How can we help materialistic people recognize the need to control their thoughts?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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what is the need for them to pause their thoughts or rectify their thoughts? See, even within materialism, also people need regulation. As I said, nowadays there are so many people who are becoming addicts of different things. Now there are alcohol addicts, there are drug addicts, there are smoking addicts.
Nowadays there are device addicts. I’m just hooked on to devices. So now at a particular point in their lives, they will realize that, now this habit has consumed me.
It’s like our free will never goes away. But by repeated indulgence, the scope of our free will keeps decreasing. That means an alcoholic does not have the free will whether to drink or not.
Alcoholic may have the free will, should I drink whiskey or brandy? So what has happened? The scope of the free will has decreased. The free will is still there, it’s a small free will. Now, even in their life, even if people are materialistic, sometimes they also get the realization things are going out of control.
So I’m writing a book on spirituality and addiction. So there I read some stories of people who were addicts and who recovered. The recovery begins by admitting the gravity of the problem.
So there was this alcoholic who was, you know, one night he had the desire, I want to drink. He went to his fridge, he went to his house, he found that the drink he wanted was not there. So it’s a cold night, it’s America only.
So he went out, got into his car, went to the nearby bar, in that bar he found that that drink was not available. The other bar was almost half the way across the town, it was chilling at night. He went across and he came near the bar and suddenly his car stopped working.
He got out of the car, he had come out in such as a craving, had come out without wearing proper warm clothes also. So shivering as he came to that bar finally and he asked, he got it. And as soon as he paid for it, got it, immediately opened it and drank it.
He thought, no, I spent so much effort, I will drink it peacefully. So then he put the lid back and he went back to his car. As it was snow, his legs slipped and what had happened was he had not put the lid properly.
So there he had an abhishek of alcohol. All the alcohol poured over his body and as he was lying there on the ground, could look around, all the houses were closed and lights were off. He struck himself, what am I doing? I could be sleeping peacefully in bed, here I am lying in the snow, drenched in alcohol, freezing and cold.
At that time he realized, I realized, I am a slave. I am enslaved by alcohol. So we all, I mean even people who are materialistic, at some time or the other, they get that realization that their materialism has taken control of them and at that time they awaken.
So if people are not ready to practice bhakti, we have to know that everybody has their free will and different people are at different levels of spiritual growth. So some people may just not be ready right now. So what we should do is, we can just give them positive impressions of bhakti.
That means, you know, if we interact with some people, maybe our relatives, friends, acquaintances, if after meeting us they feel, I met a nice person. Now I don’t necessarily want to do what they are doing, but they are nice people. Then if they have that impression of devotees, then eventually when they feel the need, then they will turn towards Krishna.
So we can invite people towards Krishna. If they are ready right now, they will come right now. But if they are not ready right now, we can keep the door open for them.
By not making it a confrontational or personal issue, I am telling you to do this, why I am not doing this. They may not feel the need right now, but the nature of material desires is slowly but surely they will get a stronger and stronger hold on them, people. And so when they feel the need, then they will turn towards Krishna.
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