Alternative to Gelatin for Vaishnavs

Unfortunately, in the Western world, gelatin is a very prevalent substance in nearly all foods as well as medicines that are released in capsule form.

As most Vaishnavs know, gelatin is made from the bone of animals and thereby being an animal product is forbidden from consumption from both Vaishnavs as well as vegans.

Fortunately, some companies looking for a "vegan friendly" solution to using gelatin in capsules have instead opted to use vegetable cellulose and water as a very viable solution for providing easily digestible capsules.

However, it is up to the vegans and the Vaishnavs of the world to spread this message to all of the consumer manufacturing companies that produce these products using gelatin that we would prefer them to use vegetable cellulose and water so that we may also consume their products.  The retail and manufacturing industry continues to deal in the law of supply and demand.  Therefore, if there is enough protest in the consumer market regarding the prevalent usage of gelatin in the industry, the manufacturers WILL change their manufacturing process to fit the needs of their consumers.  If we look at many large fast food chain outlets such as McDonald's and Pizza Hut, these chains were formerly using lard and other animal byproducts in the production of their food items.  However, with the rise in vegetarians in the United States, these chains have long since switched to more "vegetarian friendly" alternatives such as the use of vegetable oil or other plant-based alternatives where possible.

Therefore, WE can change these practices and thereby change the WORLD.

Understanding the "subconscious"

Western philosophy often refers to the inner personality of a human being as their "subconscious".  This is understood by Western philosophers to mean actions or thoughts taken by a human being that is completely out of their conscious mindset or knowledge.  Some of the things that have been described as occurring completely through means of the subconscious are rather amazing and spectacular.

However, the phenomenon created by the "subconscious" can be explained rather easily through religion especially through religious texts such as the Bhagavad Gita.  In the Bhagavad Gita, every human being is said to be a manifestation of God or an instrument/servant of God.  However, many people have not achieved this self-realization and therefore continue to believe that they are in charge of their own fates/destinies through the power of independent "free will".  While humans still exert some level of free will and independence, ultimately, all outcomes as dictated by God will come to pass.  A person's exertion of his/her free will only serves to delay the inevitable.  Therefore, when a person "unconsciously" or "subconsciously" performs an action, they are actually carrying out the will of God.  They are acting as instruments and servants of God completely unbeknownst to them.  

Therefore, a true religious believer will understand that the phenomenon that is attempted to be explained by Western philosophers and Western culture is simply a manifestation of executing God's will and God's destiny.

The Truth behind Astrology/Horoscopes

As many people know, the study of Astrology is the study of the planets/stars and how they relate to human beings.  This has been done by thousands upon thousands of years by many various cultures including the Indians as well as the Chinese.

Many modern men and women no longer believe in the study of Astrology because they feel that it is too fantastic and illogical that the movement of the stars and planets could actually control and predict the course of our lives.

However, from a religious perspective, the study of astrology makes complete and perfect sense.  As God created the Universe as well as all souls on this planet, our souls and lives are inevitably bound to everything to everything in the Universe.  We are one with God and the Universe.  As God controls the Universe, as does he control our souls and our lives.

However, our souls are only a small fraction/part of God compared to the overall Universe, therefore, by only understanding the Universe can we comprehend the future and course of our lives.  It is a great deception for us to believe that our lives are completely within our control through our free will.  All actions and reactions in this world act according to God.  While we have some free will to complete actions on our own, ultimate even these choices of our free will must eventually be surrendered unto God.  Each action that we commit even through our own free will is still influenced through the grand scheme woven by God.  The actions that we commit through our own free will only delays the inevitable result to be realized by God.  

Therefore, if we look to the study of Astrology as a religious truth due to our unity with the Universe and God, we will recognize how much astrology can predict the course and future of our lives.

Advice for the Modern Man regarding "Sexual Tension"

Most men in the Western World will describe a phenomenon known as "sexual tension".  This essentially involves the sexual feelings that a man might feel towards a woman that is particularly beautiful or attractive woman.  

Why does a man feel this "sexual tension"?  The underlying cause stems from his identification with the characteristics of the beautiful and attractive woman.  Seeing such beauty manifested in the body of another human being puts the man in awe.  He would like to further understand how such immense beauty can be manifested in another human being.  

However, he does not realize that his yearning and desire to further know this immense beauty is nothing other than the desire and yearning to know the beauty of the world that is created by God.  Instead, most men identify this feeling with the desire of the sexuality of the human being and thereby remain bound to the items of the material Earth rather than the spiritual plane.  This desire is subsequently translated into passion or lust and therefore a man feels uncomfortable around spending time alone with a particularly beautiful or attractive woman without being in a relationship.  He feels that he will not be able to repress or control his feelings and will thereby act upon the desires and emotions that he experiences while seeing such a beautiful woman.  The man may even try to subtly release that sexual tension by flirting with the attractive woman through dialog or even possibly lightly touching her.

What men do not understand is that most women will not feel this way around men.  Women are more driven by a desire for love than the primitive emotions of passion and lust.  This is how many beautiful and attractive women can spend time in the company of men without feeling similar feelings.  Women are much more focused on their own internal sense of love and attraction rather than superficial features of beauty.  Many handsome men might be in a room with a very beautiful woman and yet the woman will be able to fend off the advances of all those men while they are focused on the man that is the object of their affection and love.  Women feel this attraction on a much more emotional and spiritual plane than men who typically associate with this feeling on the physical plane.

Therefore, what can the modern man to alleviate this "sexual tension" and continue to remain in the presence of beautiful and attractive women?  First, by understanding that women do not typically experience this "sexual tension", many men can put their minds to rest and at ease.  If the attraction between a man and a woman is mutual, the attraction will ultimately result in some type of communication or even possibly a relationship.  If that attraction is present, the woman will often times go out of her way to send signals of interest and attraction to the man (which are far too numerous to describe here) in order for the man to follow up and initiate a conversation with the woman of interest.  Second, a man can try to better control his feelings of passion through identifying the woman as a sister or a mother rather than an object of sexual desire.  Third, a man can direct those feelings of passion and lust into a desire for understanding, knowing and loving God that created this Universe and all the beauty within it  In this manner, the modern man can ultimately relieve this feeling of repressed passion or lust and instead better leverage his energy towards finding, knowing and loving God that created all human beings on this Earth.

Divine nature of Women

Women have within them an absolutely divine nature.  Their nature is fundamentally divine through their extreme attachment to emotional love.  Whereas men often times can detach themselves from their ability to love, women are creatures of love.  It is an essential part of their emotional makeup and it defines them. 

Men, in relationships, often focus on superficial aspects of a person such as physical appearance.  However, due to a woman's ability to discern and recognize emotional attachment to a person, they are able to more readily go beyond a person's physical appearance to see the inner being of that person.

Women have a great desire to know and experience love and often associate the emotion of love with the necessity of a physical relationship.  Love is an essential and defining component to a physical relationship with a woman.  Without this one essential component, very few women can engage in any type of physical relationship.

In addition, as mothers, women have a great ability to love.  They are able to transfer all of their emotional love towards their children.

This defining characteristic of a woman's desire to love conveys their very divine nature.  A woman's ability to love is a reflection of their unconscious desire to love and know God.  They attempt to find love through every human being they encounter whether that is their husband or their children.  Therefore, with this innate divine attribute, women are better able to understand how to redirect that love towards God since they already know how to direct their emotional love and attachment towards their husband and children.

Men can learn from this characteristic and attribute of women and thereby incorporate this feminine nature into their own personality as part of their quest to achieve true yearning and love for God.     

Eve, the Apple of Temptation and the Bhagavad Gita

With Eve and the Apple of Temptation, once the fruit was tasted, this began man's downfall from God. 

So, how do we, as modern men, interpret this?

 This phenomenon is also described in the Bhagavad Gita:
"The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: It is lust only, Arjuna, which is born of contact with the material mode of passion and later transformed into wrath, and which is the all-devouring sinful enemy of this world."

Therefore, the Apple of Temptation was the passion of lust that brought about man's downfall.  However, God was kind and offered the ability to continue to attain God through that same passion.  

This can be done by turning that passion of lust instead into a yearning and love for God.  This transformation thus becomes a divine quality and attribute rather than a sinful quality.  The lust of passion is by far one of the strongest human emotions that can be experienced.  When this is turned towards God, the human being has a strong desire to learn and know God.  That yearning can subsequently be transformed into a form of ecstasy.  Since the soul, mind and body are one in this state of ecstasy, the feeling resembles that of intense arousal as one may experience during sexual intercourse.

In fact, the mutual attraction that a man and woman feel towards each other in the emotion and passion of lust is simply a misdirected emotional love and yearning for God.  Through the entanglement of Maya, a man and woman's vision is clouded into believing that this emotion is tied to this Earth.  Through this delusion, the passion of lust becomes an act simply to experience pleasure while remaining bound to the material things on this Earth.  Once a human understand the true nature of this emotion and passion, it can be used as a stepping stone to achieve the ecstasy associated with knowing God.

This concept can also be translated and leveraged to apply to a marital relationship.  The husband and wife must look for the divinity within each other and apply that jointly as a yearning towards God.  Once that Godliness is recognized in one's own partner, the sexual experience thus becomes removed from the sinful passion of lust and instead becomes divine.  The sexual experience thus becomes much more enhanced through this mutual understanding and love of God.  By understanding the divinity within each other, each partner can become a servant of the Lord.  This thereby means that each partner in the relationship participates in an effort to make the other partner happy.  Through this mutual love and understanding, both partners can experience intense pleasure since the relationship is no longer about satisfying one's own needs, but rather satisfying the needs of another.  This ultimately makes the entire sexual experience divine and incapable of incurring sin.

Through this knowledge and transformation of lust into a passion towards God, one can come to once again know the divine ecstasy of Heaven while still remaining on this Earth.

Jesus Christ and the Bhagavad Gita

Jesus Christ was also a follower of the principles and tenets of the Bhavagad Gita:

1.  Jesus Christ describes himself as the "Son of God".  All men and women of the world are children of God and therefore have the presence of divinity within them as is described in the Bhagavad Gita.
2. Jesus Christ also occasionally describes himself as God or one with God.  This describes the loss of distinction between the Self and the non-Self.  When you are working in the service of the Lord, one occasionally loses one's own identity and merges with the Supreme Self.  At this point in time, there is no longer any concept of "I".  The devotee and the Lord are one and act as one.
3. Jesus Christ often recognized that he was not God and simply stated that he was the servant of the Lord.  This means that Jesus Christ was not an Avatar of God in the Vedantic sense as Rama and Krishna were.  The Lord taking the form of man in the Vedantic sense retains all of his perfections and omniscience, thereby remaining the Supreme Personality of Godhead.  However, an avatar of the Lord outside of the Vedantic avatars is a man of normal birth that has been given divine commission from God.  With this divine commission from God, he may be able to complete amazing feats of work, however, he still remains limited by his human faculties.  He is neither able to predict or know all as is the case with the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
4. Jesus Christ recognized the illusion of Maya in this world that so entangles men and women and binds them to this Earth.  Since Karma requires that each man and woman pay for the sins that they have accumulated in prior births, there is no way to remove that entanglement or delusion from the eyes of those who have not achieved a propensity, desire or yearning for God.  The only way that these souls so entangled in Maya and bound to this Earth can achieve liberation is directly through interaction with the Lord or the Supreme Personality of Godhead.  Any amount of effort on the part of man will never be able to free these souls from their bondage.  Each man and woman on this Earth, while working in the service of the God, ultimately only works for their own liberation and salvation.  Jesus Christ, recognizing these tenets, knew that the only ways for these other souls to achieve liberation and salvation would be to sacrifice his own soul's liberation in exchange.  Therefore, Jesus Christ would continue to be bound to the Karmic cycle of human birth and death in order to continue serving the Lord throughout the centuries.  He would accept all the pain and suffering that is associated with human birth and death so that he could continually serve the Lord through all his various lifetimes.
5. Jesus Christ endured immense pain and suffering as a man in exchange for relieving the pain and suffering of other men and women.  Since he loved humanity, he accepted the pain and suffering of humanity as his own so that they could remain happy and free from sorrow.  By recognizing the divinity within each and every human being, he accepted this pain and suffering willingly.  He would then offer the pain and suffering of his devotees to the Lord, and request that they be relieved of their own pain.  Whenever he personally experienced pain and suffering, he knew of his disciples/devotees pain and suffering.  The Lord takes away all pain and sorrow as long as that it is offered to him in loving devotion.
6. Jesus Christ mentioned that humans can only "achieve salvation through Me".  That is not to say that Jesus Christ was the Supreme Personality of Godhead.  Rather, Jesus Christ was a servant of the Lord and was a man.  Since men and women can never achieve perfection, they cannot directly emulate the Vedantic avatars of God.  Instead, they must emulate a man who has realized God.  Therefore, by imitating the life of Christ, one can come to realize God and achieve liberation and salvation.  

Free from attachment

One who is not disturbed in mind even amidst the threefold miseries or elated when there is happiness, and who is free from attachment, fear and anger, is called a stage of steady mind.

The word muni means one who can agitate his mind in various ways for mental speculation without coming to a factual conclusion.  It is said that every muni has a different angle of vision, and unless a muni differs from other munis, he cannot be called a muni in the strict sense of the term.  But a sthita-dhir muni, as mentioned herein by the Lord, is different from an ordinary muni.  The sthita-dhir muni is always in Krsna consciousness, for he has exhausted all his business of creative speculation.  He is called prasanta-nihsesa-mano-rathantara, or one who has surpassed the stage of mental speculations and has come to the conclusion that Lord Sri Krsna, or Vasudeva, is everything.  He is called a muni fixed in mind.  Such a fully Krsna conscious person is not at all disturbed by the onslaughts of the threefold miseries, for he accepts all miseries as the mercy of the Lord, thinking himself only worthy of more trouble due to his past misdeeds; and he sees that his miseries, by the grace of the Lord, are minimized to the lowest.  Similarly, when he is happy he gives credit to the Lord, thinking himself unworthy of the happiness; he realizes that it is due only to the Lord’s grace that he is in such a comfortable condition and able to render better service to the Lord.  And for the service of teh Lord, he is always daring and active and is not influenced by attachment or aversion.  Attachment means accepting things for one's own sense gratification, and detachment is the absence of such sensual attachment.  But one fixed in Krsna consciousness has neither attachment nor detachment because his life is dedicated in the service of the Lord.  Consequently he is not at all angry even when his attempts are unsuccessful.  Success or no success, a Krsna conscious person is always steady in his determination.