This course is part of Sastra-Caksus, Year 1 and consists of 91 lectures, available on:

http://seminary.bhaktivedantaacademy.com/classes/bhagavad-gita-seriatim/

Given in Bhaktivedanta Academy, Sridham Mayapur, September 2010-April 2011

The following are lecture notes briefly delineating its contents.

• Living entity wants to enjoy and thinks himself the controller, therefore if something is not going well, they have the tendency to blame the Lord.
• We only receive things according to our desires and to what we deserve.

• 5 factors of action: there are 3 doers - the soul, material nature and the Supersoul. The soul's doing is his desire, because it starts a chain of events.
• Acting piously does not necessarily mean that our consciousness has changed.
• The idea of pious activities is that one might come in contact with devotees and develop spiritual understanding.
• Atheistic Sankhya separate consciousness (pertaining to the soul) from activities (pertaining to material nature). Actually, cit potency means consciousness, knowledge and activity. They consider that jiva has nothing to do with what happens here.
• But jiva is doer in a certain sense, because otherwise scriptural injunctions would have no meaning. We desire, Lord sanctions, modes of nature carry it out. By changing desire, we change the results of our activities.
• Persons with material desires maintain the material world, for those who have no material desires, there is no material world.
• Having full knowledge is important to act, by acting one will advance in REAL knowledge, namely, our relationship with the Lord.
• Jiva on its own can hold very limited happiness, but surrendering to the Lord, he connects to the unlimited happiness of the Lord
• 41:00 The living entity is a subordinate controller. The real meaning of this is that they control Krishna through their affection.
• Only by surrendering to the Supersoul, one can see all living beings the way Supersoul does - with equal vision that everything is connected to the Lord and meant for His service. All living beings, all things, all situations can be engaged in the Lord's service.
• By seeing how pleasure is gained on the spiritual platform, one can give up inclination to gain it on material platform, because the soul's drive always is to be happy
• Prabhupada seeing Krishna everywhere, like in pigeons.
• 60:00 Moksha is neutral platform of liberation, brahma-bhuta is positive as the platform of liberation where one is moving towards love for the Lord.
• On the neophyte platform it may be that our activities in devotional service is fixed, but our consciousness is not, but we are trying for the level where proper activities, knowledge and consciousness go together.
• 64:00 We are focused on present, on abhideya, and we know whether abhideya is correct by seeing whether it's moving towards the goal, prayojana
• When we become older, senses do not become automatically controlled, because they are driven by mind, and mind does not go away, although the senses become weak. Therefore we must make endeavor, by changing desire, to control senses.
• Progression of activities: impious activity - pious indirect activity - pious indirect activity connected to Krishna - direct devotional activity
• 78:00 to 86:00 ENGAGING VIDEO GAMES IN KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS
• Dualities come from doubts, but when we see everything in connection to Krishna, we see different aspects of the same thing, not different things. Only in this state we are able to act for the welfare of all living beings by engaging them in Krishna's service.
• Krishna consciousness is very simple, but it has to be constant, only then it will be progressive. It's not something that we do once and it's finished.
• Even while doing things for Krishna we should not think ourselves the doer, otherwise we may become frustrated when it doesn't go right.
• Very end: Self realized - one knows one is the soul, Self-disciplined - therefore one keeps oneself properly engaged as a soul, and he is constantly endeavoring for perfection - always works towards achieving that position of liberation, therefore he will achieve it soon.