In the material existence we find so many species of life—animals, insects, men, and so on. All are arranged by the superior power. They are not accidental.

- Srila Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita As It Is 16.19 purport

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HG Ishvara Prabhu SB 10.58.1-4 Iskcon London

May Vrindavana, filled with a host of pure spiritual virtues, and glorified by the greatest sages and philosophers, with her wonderful power and mercy transform sinful animals like me into servants of her feet.

Source : Nectarean Glories of Sri Vrindavana-dhama by Srila Prabodhananda Sarasvati Thakura, 1-44 Translation] 

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(Kadamba Kanana Swami, June 2011, Stockholm, Sweden, Lecture)

I think that the only thing that can really bond us together is friendship. Just common acceptance of Krsna as the Supreme Lord will bring us together from time to time – we will come together at the temple and festivals – but friendship will take us so much further. Because it is in friendship, real friendship, that we are going to stimulate each other so much more than by just being colleagues!

I have often given this example of how we can be together like colleagues. We are all devotees of Krsna and we are all colleagues. We are all devotees in the same temple, we are all colleagues. We are all chanting Hare Krsna, we are all colleagues. We are all dancing in the kirtan party as colleagues. But when there is no friendship, it is not enough.

If there is friendship, then friendship is different. Friendship is like a family spirit. When your colleague is not performing well, it disturbs your work, and you say, “Get it together! You know, they’ll throw you out of here one of these days if you don’t get it together.”

That is what you say to a colleague but to a family member, you say, “When in the world are you ever going to get it together? But we can’t throw you out because you’re part of the family.”

That is different. That is friendship and in that friendship there is trust. We know we are going to be accepted. We don’t have to have a masquerade where everyone acts out to be a pure devotee in a Hare Krsna community. We can just be more honest. If there is friendship, we can just be who we are and still be accepted. In that way, we can get some real human support which is what we need!

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Oh, for the love of stuff!

Ok folks, the time may be coming. This world may be a bit kookie; some of the methods we use for communication, and even a few of the “normal” societal values we raise arms over may not be the most progressive.

One quick question we should ask ourselves is: “Do I posses things or do they posses me?” You know, the type of question we encourage our kids to shut up about. But hey, why not raise the question? Do our so-called “modern problems” actually differentiate in quality from other problems throughout history? What solutions are on the modern factory workbench to meet with the imbalances of the soul? The next iPad? Unlocking the holy grail of smart phone apps? The next, next myspace? It seems that rather than continuing to find solutions through different arrangements of matter, no matter how glossy-sweet they may be, it may be wiser to seek a more holistic approach.

We don’t need a modern, complicated lifestyle to bring us satisfaction. Lasting happiness will not be found by our rush to touch, taste, or smell any one of the colorful varieties of sensations effectively calibrated to distract us. Neither is lasting happiness found by running away from the world. We have to act in this world, but the key is to act in a way that is congruous to our true identity as spirit, and not matter – two categorically different phenomena that we oftentimes fail to accurately discriminate.

Descending into the city from a mountain. Nature is characterized by goodness. Cities tend to shelter good doses of restlessness and ignorance. Path to ignorance, like the ignorance itself, is crooked and difficult to navigate. Those who are used to ignorance have become attached to the very source of their own pain.

The Perverted Desire to be Omnipotent

Since time immemorial, there has been espionage and surveillance. Spies, in various forms and nuances, have always been used to gather information on undiscerning specimen(s). Now, with the advancement of technology, spying has shifted from the traditional/iconic Mr. John Smith persona, who acted like your ally but was in cahoots with the enemy, to impersonal machines hacking information via wireless networks by people in isolated rooms anywhere in the world for motives both benign and malevolent. In modern day espionage, there is the growing notion of having mass surveillance of people for the purpose of controlling and gathering intelligence; indeed, a future reminiscent of Orwell’s prophetic 1984.

One example of modern surveillance in its nascent form is the Panopticon. In 1791, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and abolitionist, designed and published his ideas for surveillance in prisons through a structure he dubbed the ‘Panopticon’. The Panopticon is an architectural design in which a circular structure encircles a single observer tower at the center. Within the circular structure are the prison cells, which are shielded so that the inmates cannot see the observer tower, but the observer within the tower can see into every cell in the prison; hence, the prisoners are unable to know if they are being watched while the observer can very easily monitor all of the prisoners. Bentham’s innovative idea of how to observe a mass group of people, both individually and collectively, is touted for being the catalyst for the modern surveillance systems of tomorrow.

However, what was originally intended to be in prisons only has escaped its shackles to include society in general. With the invention of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in the 1940’s, Bentham’s idea reached its potential. Now cameras could be placed anywhere; people could be very easily monitored and, with the advent of more sophisticated computer systems later on, very easily identified. It is now a curious phenomenon just how much we are being spied on every day – at intersections, stores, public squares, via cell phones, internet, texting, e-mail, and wherever else we don’t know….

Especially under the safety blanket of war on terrorism and scare tactics, governments have tried to broaden their control on the population through mass surveillance. The National Security Agency (NSA) was exposed earlier this year for their mass surveillance of US citizens. They are collecting various categories of metadata from phone calls and deciphering it using information mining filters to collect intelligence that is deemed noteworthy.

Meanwhile, technologists, at the behest of governments worldwide, are hard at work advancing the processing speed by which faces can be identified. Governments and military are using the same filtering system they use to recognize voice and text, but now are integrating it with Facebook’s technology of identifying and tagging people in pictures, which they can then apply to live video surveillance. There are already databases of biometrically analyzed pictures that people post of themselves and others on Facebook.

Mass surveillance, although unscrupulously deemed by some as necessary for safety, has a great possibility for abuse. How far should surveillance go and personal freedoms forfeited, before one starts to feel like a prisoner in the Panopticon?

The Bhagavad-gita teaches that only Krishna, or God, can be the true observer of all living entities. His presence is completely benevolent, without any tinge of mundane self-interest or corruption.

In the commentary to Bhagavad-gita 5.15 it says:

“The Lord is the constant companion of the living entity as Paramatma, or the Supersoul, and therefore He can understand the desires of the individual soul, as one can smell the flavor of a flower by being near it. Desire is a subtle form of conditioning for the living entity. The Lord fulfills his desire as he deserves: Man proposes and God disposes. The individual is not, therefore, omnipotent in fulfilling his desires. The Lord, however, can fulfill all desires, and the Lord, being neutral to everyone, does not interfere with the desires of the minute independent living entities.”

When those in power imitate having the powers of God, but failing to have the same benevolence as God, neglect the people’s welfare for their own selfish interests, a scary situation is born. Attempting to imitate the Supreme Being is one of the major diseases of an unhealthy soul, and everyone in their sphere of influence is affected.

“Similarly, the living entity… starts his own business to compete with the Lord. There are many competitors out to attain the Lord’s position, but to become like the Lord is not at all possible. Thus there is a great struggle for existence with the material world as different parties try to imitate the Lord. No one can become one with or equal to God. To imagine this is to continue one’s bondage in material existence.” – Srila Prabhupada