Vishnu Krishna Sri Krishna Shriad Hi, Hrishna. Hurry Krishna Krishna Krishna H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H R H Shil Pubad J Har Krishna everyone my name is Kesha Baswami I'm so happy to be with you over the years I've had the opportunity to participate in various forms of digital community building outreach education and in this digital dharma course we will try to share some of our learnings things with you and perhaps help you to find more creativity in the way we use this platform. As all of you uh experience every single day, the world has changed rapidly.
How people were functioning in 1965 and how people are functioning in 2026 is very different. The way we buy things, the way we educate ourselves, the way we communicate, the way we find community, all of these things have evolved. And therefore in the Krishna consciousness movement, we also have to ask ourselves the question, have we evolved in the way that we're sharing this message with the world?
Our philosophy, our practices, our fundamental message never changes. But perhaps we can look at creative mediums that can be utilized to proliferate that message. This first session will be entitled the digital opportunity why go online and I'd like by looking at the first two purposes of Iscon which are very telling because they both communicate to us that the purpose of the international society for Krishna consciousness fundamentally is to share spiritual wisdom to share uh an idea to communicate to the world teachings, age-old teachings that can as as written here check the imbalance of values in the world, achieve real unity and peace and really we're trying to shed uh share the the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, the Shrimat Bhagavatam and trying to get that message out as wide and as um powerfully as possible.
[sighs] And so the way that people are communicating in the world now has changed. As we know, originally there was an oral tradition. Nothing was written down.
Nothing was recorded. It was just passed from teacher to student. And then as we know uh around the 1500s there was the invention of the printing press uh Gutenberg and of course we know the Bible the Gutenberg Bible was produced from that printing press and by the 19th century in the time of Baktivino Takur and later Bakti Sidanta Saraswati Takur the printing press uh became a regular feature in India and so that was the main way in which people were communicating but as we know time moves on and there was advances in technology soon data became available in a non-paper format on the internet later on that data was accessible anywhere you go because smartphones now allow us to be connected on the move at every moment moment and now we know that that data is not just one way through social media that data is exchanged and a whole web of activity takes place and so this is a major revolution in the way ideas are shared in the world and now we are going into another age of AI.
AI is particularly concerning for the world because all previous technologies we were controlling but it feels like AI is a technology which may equate and even may exceed humans. Uh that's what people are worried about. So while the Krishna consciousness movement will always uh utilize oral tradition giving classes the the transmission from teacher to student that will never stop.
Books will never stop. We'll always print books and books are beautiful. However, we can also think about how we could be utilizing these platforms in more powerful ways because this really is where the world is today.
Let me share some statistics with you. There are over 8 billion people in the world according to the latest surveys and census statistics. But just look how many people are utilizing digital platforms.
Nearly six billion people uh have phones. The same amount are using the internet. And look at this.
Social media is used by nearly 65% of people in the world. These are very telling statistics, latest statistics. And the interesting thing is when we look at the internet and why people are using the internet, a variety of reasons.
But if you look here in the top left, one of the main reasons is that's where people find information. That's the first place people go to when they want information. And if you look at this trend from 2018 to 2024, there is a very clear trend here which is people are using the internet and online services more and more and more to find information and that trend is only going to continue.
6 and a half hours every day is what most uh people spend on the internet and 3 and 1/2 hours of that is on the phone. The Har Krishna are known for were were always known for being everywhere. We were at the airports, we were at the shopping malls, we were on the high streets, we were everywhere where people were.
And that was one of the most powerful things about the movement. But now people are online. That's where people are.
And we also need to be there. And so this course will be talking about that. 73% of the world is online.
And in the younger generation 5 to 7 hours is spent on the phone. So we have to ask ourselves are we reaching the people through those mediums? And we can just consider in our own life how do you access your spiritual content today when you want to learn something when you have a question when you want to connect with devotees what is the way you're using to do that and we'll see that even in our own habits we are utilizing the online world but are we as communicators educators inspirers are we utilizing those platforms to also communicate on a mass scale to others.
Just to give you an idea, these are just some of the Iscon success stories of individuals, temples using social media to reach many many people. Um, it can be lighthearted invitations as Iscon Neapville is doing so well. Some of their videos have attracted over a million views.
Think about what a million people uh that's a lot of people. Uh we here see here the Krishna life um project which is doing such wonderful work has also done amazing on social media and we see individuals here we have Goranga Pu who has over two nearly 2 and a half million followers and some of his reels have over uh 30 million views. This is an incredible way to reach people with a message in a way that can can move them to take that step on their spiritual journey.
Other religions are also utilizing it. Hillsong Church is a new age Christian church. They have incredible online presence and they have YouTube videos with nearly 300 to 600 million views um recreating representing the message and reaching the people of this time.
And then we have someone like Sudguru who has also used digital platforms and also the apps. He launched his app, the mind, the miracle of mind app, and it reached 1 million downloads in uh less than a day, which is five times quicker than chat GPT took to get 1 million downloads. So, just see how much of a demand, how much of a potential, how much traction can be achieved through the digital platforms.
Our principle as we know as taught by our acharas. In anything in life we just look at what is the connection to Krishna. Can this have a connection to Krishna?
Can this be used for Krishna? Can this be engaged for the purpose of Krishna's pleasure? And if the answer to those things is yes, we don't reject it.
We utilize it. And so uh this concept of yupta vaya which is so central to go vayashnavism really stands as our guiding principle and this is exactly what the acharas did. Bakti sedantasarati used modern conveyances modern machinery to proliferate the message.
Shilap Praad here on the right with his grundig dictating machine utilize technology and if these personalities had access to the digital platforms we use now uh we have available now it's almost without a shadow of a doubt they would be utilizing it. So just to share one final thing with you that it's not just an opportunity for us to go out there and get people interested. People are already interested.
This was a recent survey of what kind of reals trend online. What kind of things are people looking for answers? What kind of help do they need?
What are their pain points? And the three most common subjects, areas, um, life situations that people need help with or what is my purpose, how can I improve my health and why does love never seem to last? These are the things which are concerning people.
Now imagine as teachers of the Bhagavad Gita as communicators of this ancient wisdom of sanatan dharma. What is my purpose? What about if we were able to share with individuals the concept of dharma and how that relates and how that can be found and how that is so beautifully delineated in books like the Bhagavad Gita.
People want to know about how they can improve their health. What about if we taught them about the mind, the mana? What about if we taught them about sva?
All topics in the Bhagavad Gita very very prominent. And people want to know why love never seems to last. What about if we framed an answer to that question through the lens of bacti the central part of the Bhagavad Gita showing people how to actually find true love.
So what we are studying and what people are interested in are actually seamlessly connected. We just have to be on the platforms and we just have to find the right voice in order to reach people. So this was just an initial session to get you deeply thinking about the digital platforms how these are proliferating in the world they're only expanding and how through the concept of yukta vaya we can consider how can we use these to achieve the purposes of the Krishna consciousness movement which are primarily to systematically educate people in the techniques techniques of spiritual life.
In future sessions, we'll be going a little bit deeper. Thank you very much, Shilraad J.
