Transcriptions
Dev Priyānanda Svāmī Bhagavān
Video Link: YouTube
So, let’s begin. Namaste.
So, I’m going to be the Grinch. There’s an old film called The Grinch That Stole Christmas.
What does it mean? The end of the year is actually today. The solar year ends at the winter solstice, when the sun makes its greatest travel south. This is called the Dakṣināyana path. And then it reverses and travels north on the Uttarāyana path until summer solstice, around June 21st. So this is the actual new year, the solar year.
Now the lunar year begins in the full moon in Aries. Now Aries—not by Western calculation, but by Vedic calculation, which is the actual sign of Aries in the sky. The Western astrology deviated about 2,500 years ago when the astrological treatises were translated from Persian, where they had been translated from Sanskrit into Persian, then from Persian into Greek and Latin.
And in those translations, a mistake was made that the vernal equinox, the time when the sun crosses the celestial equator, is always on the first degree of Aries. Well, this is just wrong. You know, maybe it was then. Actually it was, 2,500 years ago.
But due to the precession of the equinoxes, in 2,500 years, the vernal equinox has moved about 23.6 degrees. This is called the Ayanāṁśa. So Western astrology is off by that amount, the Ayanāṁśa, which changes over time. It’s just going to get greater and greater, meaning Western astrology is going to be more and more useless.
So based on this mistaken assumption, the Christian Pope Gregory fixed the beginning of the new year as January 1st of the 12-month calendar, and of course Christmas, which is also a type of New Year’s celebration, was fixed on December 25th.
But actually, the scholars have determined that Jesus probably was born in the springtime because the lambs were in the manger giving birth to their young, and they bear young in their spring.
So the whole thing is completely off. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to the natural cycles. The real seasons are determined by the movements of the sun and moon.
And the proof of it is that in India, there is a calendar based on lunar astrology primarily. And by that calendar, you can pretty much exactly determine the change of the seasons. I mean, it’s so good that my neighbor over here is a rice farmer, and he planted his rice so that it ripened just as the season changed from wet winter to dry winter.
Just as the rain stopped, his rice became mature. And after a few days of sun, it was perfectly ripe and ready for harvest. Now he couldn’t have done that with any Western way of forecasting because it doesn’t follow the natural cycles.
So they’re always talking in the weather reports, weather forecasts, about unseasonable rains and this and that. No, there’s no unseasonable rains. But the seasons shift according to the lunar calendar, which is different from the solar calendar, you see.
So the seasons, that’s why this solstice is December 21st and not January 1st. Because the Ayanāṁśa screwed up all the calculations of the Western astronomy. And so the religious authorities decided that the year is going to begin on January 1st. But actually it begins whenever the moon gets around to it and the sun.
So the reality of it is easy to observe, but you can’t observe it if your mind is shuttered by some theory, invented by some authority, and artificially imposed on all the people.
So I’m going to be the Grinch that stole Christmas and New Year’s and give the review of 2019 today.
So what happened in 2019, at least as far as this channel is concerned, is very interesting because, and it’s really the only reason I’m doing this review, which I’ve never done before and may never do again, because several major trends reversed during this year.
And they are, for example, ever since I started this channel, the largest number of views have come from the U.S. After all, this body was born in America, so, you know, the way I talk is pretty American, even though I’ve taken great pains to disguise my real accent, which comes from New Jersey, and speak in a more neutral accent that’s more understandable to an international audience.
Still, most of my viewers historically had come from the U.S. That’s not true anymore. This year, there were more viewers from India than from the U.S. In fact, the Indian viewers have become the largest category. And this is the first time that’s happened in the history of this channel.
I find that very interesting and extremely encouraging. Now, most Indians would never publicly admit to recognizing a Westerner like me as a real holy man. It would be socially impossible for them because of caste ideas and, you know, similar kind of racist attitudes.
But what does Kṛṣṇa say in Bhagavad-gītā ?
cātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛṣṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ
He said, “I created this system of four varṇas—brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya, and śūdra—according to guṇa and karma, according to the quality and the work: guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśaḥ.
That’s why my guru gave me this Upanāyam, sacred thread, and the Gāyatrī mantra. And I’ve been chanting Gāyatrī mantra since 1971 and getting great insights and help because of it.
Now, if Kṛṣṇa is the ultimate authority for many Indians, for many Hindus, then why they won’t recognize somebody like me? Well, it’s only because of social pressure. Because the idea of caste by birth has become so ingrained in Indian society that nobody dares break it—even those who know better.
When I first came to Tiruvannamalai three years ago, I stayed with a doctor and his wife. The doctor was from Germany. His wife was local from Tamil Nadu. And she told me privately that “I don’t believe in all these caste-based ceremonies and customs and stuff like that.”
And I said, “Well, why do you still do it?”
And she said, “Oh, because the neighbors would gossip, my reputation would be ruined, I wouldn’t be able to socialize with my friends.” and so on and so forth.
I said to her, “Well, that’s, you know, you don’t have much courage of your convictions, do you?”
Because when I gave up Christianity and became a yogī and went to India and everything like this, my family rejected me completely. So I lost my family. I lost, actually, all my friends.
Even the New-Age people in California think, “Oh, you don’t have to really follow the Vedas, you know, you don’t have to really believe in all those instructions and that philosophy. You don’t really have to take a guru and follow his instructions. You don’t really have to do all that sādhana and all that stuff. You just think you’re enlightened and then you are, right?”
No, no. So this attitude, which I call neo-Advaita, has infected the American spirituality and European spirituality so completely that a person like myself really gets no traction, you know, because I’m saying what is in the Vedas. The Vedas are the authority, not some half-baked hippie, you know, like me or so many others that teach Vedic spirituality, even though we’re very new to it.
You know, we’re just new converts. What do we know, right? We didn’t grow up in it. We’ve only adopted it, usually after reaching adulthood. So by self-determination, we become followers of the Vedas.
But because Americans are lazy and always looking for a shortcut… oh, they’ll work hard for money. But when it comes to religion or spirituality, they always take the easy way out. So most Americans would reject me just because I actually, you know, wear the tripuṇḍra and the bindu, and just because I actually do the sādhana; I actually follow the rules and regulations, you know.
I’ve actually molded my life according to the Vedas and followed all their principles and ideas, and I speak only what’s in scripture. I don’t speak anything outside.
So they reject me. They don’t recognize me, and the Indians don’t recognize me, even though they appreciate what I’m saying, because it’s awkward from the caste-by-birth perspective, which pretty much infects the entire Indian society.
So it’s really funny. But wait till you see. After I leave my body, after I leave this body, I’ll become very popular. You know, saints are always more popular after they die, right? Because they’re not there to look you in the eye and tell you you’re wrong.
Or they’re not there to show a better example. Or if they do show a better example, it’s only in retrospect, and it’s far away in space and time, and can be safely ignored.
So you see, people are actually hypocrites. They don’t really believe in the things that they say they believe in. They don’t believe enough to put their ass on the line and live according to it.
They compromise. They take a job that involves economic exploitation, you know, or spying on the users. You know, these tech companies that use surveillance as a business model, you know, and this is going on, and they know it, but they still, they work for these companies, and they take the money.
And then they justify it by saying, “Well, on the weekend, I do a little sādhana, you know, I chant a few mantras, and maybe I do a little ceremony, and, you know, so it’s all okay.”
Well, you’re the one who has to experience the results of your karma. That means every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and it’s not like you can balance out the bad things you do with the good things that you do. Because anything that causes pain to others causes bad karma, and that has to be experienced. Even if you do so many other good things, yeah, you’ll get the results of those, too, separately.
So it’s not like you can cancel out your bad actions with good actions. No, they both bear results. That’s the actual law of karma, and if you read the scriptures, you would know this.
So that’s why the Buddha taught Right Livelihood, not to do anything for a living, not to do anything to justify your sinful activities by saying, “Oh, I take the results of my labor and use it for some pious purpose.”
No, that doesn’t fly. That’s not right. So in this year, I’ve come to, I would say, repose my complete faith in the Śrī Vidyā path.
Oh, that’s the other thing, the other statistic that’s kind of amazing. A year ago, the number of female viewers on this channel was almost immeasurable. So tiny, just a handful. Now they’re about 35%.
So since I’ve started doing videos based on the Śrī Vidyā, the worship of the Goddess, now more women are involved, and I think that’s a very positive sign because the women are actually the carriers of the spirituality in human society.
You know, the men will go to the temple and they’ll sit there, you know, drumming their fingers and looking at their watch and, you know, fidgeting around because their wife made them come or their mother made them come. But the women are the ones who get into it.
They really like religion—and bona fide religion is a beautiful thing, and it is the glue that holds human society together. Otherwise, it would just be a war of everybody against everybody else. And actually, we’re headed in that direction as society becomes more and more atheistic.
So that’s another thing about this year, that the atheism, and especially atheism in the name of Vedic knowledge, has become ever more and more pervasive. This is very dangerous. This has to be stopped, or at least slowed down enough, so that the real Vedic philosophy can make some inroads, can have some impact on society.
It’s not just enough to rubber stamp and say you’re a Hindu. Hindu is really a meaningless term. It doesn’t appear in the Vedas. It was introduced from outside by invaders of India, and it’s really a pejorative, like nigger. So it’s a really nasty term.
I don’t like to use it. I never use it unless I’m talking about how bad it is, and how it should be relegated to the dustbin. What we are, are varnāśram, varnāśram-dharma, or sanātana-dharma. And this dharma is all-inclusive, and it’s based on the Mother, Lalitā, Tripurasundarī.
She is the real controller god, and Śiva is somewhere in the background. He’s transcendental. He’s not involved. He’s just a watcher. She’s the one who really determines what happens, and She’s the one whose service gives magical results. And I’m here to tell you that there is no better sādhana that I’ve ever done in terms of its immediate and powerful results than the Śrī Vidyā.
Āūṁ Tat Sat, Āūṁ Shakti Āūṁ.