How does a person know, on a practical everyday level, whether or not the overall direction of their life is pleasing to God? This question was the topic of a lecture by Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda. Jagad Guru began by sharing that, because we are all God’s servants, the real question is, “How can I function in such a way that I am pleasing to God?”

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Five hundred years ago Lord Chaitanya appeared for the purpose of spreading love of Godhead. At that time when He appeared, India was, practically speaking, bereft of any love for God. Their concept of God, the concept of God that they had, had been limited by the teachings of Sankaracarya who appeared in the eighth century. From the time of Sankaracarya everything was more difficult in terms of people having come to accept the concept or accept the impersonal feature of God and so at that time Vedanta or the Vedas was considered to be simply the teaching of the Absolute Truth being impersonal - that God is impersonal.

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Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Lord Chaitanya, He was a great scholar. He appeared in Navadvip. As we already mentioned Navadvip was a college town, college city, full of logicians and scholars of the highest caliber and you know that was their fun, you know, defeating the other people in debate and scholarly discussions in logic and so on. So Chaitanya appeared in this atmosphere and when He was still very young, He already started His own school of logic. He had many students and was also engaged in defeating all the debaters and philosophers and He became renowned throughout India as the greatest scholar. Yet He left only eight writings, eight verses that He wrote. The only thing He actually wrote was eight verses and in these eight verses you’ll find the summary of His teaching, of His life, the essence.

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This article has been edited from a lecture given by Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda on the prayers and teachings of the great transcendental personality, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the foremost proponent of Bhakti yoga and the inaugurator of the worldwide kirtan movement. To hear the singing of transcendental sound, please check our Kirtan Videos

Lord Chaitanya prayed:

O my Lord, Your Holy Name alone can render all benediction to living beings, and thus You have hundreds and millions of Names like Krishna, Govinda, etc. In these transcendental Names You have invested all Your transcendental energies. There are not even hard and fast rules for chanting these Names. O my Lord, out of Your kindness You enable us to easily approach You by chanting Your Holy Names, but I am so unfortunate that I have no attraction for Them.

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Mantra Meditation and Self Realization was edited from a transcript of a class given by Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda in California. In this article, Jagad Guru explains clearly and simply the purpose of mantra meditation and how to practice it.

The Science of Identity

The practice of mantra meditation is very simple. But first let me give you a summary of the science of identity, of which mantra meditation is a part.

“Science” means “truth”; therefore the science of identity means the truth of our identity. The first question regarding our identity is: what are we in essence?

Am I My Body?

In today’s world, the most widespread concept is that we are chemicals. Modern scientists say we are just chemicals that somehow or other combined together a long time ago to create life. According to them, we are the evolution of those chemicals and nothing more. Being influenced by these theories people in general have come to think that we are matter or chemicals---we are these bodies.

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What is loneliness, what causes it and why is it so pervasive? In this interview, Jagad Guru speaks on the root cause and the cure for loneliness.

QUESTION: I was at a party the other day and a lot of my friends were there. But in the core of my heart, I felt so lonely. I'd like to know what this loneliness is all about.

JAGAD GURU: Just about everybody has had that experience of being lonely even though we're amongst so many people. I particularly remember Christmas when I was a kid. There were always a lot of people in the house. They weren't strangers, but actually relatives and family friends. But the experience of loneliness existed even when I was amongst all these loved ones — parents, friends, etc. Everybody was there; yet I was feeling this emptiness. I'd know that I was empty.

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What Are You Worth? The Question of

SELF ESTEEM

Are you an achiever? A winner? Are you young, attractive, cool, intelligent? In our modern society, a person’s value is based on such material considerations. So life becomes a struggle for material achievement of some kind. If we succeed in our endeavours, we consider ourselves valuable. If we fail, we feel worthless. But is this how we should determine our worth?

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