Power to... (Lectures)

Expressions researched:
"power to" |"powers to"

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

Lecture on BG Introduction -- New York, February 19-20, 1966:

Now, as we are accustomed to think either of this material energy or of the spiritual energy, now, how to transfer the thinking? The thinking of the material energy, how it can be transferred into thinking of the spiritual energy? So for thinking in the spiritual energy the Vedic literatures are there. Just like thinking in the material energies, there are so many literatures—newspapers, magazines, novels, fictions, and so many things. Full of literatures. So our thinkings are absorbed in these literatures. Similarly, if we want to transfer our thinking in the spiritual atmosphere, then we have to transfer our reading capacity to the Vedic literature. The learned sages therefore made so many Vedic literatures, the Purāṇas. The Purāṇas are not stories. They are historical records. In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta there is a verse which reads as follows. anādi-bahirmukha jīva kṛṣṇa bhuli' gela ataeva kṛṣṇa veda-purāṇa kailā (CC Madhya 20.117). That these forgetful living entities, conditioned souls, they have forgotten the relationship with the Supreme Lord, and they are engrossed in thinking of the material activities. And just to transfer their thinking power to the spiritual capacity, the Kṛṣṇa-dvaipāyana Vyāsa, he has made so many Vedic literatures. Vedic literatures means first he divided the Vedas into four. Then he explained them by the Purāṇas. Then for the incapable persons, just like strī, śūdra, vaiśya, he made the Mahābhārata. And in the Mahābhārata he introduced this Bhagavad-gītā. Then again he summarized the whole Vedic literature in the Vedānta-sūtra.