Our Eternal Free Will

One time I went to an esoteric fair, and it’s a true story. Went to an esoteric fair and there was a lot of people displaying all kinds of things. You know how, you’ve been to these fairs probably? And there different people representing different philosophies and so on and had their booths and their… you know, their places of, you know, practice and so on. And there was one big setup, you know, and there were people there, many people occupying the booth.

They were affiliated with this and they were inviting people to sit down in the chair and… It was a kundalini thing. And they were, you know, doing this and that and stimulating a few points and everything and they get a little kundalini rush, you know, little something stirring, and, “Oooo!” you know, and they go, “Wow, man. This guy’s heavy. This is really good stuff.” You know?

So I was watching and I was, you know… After a while I could see there was one guy that was obviously the head guy. So I go up to him and I said, “You know, can I talk to you a minute?” He said, “Sure, sure.” I said, “I got a question,” you know. He said, “Alright, what is it?” I said, “If I adopt this teaching that you are offering and I follow this very precisely, where will it take me?” And he changed the subject. He started talking about something else. And I brought him back. I said, “Yeah, I know, but, you know, if I do this and I reach perfection, what will that perfection be?” And he changed the subject.

And I brought him back again. I said, “Come on, man, just tell me. I’m thinking about doing this. Maybe, I don’t know. What will it do for me? Where will it take me? What will be my final destination?” And he finally looked at me and he says, “You know, I don’t know.” I said, “You don’t know? You’re teaching this? You’re getting all these people to come and you say, ‘You should do this,’ and you don’t even know where you’re going to go?” He said, “Well, it’s better to be on some path than no path.” I said, “I don’t know about that.” (Laughs/Laughter) You know? “I’m not so sure!” You know, I was really, really surprised. They don’t even know what they’re doing. They’re just trying to get some experience, “Oh, it felt good!” Or, “Oh I just was spaced out,” or, “I just went and cruised around in the astral dimension,” or whatever, you know?

Hey man, you’re spirit soul. You need to know what is good for your eternal life. It’s not like you’ve just got a little time left. You’ve got eternity. What are you going to do with it, you see?

So the pure teaching of bhakti yoga, coming down through a perfect line of perfect masters gives us this opportunity to know the truth. Then we can make an educated choice. “Okay, no, I’m not interested in that right now. There’s some… I don’t know if I want to do that. I prefer this,” or, “I…” Okay, fine. Beautiful. Because what? We have an eternal free choice. We have an eternal free will. God has given us an eternal free will and minute independence. And He leaves it up to us. He’s in our heart but He doesn’t make us do anything. It’s other people that try to make us do stuff. God doesn’t. You see? He lets us choose. Why? Because ultimately He wants us to love him and love is a choice. You can’t make somebody love you.

There are people all over this planet trying to make somebody else love them. Can’t do it. You might make them cook for you, wash your clothes, satisfy your sexual desires, you might make them do many things. But you cannot make them love you. They have to choose that. So love is very special. That is why we have an eternal free will, you see? And when we choose, God is right there. “Yes, this is for you.” And He gives us this ability to see this. Vision comes from Him.

So if you’ve heard the philosophy before, if you already are embracing this philosophy that I am God and you are God and we are all God, it is wrong. We are mini-gods. God means dominator. Everybody dominates somebody and in this world the more the better. (Laughs) You see? We’re all little dominators. We’re all little gods, but we are not the Supreme Lord, you see, and we can never become the Supreme Lord. You know.

All these great yogis, so called gurus, “I’m God and you are God but the difference is I know it and you don’t.” No, you don’t know anything, you see? There is only one Supreme Lord, Bhagavan. He has many, many, many names. They all describe Him. And the primary name of all names, the one that describes God in His complete feature is Krishna, the all-attractive. Every amazing feature that the Supreme Person has makes Him that much more attractive and the name that describes the all-attractive nature of Bhagavan is Krishna.

So that is the understanding that I hope you will be interested in, you see? But again, you have the choice. Do your hatha yoga, beautiful, best for the body. Great! No question about that. You see. If you want to do some pranayama to still the mind, whatever. But the mantras given to us by the Supreme Person Himself are the real purifying agent in this age of Kali Yuga, without exception. This is what we are supposed to do in this Kali Yuga to reach this ultimate destination. So that’s what we’re going to do right now. We’re going to have a sankirtan.

Kirtan is the Highest Meditation

I know sankirtan is very popular now in the Western world especially, you know? Sankirtan means congregational chanting. And so we’re going to do that. We’re going to chant these mantras with the accompaniment of some instruments. Guitar and bass guitar and we have a harmonium here, a drum. You see? We have you. Your beautiful voices, you see? So we’re going to combine all that together and chant these names of the Supreme Lord.

So back to our mantra card. We’ve learned Gauranga-Nitai Gaur. There’s also another mantra right below that: Gopala Govinda Rama Madana Mohana. You see? These are also names of the Supreme Person. And on the back we have the one mantra that includes all the other mantras. This is the mahamantra. Maha means great. Mantra means mind deliverer.

This is the greatest mantra of all mantras. If you want one mantra, this is the one. This is the mantra prescribed specifically for this age of chaos, confusion, calamity and suffering aka Kali Yuga that we’re in right now. You see? This is a universal mantra. And then finally we have the mantra Haribol which is a mantra that means chant the holy names, chant the names of God.

So we’re going to use these mantras now in our sankirtan. So there’s a leader, which in this case will be me. I will chant the mantra while you listen, then you chant the mantra while I listen. So it’s back and forth like this. Relax. Let yourself open up. Just let yourself chant. Let it flow through you. Listen to the sound, repeat the sound and you will be engaged in the highest activity of meditation of all meditations, as declared by Krishna Himself. Okay? Alright. Let’s do it.