(The following article was posted in the “Inner Voice” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 8 July 2004.) HOW DO we define the inner voice? Is it conscience, our higher self, the ‘lower self’ or something entirely different? What force dictates action and decides crucial issues of the day? Is it intuition, common sense, our heart, intelligence or something else? Gandhi was well known for listening to his inner voice and for extracting ideas from the Gita, where we’re reminded that our very mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy (6.6). Certainly there’s a part of us dictating harm: in a split second we obey a voice telling us to do something that leads to sudden death in a car crash. Conversely, an inner voice prompts us to make a driving decision that saves our life. Sometimes we have to decide between living a short, brave and heroic life or long safe one. Hamlet said, “conscience makes cowards of us all”. The inner voice is both misleading and life saving. It can be conscience; it can be selfishness; it can be selflessness; it can be foolishness. It can be the prompting of the senses to eat this, smell that, hear this, look at that, feel this. And it can be the voice of restraint. I must do my duty, practice some discipline, forgo this pleasure for my long-term purpose, live more simply. Thinking things over often means consultation with many inner voices. In life we have many tough decisions to make. So who will guide us? What principles, if any, constitute my foundations? God is our witness within our heart, sometimes dictating “Don’t do it”, or “Do it.” This inner voice becomes clear if we accept Him as param-atma, and take the Gita as our collective working guide for work, rest and play. (The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON governing body commission)

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 16 February 2004.) RUSSIA HAS corroborated its ability to evolve from a pre-glasnost nation with many single-minded legislators to one that allows religions other than its ‘big four’ – Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism – the right to, practice openly. On November 10, 2003, this newspaper published an AFP release in which Sanjeev Jha, president of the Indian Association of Russia, talked about plans for a proposed building in Moscow. All the hand-wringing happened because of a proposed Vedic centre in Moscow. Some locals had opposed a replacement centre for one that’s soon to be demolished. In their disapproval, the protestors had dismissed exuberant Hindus, especially its bhaktas, as unrealistic extremists. This small herd of independent minds, which included some Duma members, was described by news services as ‘ultra-nationalist lawmakers’. It came up with an awesome application of the preIlX ‘neo-‘: it was the term ‘neo-religious’. This invented phrase applied to Vedic religion. The new location, officially approved on January 20 by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, won’t house one of the four ‘traditional religions’ of the region, although the global populations of Buddhists and Jews fall into fIfth and twelfth places respectively. To a small but literate pack of protestors, Vedic had become ‘neo’, a ‘novel religion’. Never mind that nearly a billion Hindus populate the globe, making their faith rank third in the world, after Christianity and Islam. President Vladimir Putin’s government has accepted even those primitive, bright-faced believers – the dancing, shaven-headed set. Maybe they’re not so out of step. Luzhkov’s signing the new land grant in city centre reaffirms that religion, which is often a traditional, sober, singular and private affair, can be different as well as public. (The writer is emeritus member oj ISKCON governing body commission)

I mentioned in a recent Hindustan Times submission that Christians tend to identify more with Christ than with God, because of Christ’s apparent “human-ness.” He talked and ate with people, washed people’s feet, walked with them, was their friend, and even bled for them. Most say he died for them. These days American Christians can often be seen wearing jewelry such as bracelets, brooches, pendants, necklaces, tie pins, cuff links, etc, bearing a popular etched description that reads, “What would Jesus do?”

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 07 February 2004.) OF THE Padma Purana’s 8.4 million universal life forms, we’re told that earth-dwelling homo sapiens are in the best position to advance to higher consciousness. According to the Bhagavat, we can attain perfection (11.20.7). That book also says that ancient books of wisdom are like favourable winds propelling the boat of the human body toward its ultimate goal. It further suggests that a guru is like a coxswain, or the steersman of a racing shell, one who guides us to our destination. We’re implored to take advantrage of the human situation to avoid spiritual suicide. Unfortunately, as we ply seemingly smoothly along, there are endless opbstacles. And many hurdles are close to home. For example, the very manner in which we communicate is deeply entrenched in monetary and marketing terminology. Money is often the ultimate measure of success, and the desire to sell goods permeates our lanugage. Corporations sometimes say ‘people are our greatest asset’. But ‘asset’ is a monetary term. The words ‘worth’ and ‘value’ have come to mean little more than cost and and price. Language is reducing our grasp of any real values. The worth of a thing – as in ‘for what it’s worth’ – is not a measure of an item’s intrinsic merit. ‘Value’ today is seldom equated with importance and morality. The Bhagavat is a map, steering people across the ocean of an unpredictable world, where the body — and mind — are vulnerable to hijacking. Today’s ‘economic’ use of language, ‘cheapens’ lives. We’live in an age when a graveyard is called a ‘memorial park’, so that the dead rest easy in our minds. An earplug is a ‘noise filter’, and a bar of soap a ‘skin cleansing system’. Cows are called food products. ‘Bottom line’ is another phrase that’s come to mean a final conclusion or summary statement. When we take advantage of shastric evidence, linguistic morphing can be superseded by wisdom. The technology of spiritual progress guarantees our human craft are guided — in every respect — toward their natural harbour on the most protected route. (The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON governing body commission)

Love of God overtakes all (The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 9 March 2004.) MANY TEENAGERS are nihilistic. They think the end of history coincided exactly with their arrival on earth. Similarly, once sensual attraction makes itself known, life before romance is is dead. No school, college or university can teach the subject. How do you teach someone to be madly in love? The 16th century Vaishnava intellectual, Rupa Goswami, wrote that attraction to God should flow as naturally as rivers surge to the sea, and be as spontaneous as teenage feelings, or youth awakened to new dimensions at puberty. His writing was as much a prayer as a concept. A prayer because what is natural to the transcendentalist is unnatural to the worldly-minded. The fashion is to ‘get back to basics’. There’s a notion that technology is unnatural and transforming us into cyborgs. To offset this tendency, the thinking goes, we have to revert back to nature, get back our roots, be true to our instincts, the more animal-like the better. Rupa’s prayer is to return to basics, but not merely to sensuality or the unpredictable vicissitudes of our natures. He teaches that the existence of God and His intervening invisible hand is the most basic and natural of all phenomena. We have developed an abnormality, a lack of belonging to our roots, but eternal broadband doesn’t hang up. God stays connected. The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON governing body commission.

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 13 December 2003.) A NANOMETRE is one billionih of a metre or roughly one-thousandth of the width of a single human hair, so saith the sages of the ‘small’ revolution. Too tiny to trace? Think again. Napotechnologists don’t ihink it’s too slight. In fact, they’re beginning to assume godlike power and cqntrol the basic forces of matter and energy. This technology includes the amazing ability to manipulate genes into self-replicating living organisms — bio-molecular manufacturing if you will — to ‘control ihe material world’, in the words of the founder of Foresight Institute. But atomic measurement is — surprise, surprise — not really new. Mantras in ihe Svetashvatara Upanishad and the Bhagavat state that the size of the soul is one ten thousandth the tip of a human hair. The Sanskrit word Shata-Bhagasya is found in these two books, referring to dividing a human hair tip into 10,000 parts. Presto! Nanotechnology. And without the aid of an electron microscope. Human beings are now, more than ever, obsessed with measuring all things from planets and microbes to health and happiness. One may question the precision of these hair’s breadih calculations. What is the dimension of hair or an atom’s nucleus? Even if stem cell research improves the quality of life long-term, or even short-term, we can rightly object to the rush to market with GE seeds, and nanotechnology. A lack of foresight has to be addressed. It’s worrying. There’s an intoxicating drive that converts luxuries into needs. Before 1750 there was no refined sugar in England. And some historians say cane plantatidns in the West Indies, is what got that empire headed toward world domination. Small things, like a stalk of sugar cane, can become big. Many modern ‘miracles’ in the fields of travel, communication, medicine, education, and entertainment have already attained super stardom and become part of everyday reality. Now nanotechnology and other micro marvels bedazzle us: flat TV screens, designer implants and tiny mobile phones. We look to technology as the way forward, but we need to stop and think. Let’s look back for a moment, but without becoming ‘backward’. The science is back there. The technology is there. ‘Material scientists,’ as one yogi put it, ‘may learn someday how to communicate with the spiritual world.’ Then we’ll have gone full circle and finally got somewhere. The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON governing body commission.

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 20 August 2003. JANMASHTAMI IS a magical time, for more reasons than one. The sacred holiday Janmashtami celebrates the birth of Lord Krishna on this earth at midnight, but the ocurrencs leading up to this event are as significant as the birth itself. Prior to Lord Krishna’s appearance, Devaki had lost six sons, murdered as infants by King Kamsa, Devaki’s brother. From the shastras we learn that these six had been the sons of Marichi, and that Lord Brahma had cursed them to be killed by Kamsa, who in a previous birth had been their father. These six sons also represent the sad garbasuras, or the human defects of lust, anger, greed, madness, illusion and envy. Devaki’s sons’ deaths by Kamsa symbolise overcoming these six faults within ourselves. Fortunately, Devaki is later reunited with her sons, as Lord Krishna and His brother Balarama retrieve them from Bali Maharaja, bringing them back to life. Even so, the sons represent flaws in our character, and their deaths at the hands of Kamsa signify the need for us to purify our consciousness. Their dying stands for eradicating the ‘demons’ of material association. Decontamination of human consciousness is necessary to cure the world’s ills. Janmashtami is really more than an observance in which joy and gladness reign in the soul for a day. Janmashtami is meant to purify the entire world for a long time by penetrating the remote recesses of consclousness. Gold is often obtained from smelting ore. Similarly, the essential goodness of human beings can be extracted from this sordid and negative age. Despite being infected through the modes of passion and ignorance, understanding the meaning behind Janmasthami is a failsafe process. Holidays are in fact holy days, times meant for us to revere and worship God, not only symbolically, but also literally. We understand His nature and birth from timeless writings like the Gita. In that book Krishna says, ‘One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, 0 Arjuna’. (4.9) Equally, if not more important than never taking birth in this world again, is improving the quality of life for the whole planet – a spiritual revival. This is the deeper purpose of Janmashtami. The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON Governing Body Commission

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 14 August 2003.) A TALE told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing? This Shakespearean phrase negates life’s purpose, as does creating a cocoon based on gratification of the senses. That fuzzy feeling that engulfs us during peak times – graduations, marriages, births – and happy moments at home, or in clubs and theatres, sometimes results in a dreary aftermath. This is when we ask what IS really significant and worthwhile in life. A brighter view was expressed by George Lucas in reference to his creation Star Wars: ‘I was trying to say in a simple way that there is a God and there is both a good side and a bad side. You have a choice between them, but the world works better if you’re on the good side.’ Certainly there are at least two sides to every story. Clouds have silver linings, faults and glories exist in everyone, and so on. The Vedas describe our predicament in detail. AIthough spiritual by nature and very joyful, we are gripped by the gunas or the three ropes of ignorance, passion and goodness. These intertwined strands bind us to the material world, which is the cause of bondage and pessimism. Spending time before Deities, in prayer, reading Vedic literature, going to temples and singing mantras can become artificia! as we’re creatures of habit. Nonetheless these habits make life pleasant, and they have great potency. We might wish, however, that we could feel more or be moved more by such practices. Pushkin sometimes wrote about the un-understandable, unpredictable things in life – feelings that occur within surprise events, like unexpected visitors and semiconscious dreams. Such feelings, no matter how good, should not determine and control us. Why not? Because unpredictables often come from the dark side of life, whilst the planned, smooth-running things can be the happy events, the gardens of our lives. Ultimately it’s inner vision that should determine our thoughts and behaviour. There are many facets to belief, but love for God and knowing the nature of God are essential if spiritual love is to open our eyes rather than blind us. Spirituality based on knowledge rather than the psychological need to belong is rare. It comes from a deep ineffable source of joy within ourselves. It comes from knowing without any doubt that the world is not run by an idiot. The writer is emeritus member of the ISKCON Governing Body Commission.

(The following article was posted in the “Meditations” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 1 September 2003.) According to World Bank figures: * More than 1 billion live on less than US$1 a day – that’s poverty by many standards. * 3 billion live on US$2 per day * More than 1 billion don’t have access to clear water * 3 billion do not have sanitation facilities * 2 billion don’t have access to power * 1% of the world’s population can’t read * Less than 1% has access to the Internet. Not that the World Bank can be trusted as unerringly accurate, but these statistics are food for thought. Do the rich get richer and poor poorer? It would seem so. Maybe life’s just not fair. After all, none of us remembers asking to be born. The age old question is why many live short painful lives and others are born with silver spoons in their mouths. Why the massive inequalities? Why are there always more poor than rich? Recently I was invited to speak to a class of 17-year olds in a New Zealand school. The course was history and the subject that day was ‘war’. An inconclusive discussion ensued about ‘innocent Iraqis’ and ‘innocent’ people in the New York’s trade towers dying by the thousands. Then I broached the subject of karma. The class, for the first time, went silent and began to listen. The students seemed to realize that karma might be the answer to one of the most perplexing problems of all time, namely, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” In that classroom a new topic of interest has been floated, and the pupil’s awareness extended. Every generation seems to claim ownership of different events in history. Yet many think any time in which they live is pivotal and important, so the global technology revolution is seen to make this era unique. On the other hand, many teenagers say that the end of history coincided exactly with their arrival on earth. Beyond, but not opposed to these radically different positions, is that we all come into this world as a result of prior actions in previous lives, and personal and global circumstances reflect this. By knowing how to overcome and transcend our not so apparent birth ‘rights’ we can become free from resentment or fatalism, discover what we have to learn, and positively work for change.

(The following article was posted in the “Off Track” column of the Hindustan Times, one of India’s largest English language daily newspapers, on 29 July 2003.) Watching pilgrims’ dandavat parikramas around Govardhan at this time of year is inspirational. Most are elderly and engage in this totally radical form of worship in unforgiving heat. But swelter isn’t the real problem. The biggie here is noise pollution, or NP. You say you don’t want to know what noiseaholics are like in small north Indian villages? Sorry, but I *have* to tell you. Wearing the softest rubber-plastic earplugs available starts to hurt after 24 hours. The voice outside is amplified to 989.99 decibels through a loudspeaker shaped like a Tibetan mountain horn-meets-a-ship’s warning distress signal. Its perched upon a short concrete pole 30 meters from where I sleep in this bucolic hideaway. Life goes on, NP or not. The man sounds like he’s having his entrails ripped out by two Rottweilers, a Doberman pinchers and an Irish wolfhound. That was last night. *All* of last night. This morning Minnie Mouse took the microphone and was never in finer fettle. I thought I liked music. But film “song” can be more excruciating than full throttle jet engines up close. By the way, they have their own generators, so power cuts don’t allow easier breathing. I detest adjectives, so I won’t call it horrific, criminal, foul or agonizing. I won’t declare that I can’t sleep at night, nor will I divulge that I loathe the vibrations that saturate the ether around me. That extreme amplification isn’t necessary is something I won’t dwell on, but I’m convinced people livin nearby have serious hearing problems. Beg them to lower the volume? Just a little? No way! “This is my life, Baba.” Go to the police? They’re too busy catching thieves and murderers. Give them a backhander? Well, right now that’s against my principles. What sometimes passes for dulcet strings or celestial music is ultimately a form of sound. Singsong acappella “poetry” in Vrajbasi (male voice) are common fare. And spirited ‘songs’ (soprano female voices) accompanied by lively wind, string and percussion instruments, should make Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle (or whoever) wretch in agony. But I think they like being broadcast in remote regions, cinema soundtrack or quasi-bhajan. Holy places infected with such brash NP convictions as ‘my way or the highway’ aren’t really that different from the telltale “thump, thump” of the bass guitars that throb through frosted windows of red sporty-looking cars with dangerous hubcaps on busy city streets. Some lovers of the beat don’t even bother to put up their car windows on summer days but they love playing their favorite chart-busters at peak volume. Maybe they prefer oxygen to freon. Maybe they’re right about some things. Well, at least you don’t have to *sleep* next to them.