Bhakti Shastri (132) – Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16 Text 07 to 10

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And that description we will look at in our next class. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. Welcome back to the Bhagavad Gita Bhakti Shastri course. We are now in the 16th chapter.
We discussed the divine qualities. And then we came to the point where we just started the demoniac qualities. So, Krishna has till now described the divine qualities lead to liberation and the demonic qualities lead to bondage.
So, now we will list the demoniac qualities. Let us start the discussion. 16.7 onwards we will see.
Pravrttincha nivrttincha jananavidur asuraha na shaucam na vichacharo na satyam teshu vidyate. So, pravrttincha nivrttincha that acting properly and acting improperly. Prabhupada translates pravrtti and vrtti simply as jananavidur asuraha.
So, the demoniac people navidur. They do not know. And they do not have cleanliness nor do they have proper behaviour.
And there is no truthfulness among them also. So, Krishna starts by describing first and foremost that their behaviour is not guided. Now, what guides their behaviour? Actually, our behaviour should be guided by scripture.
So, only when our behaviour is guided by scripture then can we be acting properly just as a sick patient, as a patient who is sick needs to be guided by the doctor’s guidelines. Similarly, we are all sick in material existence and scriptures are given to help guide us so that we can recover spiritually and reclaim our eternal spiritual happiness and loving relationship with Krishna. So, pravrtti and nivrtti.
So, the scriptures tell us certain things to do and certain things to avoid, certain prescriptions and certain proscriptions. So, do’s and don’ts. Now, the demoniac people do not care for them.
The scriptures say that the Vishnubhaktasmithodeva who are devatas, those who are the devotees of Lord Vishnu and those who are opposite to that, that means those who are opposed to Lord Vishnu, they are the demons. And what is the opposition to Lord Vishnu? Now, Vishnu is not directly present in this world all the time. He sometimes comes as incarnations and those who oppose him are demons.
But those who oppose the words of Lord Vishnu, they are also of a demoniac mentality. Now, in the previous verse it was said, So, both these two verses start with dvav. We discussed in 15.16. There are two kinds of purushas and here it is there are two kinds of living beings.
So, both verses start with the same thing. But there is a difference what is being talked about. There it’s about fallible and infallible.
Here it’s talking about that is conditionally liberated. Here it’s talking about two people. They need not necessarily be liberated.
The godly are not necessarily liberated. Some of those with godly qualities may be liberated. But many of them are not.
They are on the path to liberation. Krishna has said, will lead to liberation. So, when Krishna classifies this, there are divine and there are demoniac.
So, what does it imply? Is it that everybody who is not divine is a demoniac? So, when Prabhupada was asked this question, Prabhupada was clear about the point. We have to be careful what we mean by the word demoniac. We shouldn’t think demoniac means some person who has two horns coming out of the head and maybe some fangs coming out of the mouth and hideous looking face.
That is a stereotype. That is a caricature of a demon. Demons don’t necessarily have to be like that.
So, Jaydev Maharaj wrote an article in B.T.G. where he said, who is a demon? So, he said that actually your local politician might be a demon. Your postman might be a demon. Your grocer might be a demon.
Your neighbour might be a demon. You might be a demon. So, what does it mean? It is more of a mentality.
Now, if we see in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is a war between humans and Rakshasas. So, Ravana is a Rakshasa. But the Mahabharata is a war between humans only.
Kauravas and Pandavas are both humans and actually Rakshasas are there on both sides. So, Bhima’s son Ghatotkacha, he is born from a Rakshasa. And therefore, he is a Rakshasa.
And on the opposite side, there was a Rakshasa named Alambusha. So, he was a relative of the Bakasura, not the Bakasura from Krishna Leela, but the Bakasura who was killed by Bhima. Bakasura had a voracious appetite.
So, he was a relative and he wanted to take revenge. So, that is why he decided to fight in this war against Bhima. So, either way, there were Rakshasas on both sides.
And there were humans who were fighting them over. They were the main protagonists, main opponents were humans. But then Duryodhana, although he may not have a body like a Rakshasa, Duryodhana had an asuri mentality.
So, there is a divine mentality and there is a demoniac mentality. Now, within the demoniac mentality also, there are people who are overtly demoniac and there are people who are under demoniac influence. So, many people are godless today, not because they deliberately, at least from this life’s perspective, want to be godless.
That is because they are living in a socio-cultural situation where they are not given knowledge about scripture. And because when they are not given knowledge about God, then they naturally don’t come to know about Him. Some people may be jikyas who actually endeavour to know about God.
Many people don’t. And that’s how they stay in ignorance. And under the spell of ignorance, they often act godlessly, they act anti-scripturally.
This happens sometimes, unfortunately. So, this can be corrected. And that’s what we will do with the theme of the chapter at the end, that shastram pramanam, act according to shastra.
But here Krishna is telling that the demoniac, the characteristic in general is that they conduct is not in accordance to scripture. So, in today’s society, people think that scripture is just some old-fashioned, outdated, pre-scientific mythology or just some metaphorically created for morality or whatever. They don’t consider it for what it is.
Actually, scriptures are a manual for living. And when we don’t use the manual, at best, we underuse a gadget. At worst, we may misuse and we may even cause destruction of the gadget or we may cause destruction of ourselves.
If somebody uses an electronic device in an improper way, the device may have some circuitry which may just catch fire, which may explode or whatever. So, not just electronic devices, different kinds of devices. The point is that the manual helps us to use it best.
So, the scriptures are the manual. The demoniac, they don’t follow scripture at all. And Prabhupada explains in the purport that Prabhupada usually when he talks about cleanliness, he talks about internal cleanliness by chanting Hare Krishna.
And then Prabhupada quotes Manu Samhita, which is the law of the human race. And then Prabhupada talks about women. Now, Manu Samhita, when Prabhupada refers to Manu Samhita, he is primarily referring to a principle.
Now, there are many instructions in Manu Samhita which Prabhupada did not even try to implement in today’s society. Because today’s society, the cultural situation is significantly different from the situation earlier. So, there are many statements which seem to be very casteist or sexist if we don’t understand their context.
Now, Bhakta Manu Thakur also said that Manu Samhita today has been, what we have has been interpolated by Brahmanas who wanted to promote their own position. And that’s why the specifics of Manu Samhita may have been undermined. But if we look at Prabhupada’s not just statement, but his example also, Prabhupada did not directly try to implement everything from Manu Samhita.
In his, in his, in ISKCON, he recognised the nuances and the necessities of today’s realities and he was an expert at presenting according to time, place, circumstances. But the principle is to always recognise, the principle is what? That we are meant to live in harmony with God’s guidelines. And those Krishna’s guidelines are very important for overall spiritual advancement.
And in that way, we can move forward in making spiritual advancement. Now, regarding the position of women, it’s a very important point that this issue repeatedly keeps coming up. And in today’s scenario where women often want equal rights, so the statements of Shri Prabhupada, where he talks about women needing protection, may seem to be, seem to be a throwback to past times.
But the point is, it’s not a throwback. The point is that everybody has to be situated in a way that is best situated for spiritual advancement. The best role for women is when they are contributing in the way that they are made for, psychophysically.
So, nobody can take the place of a mother. So, a father cannot take place, not just physically, but also emotionally. So, the kind of love that the mother can give the child, nobody can do that.
So, motherhood has been trivialised and sexuality has been glamorised in today’s society. So, basically, a woman can have two sets of identities. It can be a sexual identity or a maternal identity.
So, the Vedic culture emphasised that women take up the maternal identity. That’s why women are referred to as Matajis. When women take up the maternal identity, that means that they take up the role of mothers.
They will become mothers, even if they are not mothers right now. And when they take up that role, that role is a role which actually they can… Now, both the sexual identity and the maternal identity, neither of them is eternal. Both are body based only.
At the level of the soul, they are also parts of Krishna and they are devotees of Krishna, according to the Swarupa, whatever it may be. But if you look at the two roles, the sexual role and the maternal role, then the maternal role is far more conducive for spiritual advancement and far more conducive for maternal harmony also. A woman takes up a sexual role, that means a woman considers when society treats women primarily from the point of view of sexual identity.
And women also identify themselves based on their sex appeal. Then what happens is, it creates insecurity even within a woman because how long is the sex appeal going to last? A woman may look beautiful now, but after a woman who has lived only for attracting the attention of others based on sex appeal, as the body ages and sex appeal goes away, then the woman will feel lonely. And even if the sex appeal is there, women feel used for their bodies.
So, the sexuality is an aspect of life, but we have discussed the difference between sexuality and sexualisation. It’s reducing a person to just a sexual creature. That’s sexualisation.
And that is extremely undesirable. But when we have images in today’s society, which highlight the female form and various levels of dressing and undressing, and then this sort of imagery perpetuates a stereotype of a woman primarily as a sexual being. And that identity is deleterious.
It is extremely harmful. It is harmful for women themselves because it creates insecurity. It is harmful for men because it agitates them.
And it is harmful for children because when a woman wants to have that identity, or the society wants a woman to have that identity, then motherhood is not very easy. So, there are so many complaints. One wants to become a mother because during pregnancy, the boy doesn’t look attractive.
And then afterwards, one has to spend so much time taking care of the child. And people have so many ideas about when this one identity becomes too highlighted, then everything else becomes trivialised. And it’s been widely known that children who do not get, sociologists have talked about it repeatedly, that children who do not get the love of their mothers, often they grow up to be disturbed and disturbed youths who disturb society in turn.
And for a woman, motherhood is a unique privilege which is given by God. Why should a woman give up this unique God-given privilege and try to become copycats of men? Although women may claim that we want independence from men, which is how the whole feminist movement is often portrayed. But what is the idea of independence? The idea of independence essentially boils down to the idea of women becoming copycats of men.
You know what women and men are doing. Women say that we will do all that. So now, whether they can do it or not, that’s not an issue.
Women can become determined and say, we will succeed in the sports, we will succeed in that field, we will succeed in that field. Now, the point here is not whether they can or they cannot. The point is that, what is the purpose of life? What is the role that we have to play and how can we play it best? That is the important thing to recognise.
So, if we forget that purpose, then we can make a mess of everything. So, the purpose is that this life is temporary and the body that we have is just like a dress. And while we are in this body, this world is not a destination, it’s a station.
And it’s a station along which we have to pass. So, we pass life in this world in such a way that we can make maximum spiritual advancement and return to Krishna for eternal happiness. So, when a woman takes the maternal role, that means the woman can actually live in a way, a woman can be a mother throughout one’s life.
A woman may not have sexual appeal throughout life, but the maternal care is innate to the psychophysical disposition of a mother and the woman can offer that throughout one’s life. So, the dressing, the conduct, the lifestyle, all that, if it is more maternal, then the woman can also be more peaceful and men can also be more peaceful. Now, sometimes this sort of thing is taken to extremes.
And when some crimes happen against women, women are blamed. That is not the point over here. When crimes happen against women, it is men who are to be blamed.
It is the perpetrators of the crime who are to be blamed, whatever be the situation. But the important point to recognise is that why should women self-identify themselves as sexual creatures and provoke others? No. Actually, the idea is, when Prabhupada says women should be protected under a husband or son or father, the idea is that then that is the best way they can contribute according to their unique psychophysical disposition, due to psychophysical disposition, to society.
And actually, they can also get fulfilment by that. So, that is what now Prabhupada talks about the role of women. And thereafter, he used to talk about, let us talk about next verse.
So, the social condition of Demoniac people is very miserable, Prabhupada writes. This world is unreal and it is without the foundation. जगदाहूरणीश्वरम् That it has no Ishwara.
अपरस्परसं भूतम् That actually, it is just created by mutual contact without any further cause. कि मन्यत् काम है तो काम। It is used to lust only and there is no other cause. So, what is Krishna referring to over here? He is moving from activity to mentality.
So, previous verses talked about activities in terms of how they behave. Activity, quality, mentality, all these are interrelated. It is not that there has to be a watertight division between this is activity and this is quality and this is mentality.
They all are diffused together in the outline of the Bhagavad Gita we have over here. असत्यम् अपरतिष्टम्ते So, they say, असत्यम्, this world is unreal. And this is referring to, generally it refers to Mayavadis.
असत्यम् अपरतिष्टम्ते The अपरतिष्टम्ते means it has no foundation beyond. There are different approaches to this world. So, some people say that, okay, this world is false.
Some others say, okay, this world may be real, but it has no foundation to it. There is nothing beyond this world. And then some others say, जगदाहूरणिश्वरम् Some people say, okay, there is no God beyond this world.
So, this world is unreal. This world is foundationless. And this world is, this world has no God in control.
There is no God in control. So, these are basically different Godless ideas. Then, actually, the question comes up, okay, then what is the purpose of existence? And then, किमन्यत् काम है तुकम् Actually, it is arisen from lust and it is meant for lust only.
It is just meant for fulfilling desires. So, if we look at this historically, you know, the idea of refuting God and remaining and becoming defiant of God’s authority, it is not new. Atheism has been there throughout history.
Because there are always people who want to rebel against God. And this world is a facility for those people to either reform or continue the rebellion. So, some souls can choose to continue that rebellion.
And that’s how there are, there will always be atheistic people. And we shouldn’t think that the Indian culture, we can’t whitewash the Indian culture. Some people say that, oh, because the Britishers came, you know, Indian culture got spoiled.
Or because the Muslims came, the Indian culture got spoiled. Actually, yes, there’s foreign invaders. Invaders did do a lot of damage, no doubt about it.
But we shouldn’t have the idea that in previous ages, everything was rosy cosy. No, there are problems there also. Actually, if we compare with the classical age, classical age means when the Greek civilisation was there in Europe, Greco-Roman civilisation was there.
And there are other civilisations in other parts of the world. So, among the classical languages, Sanskrit has produced the world’s largest store of atheistic literature. You know, more than Greek, more than Roman, more than other civilisations in their respective languages.
Sanskrit has produced huge number of atheistic literature. How did the atheistic literature come from? They came from Buddhism and Jainism. So, Buddhism and Jainism were basically rebel religions.
They rebelled against the Vedic authority. But it’s interesting that Buddhism and Jainism were atheistic without becoming grossly materialistic. It is very interesting.
Normally, we think or we equate atheism with materialism. So, Buddhism and Jainism, if we look at their philosophy, they have some ideas that they may even worship some gods. But their ultimate idea is there is no absolute controller.
And Buddha is also according to the Jains, Buddhists or the Tirthankars according to Jains, they are the enlightened beings. They are not the absolute truth. They are not the absolute truth is some kind of Shanti, passive and Nirvana like that complete negation of reality.
I have given a series of classes on Krishna consciousness and world religions. So, there I’ve talked about different religions. I won’t go into that over here.
But at this point, suffice it to say that atheism has been there at all times. Of course, Jainism and Buddhism, they were not culturally at odds so much with the mainstream Vedic culture. They also had renunciates.
They also had the concept of regulation of one’s material engagement so that one can pursue a reality beyond this world. And the understanding that this world is a place of misery and one needs to get out of this world if one wants to become free from misery. But so Prabhupada writes that Buddhism, impersonalism and Vaishnavism, all three are common, have the common understanding that this world is a place of misery and trying to enjoy in this world increases the misery.
But we have to get out of the world. Now, what is beyond the world? There are different opinions for that. So, anyway, atheism has been there throughout history.
But in the modern times, atheism has become intellectually glamorised. And where does the glamour of atheism come from? It has come from science. Or rather, it has not come from science.
Atheism has stolen that glamour from science. You know, atheism has masqueraded itself in the scientific garb. So, there are many… So, many people think that to be scientific means to be atheistic.
Actually, science is just a tool for acquiring knowledge. And that tool can be used positively to go towards God. That tool can be used negatively to go away from God.
Science is basically study of nature. Now, from the study of nature, one can either infer towards the transcendent controller. Or one can infer towards the rejection, the denial of a transcendent controller.
So, science is basically like a map or a mirror or a microscope. Basically, a tool for studying nature. It is not just a physical tool.
It is an intellectual tool. So, it has some… There is a methodology of studying. There are apparatus used for studying.
All that is there. But the important point is that because there have been theories which deny the existence of God, which reject God, because of that, and these theories are portrayed as scientific. Actually, they are not scientific.
They are at best pseudo-scientific. So, these theories which claim to explain everything about creation without needing any reference to God, so these theories have actually led to people thinking that to be religious, we have to be atheistic. And because of such thinking, because of thinking that to be religious, we have to be atheistic, they often give up religion.
And when they give up religion, what happens is that they end up becoming atheistic because of their attraction to science. असत्यम् अप्रतिष्ठम् ते जगधाहूर अनीश्वरम् जगधाहूर अनीश्वरम् That there is no Ishwara in control of the world. And that was… We discussed earlier about atheism, deism and atheism.
So, prior to Newton’s times, the world was understood to be theistic. Theistic means that God is the creator and God is the controller. That was the mainstream understanding.
But then, Newton proposed the laws of motion and subsequently more and more phenomena started being explained in terms of laws. Therefore, the idea was, okay, the laws are governing the behaviour of matter. Then there is no role or room for God.
So, therefore, in the functioning of the universe. So, the idea came that God may be the creator but God is not the controller. That is deism.
God is the creator, not the controller. And that continued till Darwin’s time. And when Darwin proposed the theory of evolution, then that was… Actually, even at Darwin’s time, Darwin also said that the evidence for his theory is extremely flimsy.
But he said in future research, we will be able to find the evidence. But anyway, his point was, his theory, although the evidence was flimsy, if we consider survival of the fittest, then Darwin’s theory is actually unfit to survive. The evidence is so flimsy for it.
Not only is the evidence flimsy, even the theory itself is flimsy. I’m not going to that subject here. But the important point is that the theory became popular, if you look at the history of science, because it became a bulwark for atheism.
It became an intellectual basis for atheists to reject God. And not only reject God, but to revile God. Revile means to criticise as old-fashioned, criticise as mythological, criticise as unscientific.
So, it became a tool for beating down God. And it became widely accepted. And once it became accepted, so, atheism acquired scientific glamour.
And atheism, belief in God, started to seem to many people to be unscientific. But it is not. Science is a tool.
And there are many of the greatest scientists in the world have used science and have from science inferred the existence of God by their scientific studies. So anyway, what happened after this was, once atheism comes up, there is no God, then there is no basis for right or wrong. So, what is the level? If there is no next life, there is no higher reality, there is no higher controller, then I can do whatever I want to do.
And if I can get away with it, if I’m clever enough, I am powerful enough to get away with it, then who is there to stop me? I’m perfect. So, that is the idea that comes up. In such an idea, the floodgates for immorality get opened.
So, the atheist’s ultimate secret is that, actually it doesn’t even have to be a secret, but often it is that, you know, there is nothing wrong. If something gives me enjoyment, let me do it. That’s all.
So, that’s how immorality has come up. And we see within 50 to 100 years after theory of evolution being proposed, 1859 was the time when Darwin wrote his book, The Origin of Species. Then Sigmund Freud came along in 50 to 100 years after, within 50 years after that.
And he came up with his theories of sexuality, you know, perverse theories where he said, actually everything is just based on sexuality. And he sexualised everything. And he sexualised everything.
Actually, the purpose of… He made religion seem to be like a disease, a neurosis. And when he made religion seem to be like a disease, he said, actually, we have to become sexually free. Whatever sexual urges are there, act on them.
And he had some… When he was a child, he had some sexual attraction to his mother, which, of course, he could not act on because of social morality. And then he extrapolated from his experience. And he said that actually all boys have sexual attraction towards their mothers.
And all girls have sexual attraction towards their father. And because their parents… Because people are not allowed to act on the sexual attractions. So, there are so many problems which come up in society.
So, then he said, actually, everything is based on sex. And now we understand that sex is a predominant force in material life. But the idea that everything is reduced to sexuality, that is a distortion of reality, perversion of reality.
And his idea was, OK, have free sexual expression. And once he opened the floodgates, once his ideas, which were more of his creative speculation, imagination than any scientific inference, they were thought to be scientific and taught as scientific. And the result was that then… Then sexualisation, what is called a sexual freedom, what is called a sexual expression, that these are all just words for… Attractive-seeming words for immorality.
So, these became… Again, they acquired a scientific glamour. It is scientific. There are no rules and regulations.
Just enjoy. And now we have such devastating consequences. Divorces have skyrocketed.
So many children are born outside of marriages. And the whole of society has become extremely… Extremely… Troubled because of this. So, the whole result has been that people are suffering more and more.
And because they are suffering more and more, kimanyat kama hai tukam. Kimanyat kama hai tukam means that what else is there apart from sex which is the goal of life. Now Prabhupada makes an interesting point that actually, although the demons say that life is a dream, they are very expert in enjoying this dream.
What does he mean by this? You know, that impersonalists… Many people fancy impersonalism. They say that they fancy impersonalism. That means that they like the idea, oh, there is a reality in which we all have to become one.
And this world is false. But even these people who consider the world to be false, actually, they are expert. They want to enjoy this world.
They don’t want any regulations. in their conduct in this world. As this whole world is an illusion and you can act in whichever way you want, so we will act for enjoyment.
It makes no difference how we act. But yes, if this world is false, then why do we want to get more and more entangled in this world? We should want to get disentangled from the world. But they don’t do that.
So, there is this double standards in their philosophy and their action. This world is unreal. We want to come out of the unreal.
Why are we engaging in desires? And why are we expanding the desires and the activities that increase our engagement in the dream? So, is this world a dream? It is a dream. But in what sense? It is in the sense that it is temporary. But while it is there, it is real for us.
The world is real in the sense that the matter is the energy of Krishna. And we are in the material world right now. So, we can’t wish away either the material world, nor can we wish away our entanglement in the material world.
There is a process that has to be followed by which we can get out of this world. So, dream conveys temporality, not necessarily unreality. And that temporality, temporality means temporariness, temporality applies even for the waking state.
The world that we are experiencing right now is also temporary. Our bodily condition is also temporary. We will not be in this body forever.
So, when we say that the world is like a dream, that does not necessarily mean that the dream is false and so the world is false. No, just like the dream is temporary and should not be taken too seriously, this world is temporary and should not be taken too seriously. But we have to go beyond this world through a process, not just by wishing it away.
And that process involves regulating of our conduct. The demons don’t want to regulate their conduct. They just enjoy whatever they want to enjoy.
And that is unfortunate. So, now, let’s go to the next verse. So, ekam drishtim, this drishti, this vision, this understanding, all that we are understanding, kimanyat kamayit kam, there is no other, there is no God and there is no other purpose apart from sex.
Once they have accepted such a vision, the soul is lost. People are less intelligent. And what happens? prabhavanti ugra karmana so they flourish in doing ugra karma.
Ugra karma is terrible activities painful activities painful for them painful for others and kshayaya jagato hitaha so jagato ahita ahita is unbeneficial and kshayaya is destructive so their overall activities are at best unbeneficial at worst they are devastatingly destructive so etam drishtim avashtambhyam so what happens when people succumb to to atheism and immorality they then that etam drishtim avashtambhyam so the soul is lost nashta atmanu so this nashta is in a metaphorical sense actually the soul can never be destroyed we discussed about atmaha killers of the soul in the isopanishad so the soul cannot be killed but nashta atmanu the soul’s spiritual awareness the soul’s spiritual inclinations are killed because of excessive material nashta atmanu alpabuddhaya alpabuddhaya means because of having very less intelligence alpabuddhaya and what is the they may have intelligence but their intelligence is restricted to the realm of matter restricted to the realm of matter you know the earth bound are the earth bound dearth is insufficiency inadequacy so the earth bound are dearth bound the earth bound means those whose vision is limited to not to earth earth is representative of matter and material world so think oh you know this is where we have to live and this is where we have to enjoy and there’s nothing more to do in life so the earth bound are dearth bound dearth means shortage so what happens is if we think that this world is the only place for enjoyment then we want to enjoy as much as possible but the fundamental paradox in economics is the paradox for fundamental problem in economics is the problem for everyone that there are limited resources and there are unlimited desires so how can unlimited desires be satisfied with limited resources they can’t be satisfied that’s why there are haves and have-nots and the resources of the world are unequally distributed and the have-nots feel dissatisfied they feel dearth bound you know oh i want more and more and more and more and actually the haves they have have a lot but even they are dearth bound because they have greed and greed makes the wealthy needy greed makes the wealthy needy i need more need more they don’t need it but they think that they need it they feel we can’t live without it so in this way as long as the person has a materialistic vision of life no matter how much that person has still the feeling will be i want more more more and one will stay dissatisfied so one will do all kinds of terrible work to try to somehow fulfil the desires one just can’t fulfil the desires because the desires are so complex and the desires are so entangling and the desires are so insatiable so what will happen is the person will be working working furiously in a almost like a frenzy to get more and more and more and never be satisfied in a modern society is lives can be described in three words wws wws is worldwide stupidity what is this wws people do what do people they have to work and they work six hours not six hours eight hours not ten hours twelve hours fourteen hours they work and then when they come back after work what do they do people spend their leisure time primarily in two activities one is they come home and watch tv and when they watch tv what happens the tv is filled with there are many programmes programmes also show wealthy people sexually attractive people and that fills them with lust and greed and then there are so many advertisements now essentially what is the advertisement advertisement is basically telling us it may say take this product but when he’s saying they take this product indirectly it is saying that is bad you know your hairstyle is wrong your shoes are wrong your dress is wrong your watch is wrong your cell phone is wrong your house is wrong and what should you change it get a new one so naturally when people watch they watch tv that’s the major activity that they do when they come home then after that they have to go and shop so shop purchase this purchase that purchase that purchase that you know there is a whole addiction called a shopaholism shopaholism means addiction to shopping people just can’t stop shopping i want that i want that i want that i want that and then the shopaholics they just spend they just spend their money like anything and now even if today’s society is so entangled if you don’t have money still have credit card if you don’t have credit card you don’t take further loans just spend money and people get bound now naturally if you spend money then you have to work more and when you work more we feel more tired we feel i need a break and then when we come home we want to watch more tv and when we watch more tv then what happens we feel oh i want to purchase this and we want to shop more and then it just becomes an entanglement work watch shop w w s worldwide stupidity that’s how it is you know so people have to work so uh so painfully often Prabhupad here talks about weapons of mass destruction so human intelligence should be used to do benefit to other living beings but here human intelligence be used to make such weapons you know there are amount of weapons of mass destruction that are there the whole earth the population of the earth can be wiped out actually so it’s terrible and now the human creativity to be used for such a destructive purpose human intelligence it is a great tragedy so why are these weapons happening now we may say that in the past there were also weapons of mass destruction but there were there are powerful weapons like brahmastra and others but they were not primarily weapons of mass destruction now brahmastra is primarily used it was so precise that it would kill the embryo in the womb without killing even the mother so it was certainly a weapon of powerful destruction but it’s not a weapon of mass destruction now mass destruction could happen if the weapon is if say one brahmastra and another brahmastra comes together and improperly it comes together then it can create the problem that’s why arjuna was anxious and ashwathama had a brahmastra and very expertly both had to be withdrawn that can be done so today’s weapons are weapons of indiscriminate destruction indiscriminate anyone and everyone may be destroyed and terrorism which is there today terrorism is the opposite of kshatriya mentality kshatriyas actually they will fight with opponents who are equal who are equipped and who are engaged who are alert so today the terrorists attack people who are not equal they attack civilians they are not equipped they don’t have any weapons and they are not engaged or they’re not alert now innocent i mean the civilians are civilians are just going along maybe in a shopping mall or a theatre or in a commercial complex business office and suddenly the machine with machine guns people attack or throw bombs or send aeroplanes into the towers so this is all horrible so of course terrorism is a complex issue in general but the point is that there have always been people throughout history who were who were having destructive mindsets but in kaliyuga these people with destructive mindsets have been in given such have the chance it is they have got access or they may get access to such horribly destructive weapons and by the clicking of one button by some pervert thousands of people can die which is the great misfortune so weapons of mass destruction now weapons of mass destruction are so they are so destructive that they are not even destroyable easily that means they can cause destruction but if we decide we don’t want them not to destroy them often it’s difficult to destroy them also sometimes scientists decide what to do so with this we decide that we don’t want these weapons so if you bury them under the ground then it will it will only poison the soil if you burn them it will poison the atmosphere if you throw it into the ocean then it will poison the water and there are fish in it and we won’t be able to eat the fish the aquatic life ecosystem will get disrupted so there are some proposals now that these weapons of mass destruction they should be put in a rocket on on top of a rocket and they should be thrown out into outer space so we are not we are not satisfied polluting the earth pollute outer space now send the pollution outer space now now of course there are devatas you know they’ll send it down again just like trishank was sent down from above they’ll be sent down over here so anyway i’m just speaking this in a lighter way the point here is that so Prabhupada also talks about these weapons of mass destruction so the demoniac creates such things so human intelligence used to do good to others not harm to others and unfortunately the best human intelligence today is being used for such harmful things now we can’t blame science entirely for this at the start of the second world war technology came really into big play because in the first world war aeroplanes were not so much there so trench warfare was there both the armies would dig trenches and stay deadlock in front of each other but once the planes came in the trenches would be transformed into graves you’re under the ground will put you permanently under the ground with a bomb from above so technology came into a big play in the second world war so what happened there were many scientists principle scientists they said we cannot use our intelligence to kill to make weapons we’ll kill our fellow human beings so they resigned but then there are other people money rules money ultimately money is what matters for most people so other people came up and took up the role and you know Einstein himself bitterly regretted the letter that he sent to President Eisenhower saying that you know Japan that Germany may be having nuclear weapons so America should develop the nuclear weapons eventually when Japan was and the extent of destruction that happened after that that was one of the biggest regrets of Einstein’s life so it is very sadly symbolic that the greatest insight of that the best insight of the best brain best scientific brain of the scientist of the 20th century led to the worst destruction the best Einstein is widely considered to be the best brain of the 20th century at least from the material perspective and his best insight was e is equal to wmc square e is equal to mc square the interchangeability of matter and energy and what that led to that was the basis by which the nuclear bomb was the atom bomb was developed and that led to the worst man-made destructions so it’s unfortunate so though there’ll always be people with destructive mentality but today those people can have such a terrible power that they can break havoc everywhere so Shri Prabhupada also talks about animal killing also such people materialistic people are considered to be advanced of human civilisation such materialistic inventions are considered to be advancement of human civilisation but the result is that people grow more and more violent and more and more cruel cruel to animals and cruel to other human beings so so kama is there in everyone but here what is happening they’re taking ashray of kama so kama becomes their whole whole and soul of life instead of taking ashray of krishna they take shelter ashray of kama what does it mean to take ashray of kama you know people have this idea there is no problem so big that sex can’t solve it you know just whatever the problem just have sex the problem will get solved forget it all now it doesn’t get solved it just gets postponed and often it becomes not just postponed it becomes aggravated further so because often to get pleasure through sex if one wants to keep getting pleasure then one has to increase the threshold and do more and more different kinds of sex and with more partners and then that’s why in this kama maashrit that which can never be satisfied so everybody has lust and there is a civilised way in which that lust can be and lust can be engaged and purified that is through marriage dharmartha was the progression in vedic culture and marriage has been there in other cultures also but here kama maashrit the shelter of kama they think that yes through kama we will solve our problem actually devotees understand there is no problem so big that krishna can’t solve it but the demon and godless people think that there is no problem that sex can’t solve so just enjoy so that is kama maashrit this kind of devotion to kama you know taking shelter of kama that is disastrous so there are so many diseases and so many divorces and so many sexual crimes that happen because of uncontrolled lust and people think that fulfilling lust is the goal of life that they are filled with arrogance and pride and prestige so our ashayas talk about cross sex and subtle sex subtle sex is a desire for honour and mohath grahitva asad grahan mohath with because of illusion what happens grahitva they accept asad grahan they accept that which is asad that is temporary they accept it and they think this is real this is this is it almost eternal you know if all the movies they often end with and they lived happily forever so they lived happily forever is a white lie and it’s exactly opposite of dukkhalayam ashashvatam happily dukkhalayam and forever ashashvatam so it’s a white lie but people accept it and people want to believe it yes this is how it will mohath grahitva asad grahan grahitva asad that they accept it as true and then pravartante ashuchivrataha pravartante pravartante means they engage in and how do they engage in ashuchivrataha ashuchivrataha is unclean vows so bandhavidyabhushan explains that this can refer to the left-handed tantra you know the left-handed the left-handed tantra is where people engage in sex in all sort of indiscriminate ways and they think that sex is a means to spiritual advancement and they do black magic and all those things like that so that when they use this this kind of they do inauspicious activities and they do it with determination make a vrata of it ashuchivrataha that is that is disastrous so ashuchivrata people have the idea that there is this guinness book of world records so it’s there where they put two different kinds of records so what kind of records do they have all different kinds of records one record is there are couples who kiss each other and how long can you kiss how long can you just keep your lips next to each other’s lips so the record was that some couple in thailand kept kissing each other for 47 hours now even from the point of view of basic human hygiene the mouth secretes saliva and there is no pleasure over there just sticking the mouth together for 47 hours but just for the sake of a record and then all the newspapers it was a big splash in the newspapers so this is ashuchivrata so actually doing that which is completely perverse so this sort of things happen because people have just no it all starts with people have no reference point for understanding what life is meant for and how life is to be so there are so many examples of ashuchivrata we won’t go into the specifics but when people don’t have a reference point to scriptures then this is what happens you know there was some model in model in india so in india’s the world cup was there so head ram of india’s world cup finals the model said that you know if india wins then for the indian national team’s pleasure i will strip myself completely and then that became a big headline in newspapers and now we said what happens when people don’t have a moral balance moral reference then then they become imbalanced so there are there are the against to fight violence against animals cruelty against animals in slaughterhouse and other places there is organisation called PETA which does a lot of good work people for ethical treatment of animals but they go overboard in their devotion to animals and in order to attract advertisements or to attract publicity for their cause they often have women exhibiting their bodies and then they will have pictures where they have parts of women and then they will show some animal and there is a parts of animals also and they say oh just as i have bodily parts animals also have bodily parts just as you won’t eat me don’t eat the animals and they expose the and those women who expose their bodies for the cause of animals they consider oh you’re so selfless now it’s not selfless it is brainless so anyway what happened was the when this woman when this model said that i will strip for the indian cricketer so some PETA people in india said that you know those cricketers are so filthy rich why are you stripping for them if you want to strip for the poor animals you know for the cause of protecting animals so there’s just no moral reference for people to decide what is right and what is wrong so all this mohan kriyitva sadkram so krishna will now further in the next verse describe how sense gratification and wealth these are the primary infatuations of the demoniac people that we will discuss in the next class thank you very much