path of a hermit in the forest would have been artificial. Artificial things don't match one's internal quality or genuine predisposition. So, they deprive one from the strength coming from within. Without this internal force, any goal, material or spiritual, would be hard to pursue in the long run.

I know that Supreme Personality of Godhead who is transcendental to all material conceptions of darkness. Only he who knows Him can transcend the bonds of birth and death. There is no way for liberation other than this knowledge of that Supreme Person.“There is no truth superior to that Supreme Person because He is the supermost. He is smaller than the smallest, and He is greater than the greatest. He is situated as a silent tree, and He illumines the transcendental sky, and as a tree spreads its ...

I have a PhD in cell biology and have been researching the subject of consciousness and its relation to the mind. The above verses intrigued me, and I wondered how they were related to our experiences of the world. In my research I came across a concept that provided valuable insights – the concept of subjective experience. I am an individual with my own likes and dislikes. My individuality, with its preferences, applies to all sectors of my life, to every single activity I do, be it in regard to my eating or clothing or colors or car – the list is endless.

There were three poor men who always desired great riches. One day a special delivery man handed to each poor man an envelope and informed each man, that within the envelope is a great fortune. The first poor man did not think very much of the envelope, thinking it to be junkmail, he tossed it on a pile of similar mails that was supposed to make him a millionaire, or win a special prize, sweepstakes etc. The second poor man opened the envelope and found a golden card. Thinking it to be real gold, he rushed to jewellery store to ascertain the card's carat o...

The desire to see God, to touch God, to talk to God is in itself probably the strongest argument for His existence; besides the logic and evidences from the scriptures, this direct experience is very significant indeed. Bringing Deity Worship from the insiders circle of elderly pujari-priests and making it part of the congregational development is probably the only way it may become part of the positive future for many places in ISKCON. While everyone hankers for direct experience of God in person, it is...

When our Godbrother, Atreya Rsi, was in Tehran in the 1970s, he wrote to Srila Prabhupad to inform him that he had gotten some of the Muslims to chant the Hare Krishna Mantra. Srila Prabhupad's reply was very interesting and enlightening

The environment means nature, and whose nature is it? It is God's nature. Did anyone else create it? Did anyone else put it all together so that it operates the way it does? In fact, humanity is still trying to figure out all the intricacies of its functionality.

In older civilizations, it was possible to conceive, understand and retain spiritual knowledge by simply hearing from a spiritual master. In today’s day and age, however, the majority of us need to read scriptures alongside hear in order to learn, digest and remember spiritual knowledge. The foundation of the Krishna consciousness movement is predicated on the principles presented by Lord Krishna in Bhakti literatures such as the Bhagavad Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam and Chaitanya Charitamrita.