Scientists playing God are marveling at the spider web. It is resilient and sticky beyond anything made in laboratories. They’re now using such webs in genetic engineering.

What, people may ask, is this Govardhana Puja celebration? We may tell them it represents Krsna in His activity of sheltering the residents of a small Indian village from a freak rainstorm and flood. It also symbolizes Krsna’s desire to correct an imbalance of values in the world, and that everyone on the planet should be able to eat to his or her heart’s content.

On December 31, 1966 (New York City) Srila Prabhupada spoke on the Caitanya Caritamrta, Madhya-lila, Chapter 20, Verses 367-384, making the following observation: “So avatara, incarnation, comes to glorify the eternal existence of the Supreme Lord. So any avatara, any incarnation, he comes to glorify that ‘there is spiritual kingdom, there is God, and I have come to reclaim you to back to Godhead, back to home.’ This is the symptom. So therefore, by that symptom, we accept Lord Jesus Christ as saktyavesa avatara, or Hazrat Muhammad. He’s also, because these two religious leaders of the world preached about the glorification of the Supreme Lord. And they sacrificed everything for preaching the glories of the Lord….These are the symptoms by which we can understand that Jesus Christ and Hazrat Muhammad were saktyavesa avatars.”

There are two Catur-vyuhas expanding from Krsna. In Hyderabad Srila Prabhupada alluded to them. He said: “So He’s the origin of Brahma, Visnu, Mahesvara. From Krsna, for material creation, there are three Purusas. First of all, three purusas. Not directly from Krsna. From Krsna, Baladeva. From Baladeva, catur-vyuha: Sankarsana, Vasudeva, Sankarsanaa, Pradyumna, Aniruddha. Then from Sankarsana, Sankarsana, Narayana. Then second catur-vyuha. From the second catur-vyuha, Sankarsana, the purusa-avataras. Three purusa-avataras, three Visnus: Karanodakasayi, Garbhodakasyi, and Ksirodakasayi Visnu. So the, in the Vedic literature all these informations are there.”

There’s a famous Srimad Bhagavatam verse about this that Srila Prabhupada was fond of. It’s found in the Sixth Canto, and is the twentieth-eighth text of the seventeenth chapter. It reads: “Devotees solely engaged in the devotional service of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Narayana, never fear any condition of life. For them the heavenly planets, liberation and the hellish planets are all the same, for such devotees are interested only in the service of the Lord.”

“Overpopulation is a myth.” (Srimad Bhagavatam 9.20.21/purport)

Two aspects of ISKCON speak for Srila Prabhupada’s particularity. One is a strong spirit of preaching or outreach (saving the world somehow or other), and the other is celibacy. Regarding the first point, Srila Prabhupada said this: “Yena tena prakarena manah krsne. Somehow or other first of all engage him in Krsna consciousness. That is my Guru Maharaja’s gift.” (from a lecture on 7 March, 1972, in Calcutta).

Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur is quoted as saying, “I am an impious sinner and have caused others great anxiety and trouble.”

Srila Prabhupada has told us that a living body is lighter than a dead body. This indicates two facts: a. That the soul or life force is non-material; it has no weight and in fact has an ‘upward thrust;’ b. It is life, original life, that keeps the heavy planets afloat, not gravity.

On February 27, 1976 on a morning walk in Mayapur Srila Prabhupada said, “Bengali culture was very much adored all over India. Even one big politician, Gandhi’s guru, Goke, Gokule, he remarked, ‘What Bengal thinks today, other provinces will think tomorrow.'”