The tendency to self-medicate is one of the ways that we can become misled or confused because, you know, "I read it on the internet." It's something that often now a times people do, "I looked it up, that's what I think I have." I know people who do that a lot— just taking antibiotics on their own for anything.

So, we have the benefit of supporting our determination, that we have a prescription. Yes, there are a lot of branches of the Vedas, and you can go through them all and then self-medicate, saying, "I'll try this or that." But 'Mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ' (Cc. Madhya 17.186): the ultimate conclusion of the Bhāgavat system is, yes, there are many ways and paths, but you should follow the acharyas, what the great souls have prescribed already .

And then if you get a very local prescription, which we have—that’s why we have our founder acharya sitting here with us all the time—and then the prescription is already written: 16 rounds. So we can be very clear: "I have a prescription, I have to follow it," rather than the mind speculating, "Maybe I'll do something else."

And I've seen people do that—some persons say, "Well, maybe I won't chant 16 rounds, maybe I'll do my own kind of meditation because it feels better to me." Okay, good luck, but then you'll think of something else later because of the way in which the mind pulls us into a hole. We dig a hole, and there's an old admonition: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging and start chanting."

Because we can even go into such a hole that I doubt my own existence, I doubt the existence of God. This is the way the modes of nature work upon the mind. The way out of it is to follow the prescription until you feel health.

So, I have just a brief question so we have some interaction: How do you feel when you legitimately finish your rounds? You know, you actually concentrated on your rounds and you finished all of them. How do you feel at that point?

(Excerpt from the talk)

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