Mukunda: Yes, I like it. If people can understand the Lord's message in Bhagavad-gita, they can become truly happy.

A lot of people, when they just get started in spiritual life, worship God as impersonal. What's the difference between worshiping Krishna, or God, in His personal form and worshiping His impersonal nature as energy or light?

George: It's like the difference between hanging out with a computer or hanging out with a person. Like I said earlier, "If there is a God, I want to see Him," not only His energy or His light, but Him.

Mukunda: What do you think is the goal of human life?

George: Each individual has to burn out his own karma and escape from the chains of maya (illusion), reincarnation, and all that. The best thing anyone can give to humanity is God consciousness. Then you can really give them something. But first you have to concentrate on your own spiritual advancement; so in a sense we have to become selfish to become selfless.

Mukunda: What about trying to solve the problems of life without employing the spiritual process?

George: Life is like a piece of string with a lot of knots tied in it. The knots are the karma you're born with from all your past lives, and the object of human life is to try and undo all those knots. That's what chanting and meditation in God consciousness can do. Otherwise you simply tie another ten knots each time you try to undo one knot. That's how karma works. I mean, we're now the results of our past actions, and in the future we'll be the results of the actions we're performing now. A little understanding of "As you sow, so shall you reap" is important, because then you can't blame the condition you're in on anyone else. You know that it's by your own actions you're able to get more in a mess or out of one. It's your own actions that relieve or bind you.

Mukunda: In the Srimad-Bhagavatam, the crest jewel of all the Vedic literatures, it's described how those pure souls who live in the spiritual world with God have different types of rasas, or relationships, with Him. Is there any special way you like to think of Krishna?

George: I like the idea of seeing Krishna as a baby, the way He's often depicted in India. And also Govinda, the cowherd boy. I like the idea that you can have Krishna as a baby and feel protective to Him, or as your friend, or as the guru or master-type figure.