Don’t sharpen the axe in the criminal’s hands; cure the criminal
Thank you Hare Krishna don't sharpen the axe in the hands of a criminal reform the criminal Albert Einstein said that our entire much praised technological progress and our civilization in general are like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal now Einstein was one of the greatest scientific minds in the last century and he devoted himself to science yet he is candid enough to recognize the danger of indiscriminate technological progress especially when it is divorced from human progress progress in the growth of human character so an axe can be used for constructive purposes but an axe in the hands of criminal is dangerous now of course what the how technology correlates with the axe can be understood in various ways you know we have used technology to abuse, to violate to disrupt nature, to exploit nature and that has brought us to almost something like Armageddon the climate change problems which can lead to huge natural disasters and natural disturbances but more immediately for our, as a threat to our human existence itself we have many weapons of mass destruction which can wipe out entire cities and movements, even Albert Einstein himself he was a person who suggested to the American premier that time Eisenhower that better you develop new nuclear weapons otherwise Hitler will have those weapons and that will turn the tables terribly if he gets the weapons first and it was Einstein's letter that led to the Manhattan project which eventually led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Einstein actually saw the extent of the destruction that had been caused by the atom bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki he was devastated and he considered the letter that he had sent to the president as one of the greatest mistakes of his life because apparently Hitler was nowhere close to actually making atom bomb at that time and it is a sad testimony to the nature of our times that the greatest scientific insight of the greatest mind the greatest scientific mind of last century led to the greatest disaster of the last century greatest man made disaster so greatest scientific insight of the greatest scientific mind was the relativity theory E is equal to mc square the interconvertibility of matter and energy which Einstein proposed and that interconvertibility of matter and energy was the foundation for the development of the atom bomb so we see here that the weapons of mass destruction are not just a small axe which can maim a few people here and there they are like a terrible danger that can massacre an entire city or even a state so Hiroshima and Nagasaki the problems are of of the residual radiations and the health hazards because of that the problem still persists to this day to some extent now now we have many dangerous power hungry dictators and fringe groups who may acquire weapons of mass destruction and they can unleash disaster they can cause massacres so it's a great threat now what is it that makes people so terribly destructive so technological progress is like the axe but what is it that makes the whole axe holder a pathological criminal not just a criminal but a pathological criminal now a criminal is one who does wrong but a pathological criminal has got the head twisted the brain twisted the mind distorted in such a way that pathological criminals don't even have a conscience they don't feel that they are doing anything wrong often they are nonchalant or even self-righteous about doing wrong things so the Bhagavad Gita explains that there are inner perception distorters which are our inner enemies they distort our perception and they make us do wrong things as if they were right and three such perceptions distorts our lust anger and greed so here it is said that actually these three gates to hell lust, anger and greed now we see that because of lust many times rapists they watch all sorts of ghastly porn images using technology and then they perpetrate those sort of brutalities on their victims anger we discussed weapons of mass destruction and weapons of torture people with anger beat up others and often they get ideas how to do it using technology and greed also we see technology fuels greed people see such opulence and they feel that I can't get an opulence so let me just destroy in fact much of the violence that we see today especially in terms of class violence or group violence is because people see prosperity that seems unattainable for them and then they want to destroy those who have the prosperity so the point here is that actually in many ways technology aggravates lust, anger, greed it makes the pathology worse and thus people do unconscionable things without even having a pinch of conscience so this is the tragedy of today's society Martin Luther King also said that we have guided missiles and misguided men our technological power has outrun our spiritual power so now what is the solution to this we need we have invested so much energy in developing ourselves technologically which is external to us we have to develop ourselves spiritually internally by which we can gain control over our inner enemies and authentic spirituality actually enables us to see the connectedness of everything our connectedness with others and our connectedness with God who is the source of all of us and that connectedness enables us to see the promises of power and pleasure that come from lust, anger and greed to be delusions and then we can resist them so spiritual practices like yoga, meditation and prayer they give us experience of higher spiritual happiness and that also makes the allure of lust, anger, greed more resistible. Now of course it's sadly true that lust, anger, greed can even hijack people who are purportedly religionists and that's how we have the specter of religious violence and religious terrorism but here the problem is not religion the problem is the greed the anger that has sabotaged the minds of those who have then who have then masquerading their anger and greed with a religious guard.
So the problem whether a person is supposedly religious or non-religious, the problem remains the inner eminence of lust, anger and greed and the solution is to practice authentic spirituality just as we have spent so much intellectual energy in doing scientific research if we spend some amount of intellectual energy to do spiritual research then the Bhagavad Gita is a time-honored book that can offer us many breakthrough insights which will enable us to break down the hold of the inner enemies on our heart and enable us to set examples and provide tips and practices and principles to help others to break down the hold of the inner enemies on them and in that way we can all contribute to making the world a better a safer place we can contribute to curing the pathological criminal and we can ensure that the acts of technology is thereby used for constructive purposes. Thank you. Hare Krishna.