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156 THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
tad-dhdma vrnddvanam: ‘‘Krsna, the son of Nanda Maharaja, in the |
Vrndavana-dhama of Vrajabhimi, is the supreme worshipable Deity,
and His place Vrndavana is also worshipable.’’ The Western boys and |
girls are taking to Krsna consciousness, and they should have a place like |
Vrndavana. Swami Kirtanénanda, who went to Vrndavana with me two |
years ago, knows what Vrndavana is like, so I have instructed him to |
construct at least seven temples. In Vrndavana, there are five thousand |
temples of Radhad-Krsna, but the most important temples are seven, i
established by the Goswamis. Our program is to live in New Vrndavana,
depend on agriculture and cows as an economic solution, and peacefully |
execute Krsna consciousness, chant Hare Krsna—that is the Vrndavana
scheme. Yuktdhdra-vihdrasya...yogo bhavati duhkha-ha |Bhagavad- i
gita 6.17]. This human form of life isn’t meant for increasing artificial |
needs. We should be satisfied just to maintain the body and soul |
together, and the rest of the time we should enhance our Krsna con- |
: sciousness so that after leaving this body we will not have to take another
material body, but will be able to go back home, back to Godhead. That |
should be the motto of human life.
Material life means eating, sleeping, mating, and defending, and |
spiritual life means something more than this. This is also the difference
between animal life and human life. In animal life, the common formula |
is eating, sleeping, mating, and defending. A dog eats, a man also eats. A
man sleeps, and a dog also sleeps. A man has sex life, and the dog also
has sex life. The dog defends in his own way, and man also defends in his
own way, maybe by atomic bombs. These four principles are common to ;
human beings and animals, and advancement of these four principles is
not human civilization but animal civilization. Human civilization means
athato brahma-jijniasd. In the Veddnta-stitra the first aphorism is athdato
brahma-jijndsa: ‘“Now is the time for inquiry about Brahman.”’ That is
human life. As long as one is not spiritually inquisitive, jijfdsuh Sreya ut-
tamam, he is an animal because he lives according to these four princi-
ples, that’s all. He must be inquisitive to know what he is and why he is
put into these miseries of birth, death, old age, and disease. Is there any
remedy? These matters should be questioned. That is human life; that is
spiritual life.
Spiritual life means human life, and material life means animal life.
That’s all. We have to make the adjustments that are recommended in
the Bhagavad-gita. Yuktahdara-vihdrasya. For instance, because I am going
to be a spiritual man does not mean that I shall give up eating. Rather, —
my eating should be adjusted. The Bhagavad-gitda describes what class of
