Isn’t good or bad a state of mind? Why then are the regulative principles necessary?

From: srikanth

I have heard in KC movement there are four regulative principles. But why those things are considered bad or sinful ?

Isn’t this just depends on the way you perceive things in this world that makes them good or bad.Than why bother so much about all of them.

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
question from Srikant I heard in Krishna consciousness movement there are four relative principles but why are those things considered bad or sinful isn’t this just depending on the way you perceive things in this world that makes them good or bad then why bother so much about all of them yes it is partially true that our perception about things does affect the influence that they have on us so this is what has led to the popularity of positive optimistic thinking and has made people aware about pessimistic thinking and it’s dangerous at the same time beyond what we think of as good and bad things have their objective results so if I drink poison whether I think of it as good or bad is not going to make much of a substantial difference to the effect that it is going to have on me so there are from the point of view of objective reality things that are bad if somebody jumps down from a ten story building it’s not a matter of in the mind to think what is good or it is bad it is bad in the sense that the person’s bones will break and possibly may lose his life also so just as even in everyday life we feel there are things that are objectively good and bad the same principle applies to the realm of morality and spirituality there are things and activities which enhance our spiritual health and there are activities which damage our spiritual health just as if we take nutritious food it enhances our physical health and poison or spoiled or rotten food they damage or they can even destroy our bodily health so we easily understand this positive and negative effect of food for our bodily health and similarly there is our spiritual health now what does spiritual health mean? rather than talking of this in terms of bad or sinful we can focus on it being harmful for our spiritual health so what does spiritual health actually mean? we are all souls and the soul has a natural loving propensity that is directed towards all attractive Supreme Lord Sri Krishna and in loving Krishna we experience the highest happiness because love is our most precious emotion and this love is satisfying only when it is directed towards an eternal object in this world we may direct our love towards our girlfriend or a boyfriend or a cricketer or a movie star or a business magnate or a dog or whatever a pet but all these loves are temporary and in the long run they are disappointing because nobody material who is also limited and fallible like us can satisfy our heart’s longing for love so our greatest happiness comes when we direct our love towards Krishna and to help us regain our spiritual health which means that to help us develop our love for Krishna once again there are certain activities which are favorable and certain activities which are unfavorable so the four regular principles are connected with the four activities that cause the greatest injury to our spiritual health these create the greatest distance between us and Krishna why do they create the greatest distance between us and Krishna? let us start with no meaty thing now for God all living beings are his children in the Bhagavad Gita 14 chapter 4th verse Lord Krishna says I am the seed giving father of all living beings so certainly we humans are elder among the brothers in the family of God but just because we are elder doesn’t mean that we have the right to kill and consume our younger brothers in God’s family so therefore the Vedic scriptures tell us that when we kill animals and heal them that is a great pain to God because he sees all living beings as his children and to see for a father to see an older brother killing a younger brother or anything that’s horrendous so it creates a very great distance between us and God similarly if you look at intoxication when we come to material existence we forget God and forgetting God and living in the bodily conception of life where we think I am the body, I am a man, I am an engineer I am this and that all these are temporary designations these cause us to forget Krishna but when we take intoxication that further creates an illusion within an illusion so within the illusion of thinking that I am so and so person we go into further hallucination and we think that I am maybe the president of America or I am the so and so Bollywood star or whatever so it creates a further illusion within us which distances us further from the reality of our relationship with God similarly gambling gambling just infatuates us with the hope of quick money and that completely takes away our mental capacity to focus on the reality of life you start living in a hallucinatory world of numbers and figures where we think ok this will if this works out I will enjoy so again the point is that this false hope creates artificial excitement that makes us forget God entirely and of course if we look at these activities often in intoxication we are harming our own body and our own body is not our body, actually we didn’t create our body, neither our parents created our body, our body is created by God so when we take intoxication we are harming that which is the property of God and many times after intoxication people harm others also, drunken driving is one of the causes of great harm to great accidents and casualties among not just the drunken drivers, among innocent victims of the drunken driving also and similarly if we move forward and talk about gambling, gambling often involves cheating and that involves taking people’s hard earned money away from them by unrighteous means and beyond that illicit sex sex outside of marriage is especially detrimental to our God consciousness because it perpetuates our bodily misidentification the whole process of spirituality begins with understanding that I am not the body, I am the soul and as long as I think that I am the body we find it very difficult to advance in spiritual life because our foundation is wrong just as if I make the first step in a mathematical calculation wrong then no matter how hard I work in the subsequent steps, things will go wrong so it’s important to come out of the bodily conception of life and practically no other activity in material existence reinforces our bodily misconception bodily misidentification as much as sex because if we want to indulge in sexual pleasure, we have to look at ourselves as our bodies and we have to look at others as their bodies and we have to imagine that the contact of these two bodies will bring pleasure so this creates a great distance from again, reality the reality that we are not our bodies now of course, there can there can lead to legal and moral complications if people have premarital sex then they may have to go in for abortion afterwards, there can be often when there is extramarital sex, there can be violence and there can be divorces and heartbreaks because of that, so there are a lot of sociological consequences that come about and even in the west, gradually people are recognizing that without a stable family structure, society itself will collapse, and stable family structure requires to a large extent matrimonial fidelity, that means integrity in sexual relationships between the spouses so I have not talked in this answer from the point of view of what is sinful and what is biased because often for those of us who do not have faith in scriptures, that sort of analysis seems more just authoritarian rather than rational or logical so I have explained from an objective rational point of view, how these activities, first of all they disconnect us from God they disconnect us from the reality that we are spiritual beings and they disconnect us they have a disharmonious effect even on our own health and our society as well so apart from that the Srimad Bhagavatam, the Asian Vedic Scripture describes that these are the four activities in which the personality of Kali resides so Kali is not a mythological personality, he is a subtle personality we may not see with our eyes, but he spreads insidious influences among people by creating conflicts among them through misunderstandings and deceptions and hypocrisy so this Kali resides in these four activities, that means these four activities, wherever they are present soon from there quarrel and hypocrisy will start and quarrel and hypocrisy will dominate and then all relationships in order will be ruined so that’s why because there are objective harmful consequences for our spiritual realization for our devotional advancement and even for our physical health and for our social order these activities are to be given up and these are not just conceptions of the mind they are objectively and seriously harmful and that’s why it’s important for us to stay away from them and protect ourselves from the needless harmful complications that would otherwise come in our lives thank you