Hearing from a self-realized soul about God, coupled with renouncing sin, awakens love for Krishna.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Initiation Lecture — February 22, 1975, Caracas 750222IN-CARACAS [24:15 Minutes] Initiations_750222IN-CARACAS [translated throughout by Hṛdayānanda]
Prabhupāda: Ladies and gentlemen, devotees, and boys and girls. So it is great opportunity to see the beginning of initiation of how to begin the understanding of God. This is called initiation. This evening we were discussing with some learned psychiatrist to solve the problems of the world.
So we have tried to convince them that the problems of the world are due to ignorance of our spiritual life. So this body... Indriyāṇi parāṇy āhuḥ. This body means combination of different senses.
This body means we have got hands, legs, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, genital, rectum. All these different parts of the bodies are working. So these senses are working under the leadership of the mind, and the mind is activated by intelligence, and behind the intelligence there is soul. That is stated in the Śrīmad Bhagavad-gītā: indriyāṇi parāṇy āhuḥ indriyebhyaḥ paro manaḥ manasas tu paro buddhiḥ buddhes tu ya paraṁ saḥ [Bg. 3.42] So we have to take information from authoritative scriptures.
So the body is made of five material elements: earth, water, air, fire and ether. So mind is still finer than the ether, and intelligence is still finer than the mind, and the soul is still finer than the intelligence. So generally, we are on the bodily platform. They are called karmīs.
Bodily platform means that everyone is working for the bodily comfort. Bodily comforts means how to eat nicely, how to sleep nicely, how to have sex nicely and how to defend nicely. So these activities are there also in the animal life. Then, above these activities, there is mental activities.
So the bodily activities are visible in the animal kingdom also, but mental activities, they are lacking. So the human being can tackle the mental activities, which is called psychology, the science of thinking, feeling and willing. So when still we go further, intellectual platform, how the mind should be utilized? So if we can intellectually utilize the mind, then we can approach the spiritual platform. So this spiritual platform, to reach, requires gradually process of cultivation, and there is no difficulty to reach the spiritual platform.