“Every Journey Begins With A GPS, Your Destination” - Dr. Gauranga Das

Dr. Gauranga Das, Director - Govardhan Ecovillage & Member & Governing Body Commissioner, ISKCON (International Society of Krishna Consciousness), gave his welcome address at the C20 Food & LiFE conference, highlighting the facts of the realms of health and spirituality. 

Dr. Das went on to say that, “ISKCON has been very prominent globally for 2 things – praying and feeding. As of today, all across the world, we have more than 750 ISKCON temples and over the last 55 years it has distributed more than 15 billion plates of Prasadam across the globe.” 

He brought to light the fact that the various NGOs connected to ISKCON, are distributing, every single day, 3.5 million plates of nutritious food to enable the education of children and development of their character. He also mentioned that when people see him at conferences or programmes they ask him what a spiritual person is doing at such a conference. “Typically, today when most people look at spiritual organisations they don’t understand the versatility of spirituality. When I go for conferences, and at a recent one of MIT in Boston where I gave a lecture, a professor came up to me and asked me that I was introduced as a person from IIT Mumbai, but I was speaking about the Bhagvad Gita and it appears to be very strange and my dress and hairstyle is also very strange, said the professor,” Dr. Gauranga Das recalled. 

The professor asked him if he was a doctor or engineer and Dr. Das replied to him that he is a Vedic Psychiatrist. He also stated that, “When people come to me and say, ‘we are not believers of religion or spirituality’ I reply by saying, who is talking about religion and spirituality – we are into healthcare which is very important.” Moving on Dr. Das mentioned that today India has 70,000 hospitals and 2 million temples. He also pointed out that another important piece of data is that post-Covid, several businesses closed down, but not a single temple closed down. 

“Interestingly, the way forward as we see is that since time immemorial India’s Vedic tradition helped in creating mature, responsible and compassionate citizens,” he said. According to him, this was done by combining 3 elements – firstly, by making individuals spiritually absorbed in a purpose-centric way giving them direction, because every journey begins with a GPS, which is our destination. Secondly, once a person is satisfied internally, he or she becomes socially sensitive. And last but not the least the person becomes environmentally alert. He or she begins to become grateful to nature.