Among the four defects, can the first three be unintentional, but cheating is always intentional?
Hare Krishna Question from Srikar Prabhu Among the four defects Is it that the first three Are Can be unintentional But the fourth is intentional The first three are The tendency To have To have imperfect senses To be put into illusion To commit mistakes These can be unintentional But cheating propensity is intentional Not necessarily Actually At one level we can say Yes cheating propensity is intentional That people want to cheat But There are At a level of conscious functioning There are many people Who are convinced So thoroughly convinced about What they believe That they are not just cheating the world They are cheating themselves For example there may be Fanatical atheists Who think that they alone are scientific And they are dismissive Of everything supernatural They even Go to the extent of Saying that Teaching children Religion is child abuse And they are Many of them may be utterly Convinced about it So now when we talk about cheating Is it intentional or is it unintentional Now When we say intentional cheating That means one knows that one is Doing something illegal Unethical, malified And still does it.
That’s how we understand Intentional cheating But in this case The people think that they are doing good And that’s why there is a saying that Often the road to hell Is paved with good intentions So Ultimately nothing is unintentional It is that soul who Either in this or previous life Desired to defy God And not just defy God sensually Which is how most people are doing But defy God intellectually And not just defy God But deride God And deny God So And go on aggressive intellectual campaigns Such people are called not just atheists But anti-theists So they are surely At one level Sometime in the past either in this or previous life They had the intention To Defy and To defy and deny and deride God And because of that God gives them Whatever intelligence one wants Krishna gives that intelligence So Krishna gives them that intelligence And now they have become aggressive anti-theists So Are they intentionally cheating? They may not be thinking that intentionally Yes, the Atheism is wrong But I want to propagate atheism because it is my idea At a subconscious level that is definitely true But they may not be conscious of it They may be totally convinced that it is true So When we talk about intentional or unintentional Then there are people For example who may be religionists Who May be Propagating one standard And not following that and not only not following that Having no intention to follow that But just talk about it in a hypocritical way So if Now naturally everybody there is a conflict Not everybody We cannot follow the standards But we are at least aspiring to move towards the standards But when we are not aspiring to Move towards that at all And one just continues the facade of being a religionist While While having ulterior motives internally And knowing and perpetuating The double standards So as to gain respect from people That is primarily the Cheating propensity Krishna talks about this in the 16th chapter Where in He says that That person Is so demoniac I will kill all my rivals and competitors And I will enjoy I am the enjoyer, I am the controller And then I will give charity also That I will enjoy fame as a Charitable person And then Prabhupada talks about his demoniac mentality Saying that Now all these people think that God is the greatest person And they are serving God but they are coming to me for charity Therefore God cannot maintain them Therefore they have to come to me Therefore I am greater than God This is their perverse logic So here This is a demoniac mentality And a person doesn’t even believe in God But just does some rituals so as to pretend to be religious So these are examples Where a person knows what one is doing is wrong And still Or one is doing some duplicity One is having some double standards And still does that because one gains from it And that is That would be conscious Cheating which would be done So the conditioned soul has a propensity To cheat And that cheating can be Conscious Or it can be subconscious That means conscious means that We deliberately manipulate And distort the facts So that we can get some ulterior motives fulfilled Or it happens at a subconscious level Without our being consciously aware of it also So either way It is cheating propensity So not all cheating propensity has to be Intentional Sometimes it can be unintentional also.