Often devotees ask me about how to better maintain their health. Actually, I became quite sick a few years ago when I was doing traveling sankirtana. Just like many, I had pains, weakness, brain fog, and other symptoms that would come and go without a definitive solution for an extended period of time. In my case, I was like that for years.

At that time I came to understand the shortcomings of Ayurveda, homeopathy, and other natural forms of medicine. I’m sure that many will disagree, and they are free to do that. I’m not a doctor, so here I’m just sharing what I discovered along the way, everyone is free to agree or disagree, make their choices, and reap the fruits.

So, going to the polemic part, my conviction after years of attempts is that both Ayurveda and homeopathy don’t really work most of the time. Homeopathy is more or less like a placebo, based on giving very diluted forms of active principles that don’t have much therapeutic use. It’s hard to just sit and tolerate when we have some health problem, therefore homeopathy can help by giving some mental relief with the idea that one is getting some kind of treatment. As many studies show, a placebo can indeed help, often patients who receive a placebo indeed become healthy much faster (the mind is a powerful thing), but one should not expect that it will solve any serious health issue. People can believe in what they want to believe, but over time I came to understand that often it’s not just about faith.

Everything that exists in this material world was created at a certain date and everything will be destroyed at a certain date. Everything is temporary. This happens because we are under the influence of the material time.

In SB 3.26.15, time is counted as one of the material elements, just as earth, water, fire, etc. Time is described as a “mixing element” or as an “agitating element” because it puts the universe in motion, activating the innumerable transformations that lead to the creation and destruction of everything that exists inside the universe, including the universe itself. Because of the influence of time, everything that is material has a beginning and an end.

This is further corroborated in SB 7.1.11, where it’s described: “King, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the controller of the material and spiritual energies, who is certainly the creator of the entire cosmos, creates the time factor to allow the material energy and the living entity to act within the limits of time. Thus the Supreme Personality is never under the time factor nor under the material energy.”

The Bhagavad-Gita explains we are not the body, but the spirit soul inside the body. As souls, we are eternal in nature, but currently, we are disconnected from this original nature, being placed in a temporary condition that is foreign to us. Inside this temporary nature, we are called “conditioned souls”, because we are forced to accept artificial conditions such as birth and death, temporary relationships, and so on. All of this happens due to the influence of time.

How long are we entrapped here in this material world? The sankrit word is “anadi”. The dictionary meaning of anadi is “beginningless”, but Srila Prabhupada translated it as “from time immemorial”, like we can see for exemple in his purport to CC Madhya 20.117:

In his books, Srila Prabhupada makes clear his opinion about modern societies, defining them as degraded and ultimately uncivilized. The materialistic lifestyle progressively destroys moral values and kills the soul, in the sense that it destroys one’s interest in religious practices.

However, Srila Prabhupada was also pragmatic in utilizing whatever good facilities modern society could provide to facilitate his preaching. He was using planes and cars to move around, using printing presses to publish his books, and so on. At the same time he criticized the democratic system of government but also appreciated the freedom it offers, which allowed him to propagate Krsna Consciousness more or less freely in countries like the United States, which offered environments much more favorable than dictatorial regimes, like in the Soviet Union and China. In this way, he was applying the principle of using what is favorable and rejecting what is unfavorable.

We can argue that despite all the problems we have in modern societies if we had to go back in time, going back to the Middle Ages, the environment would be much more hostile to the propagation of Krsna Consciousness. You can imagine what would happen if a group of Brahmacaris, dressed in dhotis and with sikas would start doing a harinama in a Spanish city during the times of the Inquisition, for example.

Our three immediate prominent acaryas, Srila Prabhupada, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, and Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura share an agreement on the intrinsic nature of the soul as a servant of Krsna. On CC Madhya-līlā 22.106, for example, Srila Prabhupada gives the following translation: “Pure love for Kṛṣṇa is eternally established in the hearts of the living entities. It is not something to be gained from another source. When the heart is purified by hearing and chanting, this love naturally awakens.”
Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura named his main work “Jaiva Dharma”, which can be translated as The Eternal Nature of the Soul, again emphasizing the intrinsic nature of the soul as a servant of Krsna. When all material contaminations are peeled off, this natural love for Krsna automatically manifests.

However, we may have real trouble connecting our current consciousness with this perfect intrinsic consciousness. If my intrinsic inclination is to serve Krsna, how can my current consciousness be so far from it?

In the past, I wrote a few articles about living in Mayapur. Today I wanted to speak a little about the disadvantages of doing so. Yes, as in other choices, there are some positives and also some negatives.

When we live in a materialistic city like New York or Moscow, it’s quite easy to understand the difference between material and spiritual. Going to different programs in the temple, chanting our japa, studying the scriptures, and other devotional activities can be considered spiritual, while most of the other things around us are just understood as part of the material world. In a sense, this division is not bad, since it can help us to focus on the spiritual things, seeing them as a shelter against all the materialistic craziness we have around us. Such a situation forces us to clearly see the difference between material and spiritual and this clear difference can work as a catalyst that makes us more interested in spiritual life. There are of course many disadvantages to this lifestyle, but on the other hand, we can see that there is this small advantage.

When we go to live in a holy place like Vrindavana and Mayapur, however, this difference between material and spiritual is not so clear. Most of the people we deal with on a daily basis are devotees, people who worship Krsna, wear kunti-mala, use tilaka, etc. The problem is that, just like in the big city, not all of these people act in very exemplary ways. Unsurprisingly, the three material modes are still working, despite the tilaka and the kunti-mala, leading to all kinds of far-from-ideal symptoms. I found it’s still much better than in other places, but if one is operating under the assumption that all devotees are saints, this may be a rude awakening. These are the types of things one will not notice much in a short visit but become more noticeable when one stays longer.

There are several mistaken concepts in the modern concept of family life, and of course, many of these ideas also affect devotees, since like it or not we are coming from general society and still share a lot of values and beliefs with it.

The first mistake is to assume that happiness in family life is related to sex. People get into family life in search of happiness, and sex may be considered part of it, but one may be surprised at how little pleasure there really is in sex life. Sex life is used by material nature as a type of carrot hanging in front of our heads. Since the carrot is fixed, and is moving alongside us, we never reach it. We thus work based on expectations that are never fully realized.

The reality is that happiness in family life is not very much connected with sex life (which actually causes more problems than it solves) but with raising children, which allows one to fulfill the need for strong bonds and relationships most of us have. The idea that children should be avoided actually contributes to making people unhappy and serves as an obstacle for them developing their true potential in spiritual life. Odd as it may seem, family life is a great school where we can learn a lot about what Krsna explains in the Bhagavad-Gita. Some already graduated from this school in previous lives and are now ready to progress to renounced life, but most of us can learn a lot from it, and one of the lessons is how to put sex life into the right context.

Basing relationships into sex life creates other problems, such as infidelity, since once a person realizes that the illusory sexual satisfaction he or she is looking for is not available in the marriage, he or she will start looking around for other partners, leading to the cycle of divorces, re-marriages, scandals, and extra-conjugal affairs we became used to.

Some say that Srila Prabhupada taught just the ABCD in his books, but that’s not what I find when I read them. Instead, what I find is a very ingenious presentation of a philosophy that is extraordinarily complex, but that Srila Prabhupada is able to express in relatively simple words, without however shying away from all the esoteric details.

This sentence I just wrote may sound like a contradiction. How can someone write in a simple way, but at the same time convey all the details? Normally these two ideas are exclusive. Or we explain something in a simple way, omitting details, or we explain all the details, but risk making the presentation incomprehensible. Indeed, this is generally true for ordinary authors, but sometimes a great genius is capable of offering explanations that are simple, but at the same time contain a surprising volume of detail, that can be progressively understood as one’s comprehension of the subject increases.

During our youth, we are usually strongly influenced by the mode of passion. We want to change the world, fight injustice, make society better, or simply change things to our liking. Youths are a transforming force in any society, which can lead to positive or negative changes, depending on how it’s directed.

When Prabhupada came to the West, the youth was very much dissatisfied with the materialistic culture of their parents, which led to the counterculture and the hippie movement. Srila Prabhupada expertly directed this transforming force and used it to create the Krsna Conscious movement, which brought some very positive changes to society. Suddenly, instead of just breaking social norms and looking for an escape through intoxication, young people started to reform themselves and enthusiastically transform society by broadcasting Krsna Consciousness through book distribution and other means. In this example, we can see how the same force when properly directed can lead to a completely different result.

This same tendency can be noticed today but in the other direction. The younger generation in our movement has the same transforming force, they are dissatisfied with the status quo and want change. However, in many cases, this energy is not being properly used. As a result, some go outside, and just join the materialistic society, while others become a destructive force inside our movement, trying to destroy what is in place without having a clear idea of what to build instead.