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Haribol and a cordial hug to all of you. How nice to be here with you and sending our visit next to this continent of preaching with joy, a topic of importance for everyone.

The conscious education is a project of my mission. Since the beginning I have felt attracted to the Gurukulas of Srila Prabhupada. Also my Siksa Guru, Srila B.P. Puri Maharaja asked me to help in the education of the Vaisnavas.

Today I am going to describe the projects that I have, for establishing conscious education for the future of our mission and of our service to humanity. We will form a strong team among the educators in the mission to bring forward this work. It is of large time, because it has to be well prepared and put into practice as well.

There are many interested and capable devotees; it is just missing an efficient net. Conscious educators have obviously connection with: The Vaisnava Academy, The House of Wisdom, Education Department, the course of Vedic Culture, the Materkulas of the mission, the Sunday-schools of the mission, Damodara - the web page for children, the schools of the devotees like in Cali, the teacher devotees who are forming or already being formed - there are many devotees with a lot of experience in education, and our children, of course.

We will take charge of the discoveries and didactic material of the devotees from Iskcon and of the Waldorf schools. One has to learn a lot, because the education of our children is the foundation of a culture of tomorrow. Boarding-schools, like Gurukula, are very nice. Sadly there were lots of abuse in the past and it is important to proceed without committing any error. Here is a list of dangers, based on the experiences from the past, to always have it present in our efforts.

1.Parents and educators should always fight united with a continuous advising to avoid that a distance is opened that can put the children in a schizophrenic situation.

2.Parents and educators should look for economical formulas to maintain the schools and educative programs.

3.In the past, many parents showed their disqualification, considering the educators and the mission should do everything; like in the public school where you send your child without worrying about anything more.

4.The world of sexual abuse is so big and dangerous, that all relations between older and younger should be monitored. Inclusive between parents and children there exist dangers in Kali yuga. It is disgraceful to talk about these topics, but in the years of my preaching, several times there were strong accusations from children against their own parents.

I was lucky to not have these problems in a school of my mission, but at hearing of the abuses at other schools, I decided it better for the moment to close the Gurukulas and send the children to public schools and that the mothers keep themselves more informed of their own children. However, in one occasion there was a homosexual abuse from a temple president in the very farm of Gauranga Radha Vrajesvara from an ex spiritual brother of mine with two minors. He was ejected from the temple. We didn't take him to the police considering the image and knowing that they had not done anything, because the boys were 15. However, in my blood this horror was recorded, and truly he ruined the spiritual life of the two guys, and several years later one of them committed suicide. So there is not room for a millimetre of forgiving an abuse or just an approach of an abuse of this nature.

It is complicated because of the affection between educators and children; it is also a natural part, so till the moment we have decided it to be better to choose mothers for the education. But what is the fundamental in all is also the most difficult. The parents have to be excellent, responsible and work hard and close to the educators to offer their children a happy education. If the parents are not very united and very devoted, the children will also have their personal identification crisis.

We ourselves, as devotees in this materialistic world, sometimes come into identification crisis. Even more if the past has created a bad image of the devotees of Krishna to a certain point, by the scandals of devotees who came to the press, etc. So what to say then about the children, when they are in the mundane education contrivance and at home they do not find a firm decision of anything or parents who are not very united, etc. These children, of course, as everyone, have their karma, but we must sympathize very much with them, because they are in a too hard situation. Between total materialism, degradation of youth, and mediocre Vaisnavism of their parents, temples half organized, etc.

5.We do not show sufficient interest in the special education that a devotee childe requires in this world. Of course, a united Krishna conscious home is, without any doubt, the most important part of education for the children.

6.Because of the immature stage of the new temples, and lack of experience of the young preachers, there were a lot of insufficiency in the education. At the same time we see that the education system in the general world continues to change and failing in many aspects.

For a future of good education it has to be didactic materials of all levels up to university. Nowadays there is education material specialized on subjects as Ayur Veda, Vastu Sastra, etc., quite wide for whoever who would like to become professional in some of the Vedic branches, but it is missing good organization for the basic body of introduction that harmonize between them and that is free from contamination of impersonalism.

The Yoga course was quite a nice basis of the education, but it is missing some more comprehension and extension to cover all fields and present, for the devotees and the people in the world, a responsible idea of how to make the world conscious and its education with a packet of a future vision. The work with the course of Vedic Culture is a project that I started almost 20 years ago and have not managed to finish. Malati was in charge of it, but in the end she had neither computer nor time.

So we are going to put more information available about this in an interactive page to increase the participation of many specialist people and to present something well done for the world. It is easy, it just takes a lot of time and it has to be done in three languages, because I need it in all three too start. The major part of the material is in English, of course. This is something we managed in the last years with the presence of FVC, Florida Vedic College, and with the status of the devotees in Colombia to be able to offer university support from the common system for the education projects of the devotees. Recognition from the local education ministries is not so difficult if there is something quite serious. But it is important to work in the education in coordination with the system to not isolate our children from the labour market. So what is missing is more interest and a lot of work. Of course, in the Vaisnava Academy it is sad to see very few devotees who are really interested in increasing their own capacities. For instance the aspect of the 33 branches of the education of the Vaisnava Academy. Till now it has received very little attention. It is the basic work that has to be done everywhere.

The foundation of a house is given much work and investment that enter the land, and yet it is not visible. We want to see the walls at once, but this would be rather dangerous without a strong foundation. In Europe it exists a chain of schools called Waldorf that are impersonalist, but quite naturalist and have good things; important is that they manage to be accepted with their schools by thy system. We take advantage of what they have made to know how to harmonize with the ministries of education.

We have a lot of material of studies, but not much have been listed to offer in form of suitable courses for the children in a form of an education stair, based on previous success and understanding. The course of Vedic Culture offers this concept of education; it is a complete plan to present Vedic education in three semesters, it is only missing to fill well the sketched spaces and give it the spark from a very interesting course. Then we have to see who are also interested to study.

The material world is oriented to the comfort; they want solutions of pure pills and to enjoy at each moment. To study, prepare seriously the courses of the Academy is not popular. We are victims of the television culture, where people do not produce anything serious; only consume a world of false sophistication, because each day the case is more animalised. The Vedic education is a relief and a pleasure of the devotional service, and the only way out of this tragedy. So, being pressed by the famous economisery we are trying anyway to bring forward much of this. And all help from you is very, very appreciated.

Besides this, I am forming a line of people called conscious educators. They are devotees who are preparing or already graduated in the common education. They will be the base of a new sketch of education. We will be offering it on the Internet in a special page for this purpose, like with the conscious doctors and the conscious scientists, they are professionals who analyze the world that surrounds us and study the Holy Scriptures to give the foundations of our Vaisnava thoughts of the scientific and rational world.

Srila Prabhupada started all this in form of the Bhaktivedanta Institute with his schools, artists and professional disciples. In the Latin field, however, and in the many small temples, these successes almost never came to be known. Today we are inundated by quantities of information and it is difficult to know what to give priority. But nevertheless we cannot escape, rather with this facility of modern communication it is time to put us up-to-date to not be delayed. This is my intention, and I have a lot of optimism.

So, like the Damodara page finally had the opportunity to give the children in the world the beauty that the devotee artists made for them. All this already have their blessings. Many children from other countries ask for translations of our page. Because Krishna chose to put it in Spanish with many assistants to produce what is needed for a young Vaisnava family.

Besides this, with small resources, on a continent where before the Internet there was not much communication between the very devotees. Nowadays, imagine, the weekly chat of the mission and database like gurumaharaj.net, many things have changed and we are more conscious of what we are missing. It is a very big discovery, and furthermore a nice occupational therapy. I say this because if the intelligence does not occupy with things of service for humanity, they use their brain only to amuse with passion and ignorance. So it is a blessing that there exist so many fields where we can help.

Besides this, we are always trying to connect our education with the common world, looking for ways to make common people in this world interested in spiritual science, as Srila Prabhupada called it.

I recently received a new granddaughter here in Miami, her name is Sarasvati and she is daughter of Saranagati and Chaitanya Nitai, she is a sweet girl. You see, already at the chat she received her duty, because Sarasvati is the responsible of the education. We are all blessed by her appearance, because talking about the education of our children; today came the responsible of education by her new representative to bless all the conscious educators. I feel sure that with this the project will be successful.

You know that Mother Nature represented by its diverse forms as the wife, the children, etc, makes presence from the blessings in our houses. So it is something so important that they feel support and protection from the responsible devotees. Therefore our first duty is to become excellent parents, mothers and educators everywhere. To study carefully the nectar that Srila Prabhupada left to us and make our efforts of education up-to-date.

Twenty years pass so quickly and the children have already become parents there, so we should make marathon, because "one never knows what will come if one don't know what was done". The conscious educators and participants of the Vedic Culture course will have a special chat with the devotees from the Vaisnava Academy.