The following is a class on the Bhagavad Gita as it is.

Chapter number 18, text number 66, given by His Grace Shri Mhansen Karshan Dasathikari, recorded on May 25th, 2014 in Austin, Texas, USA.

Om namo bhagavate vasudevaya om namo bhagavate vasudevaya sarva-dharmam parityajya mam ekam saranam vraja aham tvam sarva-papevyo moksayisyami ma surcah

Translation in purport by Srila Prabhupada.

Abandon all varieties of religion and just surrender unto me.

I should deliver you from all sin for reactions do not fear.

Purport by his divine grace, Srila Prabhupada.

The Lord has described various kinds of knowledge and processes of religion.

Knowledge of the Supreme Brahman, knowledge of the Supersoul, knowledge of the different types of orders and statuses of social life, knowledge of the pronounced order of life, knowledge of non-attachment, sense and mind control, meditation, etc.

Now he is described in so many different, so many ways, different types of religion.

Now in summarizing Bhagavad-Gita, the Lord says that Arjuna should give up all the process that had been explained to him, he should simply surrender to Krishna.

That surrender will save him from all kinds of sinful reactions, for the Lord personally promises to protect him.

In the seventh chapter it was said that only 1 who has become free from all sinful reactions can take to the worship of Lord Krishna.

Thus 1 may think that unless he is free from all sinful reactions, he cannot take to the surrendering process.

To such doubts it is here said that even if 1 is not free from all sinful reactions, simply by the process of surrendering to Sri Krishna he is automatically freed.

There is no need of strenuous effort to free oneself from sinful reactions.

1 should unhesitatingly accept Krishna as the supreme saviour of all living entities with faith and love.

The process of surrendering to Krishna is described in the Hari Bhakti Vyasa 11.6.76.

Anukulyasya samkalpa pati-kulyasya varjanam rakshasya titi visvaso gol-tripteve varanam tatha atmanikshepta karpanye sad-vidhah saranagati According to the devotional process, 1 should simply accept such religious principles that will lead ultimately to the devotional service of the Lord.

1 may perform a particular occupational duty According to his position in the social order, but if by executing his duty 1 does not come to the point of Krishna consciousness, all his activities are in vain.

Anything that does not lead to the perfectional stage of Krishna consciousness should be avoided.

1 should be content or confident rather that in all circumstances Krishna will protect him from all difficulties.

There is no need of thinking how should 1 keep the body and soul together.

1 should always think himself helpless and should consider Krishna the only basis for his progress in life.

As soon as 1 seriously engages himself in devotional service of the Lord in full Krishna consciousness and once he becomes freed from all contamination of material nature.

There are different processes of religion and purificatory processes by cultivation of knowledge, meditation in the mystic yoga system, et cetera.

But 1 who surrenders unto Krishna does not have to execute so many methods.

That simple surrender unto Krishna will save him from unnecessarily wasting time.

1 can thus make all progress at once and be freed from all sinful reactions.

1 should be attracted by the beautiful vision of Krishna.

His name Krishna, His name is Krishna because He is all attractive.

1 who becomes attracted by the beautiful, all-powerful, omnipotent vision of Krishna is fortunate.

There are different kinds of transcendentalists.

Some of them are attached to the impersonal Brahman vision, some of them are attached to the Supersoul feature, etc.

But 1 who is attracted to the personal feature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and above all, 1 who is attracted by the Supreme Personality of Godhead as Krishna Himself is the most perfect transcendentalist.

In other words, devotional service of Krishna in full consciousness is the most confidential part of knowledge and this is the essence of the whole Bhagavad Gita.

Karma yogis, empiric philosophers, mystics, and devotees are all called transcendentalists, but 1 who is a pure devotee is the best of all.

The particular words used here are ma su ca.

Don't fear, don't hesitate, don't worry are very significant.

1 may be perplexed as to how 1 can give up all kinds of religious form and simply surrender to Krishna, but such worry is useless.

Sri Guru Vaishnavamsa Sri Rupam Sagrajatam Sahagana Raghana Tanvitam Tam Sajivam Sadaitam Savadutam Vadijana Sahitam Krishna Chaitanya Devam Sadaitam savadhootam vadhijana-sahitam krsna-caitanya-devam Sri Radha-Krishna padam sahaganalalita-sivisakam vittam shravam Krishna padaṁsahaganālali taśīviṣa gaṇavidāṁś ca namā om viṣṇu padāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭāya bhūtale śrīmatai bhaktivedanta svāmṛti nāmine kṛṣṇa-presthāya bhūtale śrīmate bhaktivedanta svāmṛtīnāmine namaste sarasvate deve gauravāni pracārine nirviśeṣu śūnyavādi paścātya diśatārvine gauravani pracarine nirvise su-sunyavadi pascadya-disatarine

But if you want 1 verse that you can understand and become perfect in Vedic knowledge if you can simply understand this 1 verse you become a perfect transcendentalist.

So then let us try to understand deeply what Krishna is saying here.

We have the purport or commentary of Srila Prabhupada, the greatest acarya.

Krishna is specifically referring to all the previous methods of elevating the consciousness described in the Bhagavad-Gita.

He's specifically referring to these other systems.

And it also applies to any kind all religion that is materially motivated, this Bhagavad Purāṇa propounds the highest truth which is reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all such truth up roots of threefold miseries so abandoning all varieties of religion not only applies specifically to the types of consciousness elevation mentioned earlier in the pages of the Gita, it also applies to any type of materially motivated religion.

That's also rejected According to Bhagavata philosophy.

I mean I prayed to God for a new car and I got it.

I mean I like my new car, my Mercedes, I really like it.

Why should I, why can't I keep doing like that?

Well, your Mercedes-Benz will save you the time of death, you see.

You may be riding very comfortably in your Mercedes-Benz down Metric Boulevard at the time of death.

If you're not connected with God you become an animal in your next life.

So what's the advantage of praying for material things?

Actually all our material things will come to us anyway according to our karma.

If you've done pious activities in the past you will receive wealth, fame, power, all these things will come.

According to past pious activities, if you were sinful in the past, you'll get disease, you'll get laid off from your job, or so many things, so many anxieties and hassles, due to past sinful activities.

So those things are going to come anyway.

No matter what you do, no matter what you pray for, you're still going to get your karma.

So what is praying that actually meant for?

What is God consciousness or religion actually meant for?

It's meant to get you out of karma chakra altogether.

I will describe to you 2 institutions of the state of Texas.

We have the University of Texas here in Austin, a big 1 of the major universities in the whole country.

Actually the largest university in the whole United States is right here in Austin.

And over in Huntsville, we have another institution called the State Penitentiary, where we have the highest number of executions in the United States.

So we have 2 award-winning or top institutions, the largest student body and the most executions in the United States.

They're both state institutions, so which ones would you rather attend?

Would you rather attend the University of Texas or the Huntsville State Prison?

They're both governed by the state of Texas.

So you have your choice, how would I like to be related with the state of Texas?

So in the same way, you see, God has his spiritual energy and his material energy.

Even if you say there is no God, still you're related with God.

1 of our students, he visited his relatives in Delhi and they said that God's just a hallucination.

The soul is a hallucination and God's a hallucination.

I said well ask them how do you know you're not a hallucination?

You say God's a hallucination, the soul's a… Well, what if I say that you're actually a hallucination?

Can you prove that you're actually tangibly existent?

So it's easy to say that God's a hallucination, but the reality is, if you look at it, what does God actually mean?

The word is thrown around a lot nowadays.

What is it actually, What are we talking about?

God means the origin of all, the fountainhead of all energies.

The source from which everything is coming.

So the atheistic philosophy is, as espoused by Dr.

Stephen Hawking, He's the champion of atheism right now on the planet.

Now science has realized that everything comes out of absolutely nothing.

But where's the scientific experiment Dr.

Take anything, get me anything out of nothing Dr.

Can you produce a blade of glass out of nothing or a glass out of nothing?

But he can't even produce 1 thing out of nothing, because everything comes from something.

So if someone says God's a hallucination you could say well if God's a hallucination then existence is itself is a hallucination.

See the Buddhists say that it's all a hallucination and actually There's no 1 even there's not even even there who's doing the hallucinating There's no hallucination.

If I don't exist, how can I think that everything is a void?

According to Buddhism, you see, you don't even exist.

I was formerly a follower of that philosophy.

I had a song that I sang 1 time called, the hippies loved it, the song called, I'm So Unreal.

Hey, I'm so unreal, I don't really exist at all.

There's no actual, that was my former days before I got to sell the light.

Now I have to come to grips with my existence and how I can make it perfect.

But I was going on, I was so miserable in the material world, I said, well I can block out the misery by just saying I don't exist.

It's just like you're a rabbit, and the fox is coming to eat you.

Well that's what I was doing, I was denying it.

It's all nothing, it's all void, it's all 1.

The al-Qaeda is not coming to chop my head off right now, but when they come with their knife and they cut off your head, then your head is cut off.

Jain Hare Krishna, well, they're cutting your head off and get out of this material world.

So the point is that we have to understand there is a substance.

The existence is substantial, it's not void.

There's an actual substance And that substance is God.

That original substance from everything is coming out, that is God.

To analyze things scientifically means we have to see there is a source for existence.

And the Sanskrit actually, the Sanskrit grains in Sanskrit, it tells us about that origin.

So what is the advantage then of worshipping that original person as the source of all existence?

Just like when I was in high school I was in the Westbury High School Orchestra, I played the violin.

And then, I played good enough, they put me in the All-City Orchestra also.

So I played in 2 orchestras, the Westbury High School Orchestra and also the Houston All-City Orchestra.

And so what we did each time we played, the first violin player you see, he actually had a Stradivarius.

His father was the head conductor of the city of Houston.

He had a Stradivarius, which is a really top-class violin, but he would play his Stradivarius violin a certain note and we would all tune to his violin.

Every instrument in the whole orchestra would tune to his Stradivarius violin.

And that way we were all in tune with each other.

And when the conductor would, then we would follow the conductor and then he and I would make some nice sound, you see, some traditional classical music and it was actually sounding pretty good, you see, because we were all in tune with each other.

We were tuned to that original, to that middle C, and he tuned his violin to a tuning fork, you see, standard tuning fork.

So in the same way, you see, life is a big symphony orchestra.

And you can be in tune, and it's beautiful.

So if you're ever feeling down and out, if you're ever feeling miserable, just depressed, greedy, lusty, or any kind of material contamination, you simply have to understand you're out of tune.

And all you have to do to taste the bliss, to be back in harmony with God, with Krishna, with Govinda, is get yourself back in tune.

There's different tuning methods described here in the Bhagavad Gita.

But Krishna says actually give up all these give up all these other tuning methods and just surrender.

The other tuning methods take a long time.

This is described in the Brahma Samhita chapter 5 text number 34.

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, only the tip of the toe of whose lotus feet is approached by the yogis who aspire after the transcendental and betake themselves to pranayama by drilling the respiration or by the jnanis who try to find out the non-differentiated Brahman by the process of elimination of the mundane extending over thousands of millions of years.

You see the yogis, the ashtanga yogis, but it takes thousands and millions of years of doing the pranayama for millions, for many, many lifetimes.

They actually slow down their breathing and they live for even 3 or 300 years sometimes.

There are yogis there are many centuries old who come down from Kumbh Mela from the Himalayas.

They're back from the days of British rule or even maybe even Mughal rule, Indian.

They go way back and they come down from Kumbh Mela but still they're not liberated yet.

They'll have to come back again many, many times as a yogi to achieve perfection.

Thousands and millions of years for that yoga system.

Only they approach the tip of the toe of the Lord.

Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Dakula explains what that means.

The precincts, In other words, they're out in the suburbs.

He explains, they're the precincts of the Lord's lotus feet.

They don't actually even touch Krishna's feet.

They're just in the neighborhood, but they're not quite there yet.

Like here you can be in the Austin city limits, or outside the Austin city limits.

Well, they're outside of the city limits, the jnanis and the yogis.

So therefore, that's why Krishna says that even though these other processes work, they're very slow, they take many lifetimes and there's many dangers along the way, just finish it up right now and surrender to Me.

And immediately you can achieve perfection, right now.

I will now deliver you from all your sinful reactions.

Now each 1 of us has our own stock of sinful reactions.

I did some dirty things in the past, you did some nasty things in the past.

We did some impious things and we suffered because of that.

But when you surrender to Krishna, mokshayasami ma suchah.

It's like you had a horrible criminal record but the governor said, hey, I take it, now you have a clean record, no criminal record, I just take it all away.

I wipe, now you have a clean criminal record.

You did meritorious work, criminal record is finished.

Now you're free, you're scot-free of all your karma.

no matter what abominable activities we have done.

Even just like we sing in our Tulsi prayers, yāni kāṇī ca pāpāni brahma hatād takāni ca Even if I kill a Brahmin, even if I murdered a Brahmin, I can become free of that sinful reaction.

So it doesn't matter what we may have done, just surrender to Krishna and it's lifted off of you.

All that huge burden is lifted off and now you can just chant and dance in ecstasy.

Taste vishadham, sing and dance, relish the bliss of Krishna consciousness.

Be happy, make others happy, live a wonderful life as a liberated soul.

Iha yaśo harer dāśayi karmanā manasā agira.

Nikala-svaptya-vastaso jīvan mukta-sau ucyate.

1 who engages fully his mind, body and words, karma-na manasa-gira, his body, mind and words in the service of the Lord, he becomes a liberated soul even in all conditions of material existence.

Even if you have to go to work on Monday morning, you can be a liberated soul.

You don't have to be a yogi in the Himalayas or somebody sitting on the beach chanting Aum on the mountaintop watching the sun come up.

You can even go to work, you can even go to the office on Monday morning, be a liberated soul at work.

Can you imagine going to work on Monday morning at IBM Corporation as a liberated soul, not touched by the modes of material nature?

This process is very powerful, this process is very effective, this process is very, very potent and it actually does the job.

1 simply has to hear from the spiritual master, hear from the Vaishnavas, hear from the scriptures, and with full faith.

Yasyadve parabhaktir tatha dve tatha guru tasyaityakyatah yatha prakashanti mahadmanah only unto those who have unflinching faith in the words of Guru and Krishna are all the imports of Vedic knowledge revealed." So simply you don't have to be a big big scholar, you don't have to, it's like you know I'm not a big big scholar.

I took a semester of it but it was pretty bewildering.

I can recite a few shlokas with a Texas accent.

But yet, because I have faith, I have complete faith in the words of Krishna, in the words of my spiritual master, His Divine Grace A.C.

Therefore I have a very clear vision of what is the Vedic wisdom, What is the essence of Vedic wisdom?

How the Vedic wisdom can actually solve every problem of every man, woman and child on this planet individually and collectively?

My spiritual master has blessed me with that vision.

It doesn't matter where you're going to put it.

Don't you have faith when you get on an elevator and the cable is not going to snap?

Or have faith when you get in your car that somebody didn't plant a bomb in the ignition and you're going to blow yourself up and you turn the key?

Well, I was in the garage, I didn't hear anybody fiddling with my car last night.

You have to have a lot of faith to get out on I-35.

I mean, people are killed every day on these.

This year so far, 1130 people have died on Texas highways.

When you come north, an I-35, a little sign that tells you how many have died so far, what's the latest body count from the Texas highways, you see.

1000, so you take your life in your hands.

Sometimes they say the highway is for gamblers.

You take your life on your hands every time you get out on I-35.

But I have faith that well, Krishna can take me whenever he wants.

See there's a very nice verse in this connection, māre kṛṣṇa rāke ke, rāke kṛṣṇa māre ke.

If Krishna wants to kill you, nobody can protect you, and if Krishna wants to protect you, nobody can kill you.

So I have faith that I can just go about my regular duties, whether it's earning my livelihood or preaching, whatever it may be.

I can go about my regular activities without being in a state of fear.

Because when Krishna wants me to go, hey, fine.

If he wants me to stay, fine, but it's his choice.

I have complete faith that Krishna loves me.

He knows, he has complete control of everything that's happening around me.

If he wants me to die right now, I'm ready.

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