Gita Overview Mumbai 16.8-12 Atheists abuse science for demoniac purposes

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So we continue with the 16th chapter.
We are continuing now. We discussed till verse 7. So we start from this section now talks about, as you remember, we discussed the overview. First it talks about the qualities and then it talks about the activities.
So among the qualities, the first quality is described that they don’t follow scripture. Now when they don’t follow scripture and they don’t have proper behaviour. So in general, you know, if you want to understand a person, basically we understand by two ways.
There are beliefs and there are actions. So these are the two defining attributes of anyone. What a person believes and how a person acts.
And even in religion, there are these two aspects, orthopraxy and orthodoxy. Orthodoxy means doxy is related doctrine. Orthodoxy means there are traditional doctrines.
Orthopraxy means practise. So orthopraxy means there are traditional practises. So this daxis and praxis, daxis is beliefs and praxis is practises, actions.
So these two define everyone. How do we know how a person is, how that person acts and how that person believes. So now here Krishna is talking about the daxis and the praxis of the demoniac people.
So he gives the introduction first by telling that they don’t believe in scripture. So the previous verse to a behaviour. Although their behaviour is not based on scripture.
So their beliefs are not according to scripture. That’s implied over there. But when Prarottinjanivartinjananavidurasura, that primarily talks about their actions, that they don’t follow scriptures.
Now after describing their actions, why don’t they follow scriptures? Because their beliefs are heterodox. Their beliefs are contrary to scripture. So what is their belief? That Krishna describes in the next verse.
Normally that’s how we look at a person. First we look at the actions, then we look at the thoughts. We can’t see the thoughts first.
So first Krishna describes the actions, then he describes the thoughts. Jagat ahur. This jagat is, ahur is, they say.
What do they say about this jagat? Asatyam apratishtham te. It is unreal and without any foundation. So now in the 15th chapter Krishna said that actually the pratishtha of the Vishvaru, of the upside down brand new tree, antam na madhyam na punasthavan.
What is the verse? Rupam asehat to blabhyate, nanto na chaate, atna cha sam pratishtham. So that actually the foundation cannot be known. So there are two different things.
One is we cannot know the foundation, other is there is no foundation only. So there are two different ideas. And scriptures say that the foundation is so profound that if we just try to explore the world, we cannot come to its end.
We cannot understand what is at its root. Just like Brahmaji, when he tried to explore the lotus, he went up and down and tried to go down, down, down. Just by his efforts he could not reach.
So that is, that Brahmaji’s exploration is a demonstration of this. One cannot understand by one’s own efforts what is the root. But these non-godly people, the demoniac people, their idea is because we cannot know, they say there is no root only.
There is no foundation at all. Asatyam apratishtham te. Now, scripture is like a reflection of society.
Remember long ago I had given a class here about how scripture is like a mirror, a muscle, a map. The temple hall Bhagavatam. So scripture is like a mirror.
Mirror means that just as I can see myself in a mirror, I point a mirror, that person can see himself in the mirror. So like that, scripture mirrors society. What does that mean? That if we look at the traditional commentators, like say Ramacharya, Shankaracharya, or other commentators, they say that each of these verses refers to different qualities, different kinds of people.
So asatyam is one philosopher. Apratishtham is another philosophy. Anishvaram is another philosophy.
And kivanyat kama hetukam is another philosophy. So now which are these philosophies, why they refer that way to that philosophy, for that we have to study those philosophies. And that is not essential for us.
So because scripture is a mirror of society, that means that these, not exactly the same ideas, but similar ideas are present even today in society. And Shila Prabhupada reflects this to talk about today’s society. Like Prabhupada in the next verse will talk about how this verse indirectly foresees the development of nuclear weapons.
So what Shila Prabhupada does is, there is scripture, scripture may have been spoken in a particular context, and it may have directly a context specific application. But scripture is not limited to its context. And scripture essentially talks about principles that apply to all contexts.
So today, if you talk about, there was, in the six systems of philosophy, the six systems of philosophy are also not static. They are also annotated. Sometimes there were scholars who debated among the six systems of philosophy.
So like we discussed Sankhya, there is theistic Sankhya and there is atheistic Sankhya. So these are philosophies of, for example, Anishvaram, philosophies which don’t accept Ishvara. So they, in the time of the Bhagavad Gita, they could have referred to particular philosophies.
But now primarily the two main philosophies that take people away from God is material monism and spiritual monism. What is monism? Monism is oneness. So generally, mayavad is spiritual monism.
There is only one thing. What is that? Sarvam kalmam idam brahma. Everything is spirit.
So that is the impersonalist. In contrast to that, there are the materialists, almost like fanatical materialists. They say that matter is the only thing that exists.
So there are material monists and there are spiritual monists. And both of them, basically, both the ideas militate away from the devotional aspect. So asatyam apratishtham te jagadahu ranishvaram.
So asatyam is the idea that this world is false. So that is the idea of the spiritual monists. They say actually this world is maya.
Only that is a reality. Apratishtham means this world has no foundation. That means this is the only reality.
There is no reality beyond this. That is the material monists. So asatyam apratishtham te.
That means, some people say that this world is not real. Other people say there is nothing beyond this world. This world is the only reality.
And jagadahu ranishvaram. Okay, this jagad is there, but there is no Ishwar beyond that. This jagad is all that is.
So in a sense, it is similar to apratishtham, but the difference is ranishvaram especially emphasises that there is no God at all. So beyond that, Krishna says, then what? So kamahaitukam means desire. Desire is the motivation which makes people act.
What other motivation can be there for people to act apart from desire? Aparasparasambhutam. Aparasparasambhutam means by contact with each other. Paraspara.
So then we ask this. So now, actually speaking, there is a lot of complexity over here. If you go to the traditional Sankhya, what it says is, in Sankhya, the idea is there is Purusha and Prakriti, but Purusha, they don’t consider Purusha’s name as Ishwaram.
They say in Sankhya, Atheistic Sankhya, there is Purusha and there is Prakriti, but that’s all there is. There is no Supreme God. So in Sankhya, the idea is that the suffering is caused by the entanglement of Purusha and Prakriti.
And all the action in this world, what is the cause? Kim anyatkamahaitukam. Actually, when the Purusha wants to enjoy Prakriti, that is the cause of entanglement. There is no other cause beyond this.
So, apratishtham anishwaram means there is no cause beyond Purusha and Prakriti. In Sankhya, the idea is, Sankhya also, they understand that when the Purusha gets attached to Prakriti, that causes suffering. But their idea is Purusha just has to become detached from that.
And then what does the Purusha do? In that Sankhya, the various philosophers have a lot of debate about what happens to ultimate destiny. So if they think that Purusha is the ultimate reality, then that Sankhya goes towards impersonalism a little bit. But Sankhya focusses primarily on Purusha and Prakriti.
That’s why one of the names of Vishnu in the Vishnu Sastranam is Purusha Pradhaneshwaraha. That he is the Ishwara of Purusha and Pradhan. Pradhan is the unmanifested stage of Prakriti.
So the idea is that there is no anishwaram, there is no Ishwara. So kim anyat kama hetu? Actually Prabhupada makes things simple for us. Purusha and Prakriti can sometimes seem metaphorical.
Okay, there is a Purusha and there is a Prakriti. Prabhupada makes it very simple. There is male and female.
And materialistic people think that the whole purpose of existence is the interaction of male and female. And to a large extent if you look at the history of western thought, modern western thought, to the extent this first line came true, to that extent second line also happened. First line is what? There is no ultimate reality, there is no God in control.
So that’s what happened say from the time of Darwin’s theory of evolution onwards. And then Darwin was in 1859 roughly. That was the year when he published his book, Origin of Species.
Then 20 years later he published his book about human races. And by that time evolution had become largely accepted, mainstream thought had become. But just 50 years later there was a Sigmund Freud who came up.
And Sigmund Freud’s idea was everything is motivated by sex. There is nothing beyond sex. And he tried to sort of, he sexualised everything.
All relationships he tried to, he had his own school of psychoanalysis. And by that he tried to, all the problems he said, all the problems people faces because they had some sexual repression, some sexual abuse. And lot of craziness came up because of that.
I think I mentioned earlier about Oedipus complex, Viagra complex, how in childhood Sigmund Freud had a sexual attraction towards his mother. And he generalised from that and he said everybody has sexual attraction towards their mother. And because society doesn’t allow you to act sexually towards your mother, that’s why we all get repressed.
And if you want to avoid mental problems, we should end all sexual repression, something like that his idea was. So similarly he said every girl has a sexual attraction towards her father. And this sort of ideas, although they were not scientific, but because he was a psychiatrist, these ideas were just speculations, but they came in a scientific garb.
And they gave intellectual rationalisation for the free sexuality that pervaded America later. And then it came all over the world. So the idea was, what else is there beyond sex? There is nothing.
Actually, ultimately everything is motivated by sex. So this sort of ideas come up because people believe that there is nothing higher to life beyond what is seen in this world. And what is seen primarily in this world is that people are animated by the male-female attraction.
Today, there are hardline atheists. These people are people who hate religion. They are the modern versions of the demons that we see.
One of these atheists, he was asked, if I was given a choice between ending all rape in the world and ending all religion in the world, he said I would choose to end all religion in the world. Because he said religion has caused more suffering than rape. Now what statistic, what survey, what logic, there is no logic to it.
This is seeping with envy. So their idea is that for humanity to live, religion must die. And these people, what has happened is, as devotees we may say science is bad, but science has a lot of respectability in society.
And science does not lead to atheism. But unfortunately, science is basically a tool for acquiring knowledge. But when science today has been taken over by atheists, actually science can never justify atheism.
Science cannot talk anything about ultimate causes. It cannot talk about God exists or God doesn’t exist. But many of the popular scientists, popular scientists means even in science, there are scientists who do research and there are scientists who are popularisers of science.
Popularisers means those who present science to a contemporary audience. They write science in a way that general people can understand. So these science popularisers are mostly atheists.
So because of which, in the public eye, being scientific has become equated with being atheistic. But that is not true. So even in our case, it is not, our debate is not against science.
Our debate is against, there are two worldviews. There is the religious and the spiritual worldview and there is the materialistic worldview. And these two worldviews have always been in debate throughout history.
Now what has happened is, in the modern culture, science has tremendous respectability. And science has been misappropriated by materialism. So that the credibility of science has become equated with the credibility of materialism and atheism.
And that’s why what Srila Prabhupada wanted, for example, through the Bhaktivedanta Institute and through other scientific research wings, that science should not be allowed to be monopolised by atheists. Science should not be monopolised by materialists. Because otherwise, the world will get a misrepresentation of the intellectual side of spirituality.
It is not that for one to be intellectually respectable, one has to be atheistic. It is not that to be scientific, one has to be atheistic. So this kind of poison has come increasingly to India also.
It has not become so widespread. So traditionally, one fanatical response brings out another fanatical response. So because of Islamic fanaticism, after the 9-11 and other terrorist attacks, so that sort of violence on the religious side gave right-wing atheists, right-wing means extremist, right-wing atheists, it gave sort of weapons for them to attack religion with.
So they say that it’s only because of religion that people can kill thousands of people like this, had it not been for religion, they would not have killed. So now, the fact of the matter is that, that only two times in recent history that there has been an atheistic government in the world, has been China and Russia. And I talk this in my Oh My God book also, there also this point is that religion leads to violence.
So actually, in China and Russia, without any war with any other country, during the 60-70 years when the atheistic communist government was ruling, the government itself killed more Chinese and Russian people than what were killed in all the wars of the 20th century. All the wars of the 20th century, and not just more than that, three times more than that. So the idea is, it’s not that religion causes violence, it is ultimately people who have a particular mentality by which they become violent.
So if they are Rajoguna, Tamoguna, they are atheists or materialists, they’ll become violent. But the difference is, religion in general teaches, to some extent at least, the value of the sacredness of life. On the other hand, atheism has no value to the sacredness of life.
The idea is, whatever is best from the material point of view, do that. And the best from the material point of view, I discussed how during Hitler’s rule, Hitler had the idea of eugenics. Eugenics means, try to create a superhuman race.
And for that, all those human beings who are physically weak, they should be eliminated. So anybody who was blind, anybody who was deaf, anybody who was physically handicapped, anybody who was mentally retarded, just send them to the gas chambers. Eliminate them.
Eliminate them. And this was done, not in some corner of some country by some fanatics. It was done by the government and supported by the best intellectuals of that time.
So the scientists at that time were pioneering this. Now I wouldn’t like to use the word scientists. They were atheists who were doing science.
It’s not that science is bad. But their idea was, by the Darwin theory of evolution, the fit have to survive, the unfit have to die. So unfit are anyway going to die, we will help them along the way.
We will kill them faster. So that nature will go forward and nature will progress. So actually, it is atheism that leads to terrible consequences.
So in India, there are rationalist associations, which are also quite aggressively atheistic. So these rationalist associations, they say that to be rationalist means to be atheistic. Because we don’t believe in anything rational.
We don’t believe in God and magic. So we have to very clearly understand that as devotees also, we don’t believe in magic and miracles so much. We understand in principle they happen.
But that is not what we focus on. Yes, we say in principle that is possible. But in practise, that is not very important.
Prabhupada, he sort of, many spiritual teachers, they hike up the idea of magic. You know, I can do this miracle, I can produce stone, I can produce ash. And the atheistic people, they say, this is all social people, we are scientists.
You know, we have technology. You people, you just believe in magic. But Prabhupada says, your technology and that magic, both are same only.
You know, what did atheistic people hate? The atheistic people said, anybody who shows magic, we don’t like you. These people are, they just peddle magic and they peddle, cheat common people. But Prabhupada says that both scientists who use technology, atheists who use technology to do all kinds of exaltery and some so-called spiritualists who use some magical siddhis, they are both in the same category.
Why? Because both are interested ultimately in manipulating matter. One might be by a way which is scientifically understood, another might be by a way which is scientifically not understood. But both are ultimately interested in manipulating matter.
And Prabhupada says, we are not interested in that. We want to go beyond matter. What else is there beyond kama? There are many features in nature which have no basis from the, say, peacock has such beautiful feathers.
So the peacock feathers have given quite so much joy. But the peacock feathers gave nightmares to Darwin. Why? Because he just couldn’t figure out, there is no other word which is transitional, halfway between peacock’s such magnificent feathers and other words such simple feathers.
So how did this bird evolve into such big feathers? Now what is the purpose? So he says, oh, the peacock has so much feathers because it wants us to attract the opposite sex. That’s all. But then, you know, all other species are able to attract the opposite sex without such feathers.
So why does the peacock, why does peacock need feathers to attract anyone? Is it that, you know, she-peacocks are more difficult to attract than all other birds? Nothing like that. So you see, if you just leave things to there is so much that cannot be explained. That just by reducing everything to sexuality, there is so much in nature that cannot be explained.
And this idea is very disastrous. It completely dehumanises people. It just makes people into a sexual, not just all of us have sexuality as one side of our life, but it just reduces people to nothing more than sexual beings.
So that is unfortunate. Krishna will describe the next verse. What is the consequence of this? So I’ve discussed this verse also largely in the previous verse, but so this previous verse talks about the world view.
And this verse talks about the consequence of the world view. And what happens? First the soul is lost. So people think there is no such thing as a soul.
And this whole philosophy is based on very less intelligence. People have intelligence, but their intelligence is deficient. It’s deficient in terms of it cannot perceive spiritual truths.
Now where did Krishna use the word Alpa earlier? Alpamedas. Good. Alpamedas is talking about demigod worshippers.
So essentially where does Krishna use the word Alpa? People who cannot see beyond material things. Even the demigod worshippers, they are interested only in material gains. And here, this Alpabuddhaya, they don’t see anything beyond matter.
They may not even believe in the devatas. But the common principle is they don’t see anything beyond matter. Alpa.
So buddhi is there, but it is very little. And prabhavanti ugra karmana. Ugra karmana is terrible karma.
Terrible, terrible karma. Kshayaya jagato hitaha. Karma which leads to destruction of the whole world.
So at worst there is kshayaya, destruction. At least there is ahita. It is very unbeneficial.
So now this world is always dukkhalaya. But to the extent people live in harmony with the principles given by God, to that extent the miseries are minimum. And to the extent there is defiance to the principles of God, to that extent the miseries increase more and more.
So I have written an article about karma where I talk about how can we know whether sufferings are increasing or decreasing in society. At first glance, it may appear that as society is progressing, we have phones, we have computers, we have machines, we have air conditioners. So people seem to be more comfortable overall.
So there is progress. And say if people are suffering, people are doing bad karma in terms of say they are aborting children, they are slaughtering animals, they are doing so many sinful activities. So is this leading to any suffering? What does it mean kshayaya jagato hitaha? So you know suffering, how can we measure suffering? We can’t exactly quantify how much a person is suffering.
But we can understand it another way. One analytical point and one objective point. The objective point would be that actually we can look at the adhyatmic, adhibhautic and adhidaivic glaciers.
And if we just look at this 50 years ago or 100 years ago and now, they have increased tremendously. The adhidaivic glaciers, the number of natural disasters in the last 10 years itself is much more than the number of disasters in any decade of previous whole century. Similarly if you look at adhibhautic glaciers, the divorces, the violence, the mutual killings, they are far far greater than ever before in history.
And what about adhyatmic glaciers, some people may say that diseases have decreased, some diseases have eliminated. But especially mental problems are huge. The kind of anxieties, stresses, neurosis, psychosis that people suffer about, they are terrible.
So even objectively, I am not going to statistics here, but objectively it can be reasonably documented that the sufferings are increasing. And there may be different kinds of suffering in different places. Yes, in India there is suffering because of poverty.
In the west there may be suffering in a different way. People may have money but still there may be anxiety. So first point is objectively we can say that adhyatmic, adhibhautic, adhidaivic glaciers, as far as statistics are concerned, we can say that they are clearly increasing.
So there is karmic reaction that is coming. But more than that, actually our sufferings depend on our attachments. To the extent I am attached, to that extent I will suffer.
Simple example is, if I don’t even know what is cricket and India just gets knocked out in the qualifying round only of the world cup. Okay, what happened? I don’t even know what happened. There is no suffering.
But if I am a mad fan of cricket, madly attached to cricket, then it will be like a devastation for India to lose like that. So attachment causes suffering to a large extent. So we can clearly see that when people don’t have anything higher to live for, people don’t believe in the soul, people don’t believe in the higher dimensions of life, then naturally they will be attached to the body.
And if they are attached to the body, naturally they will suffer. To the extent their attachment is more and more, to that extent their suffering will be more and more. So that’s why, there are so many kinds of sufferings present in society today.
Any questions, comments about this? So Shrila Prabhupada talks about animal killing. And Shrila Prabhupada makes a sarcastic point in his report. He says that, in the previous report, asatyam pratishtham te.
Prabhupada says that, these people say this world is asatya, but they are very expert at enjoying asatya. So, okay, the world is asatya, but while you are here, enjoy it. That is their idea.
So now, Krishna talks about their actions. So, instead of taking ashraya of Narayan, they take ashraya of Kama. And what kind of Kama? Dushpuram.
So now, dushpuram means insatiable. See, Krishna has already classified, described their Kama as dushpurenanali nature. In the third chapter, 39th verse, he describes that.
So, anala is fire. Dushpura is that which cannot be satisfied. So now, there Krishna says, lust is like an insatiable fire.
But then, in 7.10, he also says, in the 7th chapter, he says that, dharmaviruddha bhuteshu kamausmi bharatarshabha. So he says, there is dharmik kama also. But here, he is saying that, dharmik kama means, when there is dharma, when there is proper marriage, and then for the begetting of progeny, there is kama.
That is dharmik. But here, the kama that the demons get into is dushpurena, dushpuram. It is something which can never be satisfied.
Why it can never be satisfied? Because it is in defiance of dharma. When one does dharma artha kama moksha within that framework, then even the kama, there is some material enjoyment in it, but because there is dharma being performed, gradually realisation awakens. And gradually one goes from kama towards moksha.
It will take time, depending on how seriously one is performing dharma. But when there is no dharma, then the kama becomes dushpuram, dushpurena. It becomes terrible.
The sexuality is so unrestrained today, that one of the most perverse aspects of sexuality now is what is legally banned child pornography. Sometimes there are people who delight in sexually abusing babies who are not even one year old. There are industries doing this and there are people who are addicted to that.
Now what kind of sexuality can a person imagine? But what has happened? How did people end up over there? Once a person just tries to go into sex, you try to get some more kick from something, get some more kick from something, get some more kick from something, and people just get into such terrible things. And in today’s society, according to various surveys, child abuse is immensely common, immensely widespread. Almost one out of every five children, they get sexually abused by somebody among their family members itself.
If not their parents, then their uncles or some other acquaintances of the family. And people who are sexually abused in their childhood, they grow very traumatised. And worst of all is, they often try to take out their hurt, their anger by abusing others.
And then that becomes a tradition of perversity. So this is kama-mashita-dushpura. It’s extremely horrible.
And we are not even talking about illicit sex in terms of sex outside marriage with another member of the opposite sex. We are not even talking about sex with a member of the same sex. That is something which is considered normal in today’s society.
But even according to today’s perverse standards, there is something which is considered unspeakably perverse. See, today’s standard itself is from the scriptural point of view perverse. But even from today’s scriptural, today’s perverse standards, some people have become so perverse that they are considered perverse even among perverts.
This is kama-mashita-dushpura. It’s insatiable. Once a person gets into it, it’s like lust becomes like a black hole.
How much deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper that person can get sucked into it. There is no limit to it. That person is, damba is what, you remember? Show-off.
When a person doesn’t have qualities, so he wants mana, he wants damba. And the essence of it is moha. What is the moha? Asat-grahan, grhitva.
That which is asat, that which is temporary, he accepts that as eternal. And pravartante asuchivrataha, unclean vows. So Baldev Vidya Bhoju says asuchivrataha that there are the left-hand tantrics.
Tantra is the whole idea that one can make spiritual advancement through sex. It’s a very perverse idea. But asuchivrataha means there are tantrics who take vratas which make them bound to unclean activities.
A few years ago, there was, two-three years ago in Pune temple, the devotees did a Guinness record of having a large number of people joining in a painting competition. So at that time, the devotees were exploring, what are all the areas where people give Guinness records. So one record at that time had become famous was, a man and a woman, they kissed each other for 47 hours.
What is there, actually speaking, to touch another person’s mouth and saliva for 47 hours? It’s, there might be some imagination of pleasure, but it is so disgusting. And these people, they did that, not because there was any pleasure in the kissing, they wanted the award. And with, it is, it is a crazy idea.
This is asuchivrataha. So there are so many perverted ideas that get people considered very heroic to do these things. I’ve done this.
I’ve done that. Asuchivrataha. And that becomes like a, first of all, people wanting to do it is bad enough, but the media making it newsworthy is worse.
And not only newsworthy, to make it record worthy is worse. It’s one thing to come as a news and go, but to make it record worthy, it’s just the height of perversity. So, pravartante asuchivrataha, unclean vows.
Now, Krishna will describe the psychological consequences of their kind of living. So, chintam aparimayam. Chintam aparimayam means immeasurable.
Remember, second chapter Krishna used the word aprameyam. So up there, this soul was called as immeasurable, or it was so small that it cannot be measured. See, immeasurability can be in two ways.
It’s so small that you cannot measure it, and so big also that you cannot measure it. So here, chintam aparimayam is, there’s so many anxieties that one cannot measure it only. Chintam aparimayam is, till what moment? Pralayantam upashyataha.
Till the moment of death. Stalin, he was an atheist and he said that, before he died, the last thing that he did was, he cupped his fist and pointed it towards the heaven. And then he died.
What is the use of that? One will do that. One is being defiant with God till the moment of death. But it doesn’t help.
Pralayantam upashyataha. Till the moment of death. Kamopabhogaparama etavat nishchitaha.
Nishchitaha. They are certain about one thing in life. That is, kamopabhogaparama.
That the purpose, the parama is supreme. The supreme purpose of life is kamopabhog, is sense enjoyment. So in the atheist’s world view, nothing is certain.
God exists or not, nothing is certain. The only thing that is certain, that is kamopabhogaparama. So Prabhupada translated that, they consider it to be the prime necessity of life.
Sense enjoyment is the prime necessity of life. And they are ashaapashyatairvadha. They are bound by hundreds of desires.
And most of these desires are centred on kamakrodhaparayanaha. They are centred on lust and anger. And actually the whole advertising industry is centred on increasing this ashaapash.
Filling people with more and more desires. And getting them bound more and more. So there is the whole idea of advertising.
George Washington had said that you can cheat some people all the time, or you can cheat all the people some of the time. But one of the prominent advertisers, he said, you can cheat all the people all the time, provided you do enough advertising. If you do enough advertising, you can cheat all the people all the time.
That was the idea. Hitler had a secretary of state or something like that. His idea was, tell a lie loud enough, long enough, bold enough.
And people will believe it to be the truth. Loud enough, long enough, bold enough. Bhagwatam also says in the 12th canto predictions of Kali Vais, satyatve dharshtya me vahi.
Dharshtya means audacity. If somebody, the more a person speaks audaciously, people will consider him to be truthful. Itta himmat se bolla, sachha hi bolra hoga.
Just audacity is not the criteria of truth. But just speak things loudly, people will believe it to be true. That’s how it works in Kali Yuga.
So, here Krishna is telling, as it is, demoniac people are bound by so many desires, but the whole advertising industry increases those desires so much. So many times, cigarette companies, for example, they will give, or even drug companies, they give drug cartels. Drugs are largely illegal, so they don’t have companies.
Cartels are like illegal organisations. So, they often give free samples of their wares to teenagers. Their idea is that if you can, generally, if people become addicted to smoking or alcohol, generally they choose their brand in the ages of between 15 to 20.
And then, if they choose that brand, their idea is, at that time you give them free, get them hooked, then you will have a lifelong customer till they die of lung cancer. So, this is how people get bound. So, Krishna is not talking about advertising here.
Krishna is just talking about the ungodly people having a desire that bind them anyway. But what to speak of when the whole culture is arranged to bind people more and more? One of the more insidious ways, insidious means secretive, not easily visible, dangerous but not easily visible, insidious ways in which people have become addicted is to fast foods. There are several doctors who have written books saying that today’s society is committing suicide with its food.
People are doing what? They are committing suicide with their food. So, basically, America is the world’s biggest country, not necessarily in terms of financial power or military power. It is biggest in terms of having the largest number of big people.
You know, America leads the world in obesity. So, physically big people. So, now what they have found is that salt, sugar and fat, these three things are what the human system, the tongue and the brain are naturally attracted to.
Salt, sugar and sweet. And traditionally, cultures all over the world, whichever culture you go to, they had their own cuisines, they had their own dietary standards, but everybody would regulate this. See, even in meat-eating cultures in the past, the meat was only one part of the diet.
But from the time when food changed from a necessity to a marketed product, the idea became that the more food you can market, the more money you will make. And if you want to sell more food, what should you do? Number of people are limited. And number of people who can pay the kind of money you want to pay to get their food is limited.
So, what you do is make them eat more. And how do you make them eat more? Put things which will stimulate their taste buds more and more. So, it’s one thing to have special items like sweets, in which sugar is there.
But it’s another thing to have fatty content, salty content, sugar content in the main diet itself. So, in the 1990s, the evidence became completely undeniable that America is heading towards obesity disaster. Actually, one of the most alarming signs came up was, it is funny if it did not be so serious and tragic, the American military, if you want to hire people in the military, they have to be physically fit.
So, they did a cross-section survey of the American youth. And they found that even if all Americans decided to come to the army, we don’t have enough physically fit people to come to the army. Because everybody was eating fast food, and the effect of the fast food was that people were getting obese.
And the nature of fast food is once a person becomes addicted, it’s not considered addiction because it is a part of normal living. Say, smoking, drinking, drugs, it is an attachment to a substance that is not a part of normal living. But food is a part of normal living only.
So, people don’t think of addiction to food as a very serious addiction, because this normal eating also is there. But when people become addicted to a particular kind of food, it becomes very difficult for them to live without that. And then the number of people who are physically fit.
So, when that came up, then the government became a little alarmed. If we don’t have people to defend our country, what will people do? What will our country do? So, then they started doing a little survey, and they found that these whole markets, that the fast food that are marketed, they are made in such a way to trigger the taste buds scientifically. Scientific survey is done to see, okay, what kind of food has what kind of effect on people.
And in that way, people become exploited and addicted. So, people are bound in hundreds of ways. And what happens, Krishna is telling over here, he will elaborate on this in the next verse.
But for kamabhogartham, anyayen arthasanchaya. Anyayen means, immoral means, unjust means they use to get artha, to try to earn more and more. What are those anyayya mean? That Krishna will discuss in the next verse.
We’ll discuss in the evening. Thank you very much. Shrimad Bhagavad Gita ki Jai, Shrila Prabhupada ki Jai,