Prabhupāda doesn’t go, ‘Oh, a bunch of dirty hippies, what can we do?’ No, he sees that they have caught this aspect of Kṛṣṇa consciousness, therefore then he cultivates. That is why he could do it and his Godbrothers couldn’t.

Without faith you cannot move forward. But because we are coming from a faithless background, therefore breaking of faith is normal. Dogs bark and mundaners break faith.

There are so many ślokas that prove that Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So what is so hidden in the Veda?

That association is good for hearing and chanting or just rendering service. But when we go into that association dragging behind us this very large bag of all of our material baggage, that’s where the tiring comes.

The Lord, Gaurasundara, puts His devotees in various difficulties and associations to test their patience and strength of mind. Success depends upon their good fortune.

If we are following the order of the Spiritual Master very strictly, then that is our dharma. So one is following dharma, but now the material dharma becomes replaced with the instruction of the Spiritual Master.

Unless there is faith in Guru and Vaiṣṇavas, it can’t function. Because fault is easy to find. Anyone can find fault in the moon, but no poet does that. Means, if someone sits around and criticizes the Moon, what cultured person will take that person seriously?

Until you can go beyond justice, you can’t get out of the material world. Because justice means profit and loss, gain and and safety, that’s what justice is for. Justice is to maintain the principle of gain and safety. But it’s not spiritual, unless it is connected to Kṛṣṇa.

Prahlāda knows, ‘He will protect me, no matter what. Even if He doesn’t protect me, what does it matter? I will go back to Him, I will always be with Him.’

The neophyte thinks self-centered, because they feel themselves are important. Therefore the Guru’s importance is there because the Guru is connected to me. So the neophytes tend to fight over the importance of who is serving their Guru. Because I am serving my Guru, the whole world stops and everybody should understand that.

When all five – cows, brāhmanas, women, children and old people – are taken together as important, that is called human. If you just take one of them and make an issue out of that, that is a mundane social-political position, that’s all.

Video lecture series on the Mahābhārata by Bhaktivedānta Academy Courses