Chanting Hare Krishna is Kali-yuga's divinely prescribed remedy for spiritual realization available to all.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Lecture Engagement and Prasāda Distribution — April 26, 1969, Boston 690426LE-BOSTON [82:26 Minutes] Lecture_690426LE-BOSTON Prabhupāda: This age is called, according to the Vedic language, Kali. Kali-yuga means the age of disagreement and dissension. So in the Vedas it is recommended that kṛte yad dhyāyato viṣṇu [SB 12.3.52]. [Whatever result was obtained in Satya-yuga by meditating on Viṣṇu, in Tretā-yuga by performing sacrifices, and in Dvāpara-yuga by serving the Lord's lotus feet can be obtained in Kali-yuga simply by chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mahā-mantra.] In the Golden Age... Of course, the kṛte, the Sanskrit word, exactly there is no English translation, but generally we have got a conception of Golden Age.
So take it for granted that kṛte, kṛte means in the age when everyone was pure. Cent percent people were pure. That is called Kṛta-yuga. The next yuga is called Tretā, when seventy-five percent of the people, they were pure, and twenty-five percent were not pure.
And then Dvāpara. Dvāpara means fifty percent—fifty percent pure and fifty percent nonpure. Then this age is called Kali-yuga. Kali-yuga means seventy-five percent or more than seventy-five percent, they are impure, and twenty-five percent—I mean to say, that is in books—but actually ninety percent or more than that are impure and maybe five percent pure. This is the situation of this age.
And they are also living very short time. In this age, life, duration of life, is reduced, memory is reduced, man's compassion is also reduced. Similarly, there are so many things, they are reduced. Although we are thinking that we are advancing, but actually the most important thing we are reduced.
Take for example the duration of life. Every one of us knowing very well that as your father or forefather or grandfather lived for long duration of life, it is very difficult to find out a man who is over seventy years or eighty years. I have got experience. My grandmother lived for ninety-five years. So the duration of age is reduced, and people are not very intelligent.
Of course, it is very revolutionary that I am speaking that people are not very intelligent, but actually it is. Why they are not intelligent? Because they do not know what is the destination of life; therefore they are not very intelligent. The Bhāgavata says that destination of life is God-realization.
Na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇu [SB 7.5.31]. God-realization. [Persons who are strongly entrapped by the consciousness of enjoying material life, and who have therefore accepted as their leader or guru a similar blind man attached to external sense objects, cannot understand that the goal of life is to return home, back to Godhead, and engage in the service of Lord Viṣṇu. As blind men guided by another blind man miss the right path and fall into a ditch, materially attached men led by another materially attached man are bound by the ropes of fruitive labor, which are made of very strong cords, and they continue again and again in materialistic life, suffering the threefold miseries.] In this human form of life we can realize what is God. It is not possible in other form of life.