Awakening the Soul (Transliteration with English Translation)

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About the Book

In the book Caitanya-mangala, by Srila Locan Dasa Thakur, it is recorded that Narada Muni, while visiting the spiritual world, came upon Lord Gauranga. The Lard told him of His mission to destroy the sinful activities of the Age of Kali. “With the powerful chopper of nama-sankirtana,” He said, “I’ll cut the hard knots of demoniac desires from the hearts of everyone. Even if the sinners reject religion or flee to foreign countries, still they will get My mercy. I will send mar senapati-bhakta to go there and deliver them.”

Mar senapati-bhakta refers to that commanding acarya who will be empowered by Lord Caitanya to lead His sankirtana movement. That acarya, whom Lord Caitanya referred to, is Srila Prabhupada, who is destined to spread Krishna consciousness all over the world.

About the Author

Srila Gopal Krishna Goswami was born in Delhi on Aug 14, 1994. He became an initiated disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the Founder-Acharya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in 1969 and accepted the renounced order of life, Sannyas in 1982.

Currently he is GBC of ISKCON around the world. He successfully opend the Sri Sri Radha-Parthsarathi temple in New Delhi, amongst many throughout the world.

Following in the footsteps of his spiritual master, He is spreading Krishna Consciousness all over the world by giving people, transcendental knowledge, and guidance resulting in solace, happiness and love of God.

Introduction

Today’s human society is going very fast toward the life of degradation by forgetting the Vedic culture which is based on timeless scriptures. People are acting blindly by becoming more and more atheists to achieve happiness by their concocted ideas. They are becoming very much attached to gratify their material senses by enjoying the objects given by material nature. Our modern education is also injecting the same idea which is based on bodily concept of life. Because of this false conception the living entity is becoming more and more entangled in the cycle of birth and death. The real nature of the soul is anandamayo’bhyasat, but the way he is trying to achieve that is wrong. He needs endless happiness which remains eternal with him but he can’t fulfill the hunger of real happiness by sense gratification.

It is said, “Ignorance is bliss.” People are totally in ignorance of their real position and identity as the eternal servant and part and parcel of Lord Krishna. Actually the real home of living entities is the spiritual world where Lord is residing along with his innumerable devotees who always lead a life full of bliss and eternity. But the conditioned soul here in this world is like a fish out of the water. If someone provides all the material comforts to a fish out of water, it will never make him happy as fish belong to water. Similarly, we are all spirit souls; we belong to spiritualworld and we can never be happy by the material comforts of this material world. Therefore, the soul must awake its real nature and should go back to home back to Godhead. Generally, everyone is sleeping on the lap of material nature and dreaming to become happy in this world by serving so many personalities around him and following concocted religion.

Actual religion means to understand god and to develop the pure love for Him. By achieving this valuable human form of life if we fail to attain this loving attitude to serve the Lord then we will develop animal tendency. To reawaken this love for Lord we will have to take shelter of the devotees who have loving service attitude toward Him. Lord personally appears as Caitanya Mahaprabhu to teach us the easy way to reawaken our soul who is in deep sleep, the sleep of ignorance. And He gives us the wonderful process of congregational chanting of holy names.

This same process is presented by Mahaprabhu’s very dear and staunch devotee Srila Prabhupada who distributed this valuable gift all over the world without concerning cast and creed. He says, “So this movement is practically awakening the human society dreaming in sleep. Just like if a man is sleeping very sound, forgetting his duty, and some friend of the man is trying to awake him, “Mr. such and such. Please wake up. It is now morning. You have to do this thing, that thing.” So this movement is like that. When a man is fast asleep, all other senses cannot work, but one sense, which is called ear, it can work. Just like you are sleeping and somebody is coming with a knife to kill you. You cannot see. The man can come and kill you. But if somebody cries, “Mr. such and such, wake up! Somebody is coming to kill you,” you can use your ear and be precautious. So this Hare Krsna mantra is something like that, awakening from the slumbering state of material consciousness. So more you chant this Hare Krsna mantra-Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare! Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare-the more you become awakened from the slumbering state of material existence.”

Following the footsteps of this great personality his dearmost disciple Srila Gopala Krsna Goswami is distributing the same message around the world. This book “Awakening the Soul” is the compilation of selected lectures which he gave in various places of the world. He presented the subject matter in a very simplified manner so that any inquisitive or spiritual seeker whoever reads it can grasp it easily.

We are very grateful toward Rishikumar Das, Anand Das, and Anuttam Hari Das who rendered various services like proof reading, editing, and typesetting to make this publication successful. We specially thank Naveen Sippy for his cover design.

We pray to Srila Prabhupada, Sri Sri Nitai Gaur Sunder, and our worshipable deities Sri Sri Radha Parthasarathi to bless all of them with pure devotion.

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