Bringing God's Mercy into your own home.

Though I was never shown how to cook basmati rice in person.... except Prabhupada always says he is present whenever his personal instruction is passed on without alteration 😉 and the cookbooks follow his methods 👌✔✔✔

Everybody adds their own touch as well, I guess. Mine is using lukewarm water instead of hot or cold. You might use less or more salt than me. Also, the consciousness of the person is important because it goes in it - for example what they are thinking while sautéing the rice and stirring it in the ghee, being careful not to burn it by cooking it evenly. I like taking care and to me that is the secret to making good basmati rice. If one finds that part a chore then the cook is spoiling the preparation with bad vibes eg resentment instead of love.

One starts out by seeing all food as God-sent. So the food is honoured as Brahman. One is thinking "thank you Lord for providing this food, it all comes from You" or at least being aware that Mother Nature is one of God's Agents and that it isn't a random product of the material world, as scientists and atheists so blindly reason. They are thinking "All this is mine, let me enjoy", oblivious to where the food comes from.

One who at least sees food as being part of the Universal Whole is worshipping God in His impersonal aspect. It is not as powerful as offering to the personal form of the Lord as in bhakti-yoga wherein it becomes transformed into prasadam, nevertheless there is still spiritual benefit perhaps equivalent to partaking of the Host at Mass - well, you can do it every day instead of only at  the Church on Sundays.

Sometimes religion becomes institutionalised, thereby taking away power from the lay practitioner. Anyone can practice bhakti-yoga at home - you don't have to go to a temple to worship. And you can get your own "bread and wine, the flesh and blood of Christ" every day of the week by doing away with reliance on rubber-stamped "Representatives of The Church".

Instead, Christians are made slaves to the hierarchy. Before the invention of the Gutenberg press, people didn't even have access to their own Bibles! My, how that changed things - and delivered Christianity to the masses, freeing it from the constraints of the Roman Catholic Church.

'Thou protesteth too much'........