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Is God Connected with Evil?

• Subject: Is God Connected with Evil?
• From: Brad S
• Date: Tue Mar 05 12:24:31 1996
• Message-Id: id773

Dear Brad



Thanks for writing again. I was not born as Madhudvisa. When we take initiation 

in Krishna consciousness the spiritual master gives us a new name. It signifies 

a new birth, a new beginning. Devotees consider their life before Krishna 

consciousness as their previous life and we don't really have anything to do 

with that any more.



And the philosophy of Krishna consciousness does make sense. That is what 

attracted me to it in the first place. My first contact with the devotees was 

in a vegetarian restaurant here in Australia [I live in Australia -- not the 

US]. In the beginning I didn't take it very seriously. I thought it was some 

cheep American version of the Hindu religion. I had been to India on a student 

exchange program for a few months, and while I was there I asked many people 

about their faith and Krishna. But they didn't seem to know that much. They 

followed the rituals, visited the temple morning and evening, etc. They had 

complete faith in Krishna, but were not able to explain it to me. But when I 

started reading Srila Prabhupada's books he explained everything to me so 

clearly.



Krishna consciousness is not a religion, a sectarian set of beliefs, it is a 

scientific process for reawakening our dormant love of God. That love for God 

is within all our hearts, but it is covered now with heaps and heaps of dirt. 

Some people are more covered than others, so some are Godly and some are 

athiests. What to speak of people, all living entities are spirit souls 

qualitatively equal. Some are more covered than others, that's all. A living 

entity in the body of a tree is very covered indeed. Practically he is 

unconscious. But still life is there, and there is some very low-level 

consciousness also. Some scientists have been able to measure reactions of 

plants to different things...



So we develop or degrade our consciousness in a certain way in this life and 

the consciousness we have at the time of death determines our destination in 

the next life. If we are in animal consciousness we get an animals body next, 

if we are in human consciousness we get another human body, if we are in God 

consciousness, Krishna consciousness, then we don't have to take a material 

body again, instead we can regain our original, eternal, spiritual body and go 

back home, back to Godhead. That is the real purpose of life, that is the only 

worthwhile destination.



We don't belong in this material world, our nature is spiritual, full of 

knowledge, eternal and full of bliss -- but here, in the material world -- it 

is just the opposite, instead of being full of bliss we are full of anxiety, 

instead of being full of knowledge we are full of ignorance and instead of 

being eternally youthful we are in a temporary material body which is getting 

old and dying... It is not natural, we are spiritual, we are the soul, the 

person within, controlling the body:



                         dehino 'smin yatha dehe

                           kaumaram yauvanam jara

                         tatha dehantara-praptir

                          dhiras tatra na muhyati



"As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood

to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death.

A sober person is not bewildered by such a change." (Bhagavad-gita 2.13)



As for the problem with your faith not being as strong as you would like that 

is understandable. We are affected by the people we associate with and as this 

world is becoming more and more atheistic day by day naturally your faith will 

be affected by that if you associate with the materialists. So we like to keep 

a little separate from them. WE associate with them to preach of course, but we 

are not interested in their business, sense gratification, we are interested in 

telling them about Krishna, that's all. So for our faith to be strong we need 

the assocation of other people who's faith is strong. That's why Srila 

Prabhupada started ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. 

To provide a place for devotees to live together and serve Krishna together. 

Unfortunately, since Srila Prabhupada left his body in 1977 there have been so 

many difficulties and now, practically speaking, ISKCON is no longer an 

association of pure devotees trying to serve Krishna. So many businessmen, so 

many demons, etc... pretending to be devotees.



The best advice I can give you is to read Srila Prabhupada's books and chant 

the Hare Krishna maha-mantra. If you do these two thins regularly then your 

faith will become very strong.



Thanks for the letter. Chant Hat Krishna and be happy!



Madhudvisa dasa 

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