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Saints and Swindlers (Part 4 of 4)
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To: alt-hindu@cis.ohio-state.edu
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Subject: Saints and Swindlers (Part 4 of 4)
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From: susarla@rice.edu (H. Krishna Susarla)
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Date: 20 Jan 1995 23:22:19 GMT
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From news@larry.rice.edu Fri Jan 20 18: 09:47 1995
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Newsgroups: alt.hindu
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Organization: Rice University, Houston, Texas
Saints and Swindlers
>From the book "The Science of Self Realization"
By His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
(c) 1984 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International
Used with permission
Part 4 of 4
Reporter: When you say that lots of people want to be cheated, do you
mean that lots of people want to carry on with their worldly pleasures
and at the same time, by chanting a mantra or by holding a flower,
achieve spiritual life as well ? Is this what you mean by wanting to be
cheated ?
Srila Prabhupada: Yes, this is like a patient thinking, "I shall continue
with my disease, and at the same time I shall become healthy." It is
contradictory. The first requirement is that one become educated in
spiritual life. Spiritual life is not something one can understand by a
few minutes talk. There are many philosophy and theology books, but
people are not interested in them. That is the difficulty. For instance,
the Srimad-Bhagavatam is a very long work, and if you try to read this
book, it many take many days just to understand one line of it. The
Bhagavatam describes God, the Absolute Truth, but people are not
interested. And if, by chance, someone becomes a little interested in
spiritual life, he wants something immediate and cheap. Therefore, he
is cheated. Actually, human life is meant for austerity and penance.
That is the way of Vedic civilization. In Vedic times they would train
boys as brahmacaris: no sex life was allowed at all up to the age of
twenty-five. Where is that education now ? A brahmacari is a student
who lives a life of complete celibacy and obeys the commands of his
guru at the gurukula [school of the spiritual master]. Now schools and
colleges are teaching sex from the very beginning, and twelve- or
thirteen-year-old boys and girls are having sex. How can they have a
spiritual life ? Spiritual life means voluntarily accepting some
austerities for the sake of God realization. That is why we insist on no
illicit sex, meat-eating, gambling, or intoxication for our initiated
students. Without these restrictions, any "yoga meditation" or so-called
spiritual discipline cannot be genuine. It is simply a business deal
between the cheaters and the cheated.
Reporter: Thank you very much.
Srila Prabhupada: Hare Krsna.
