If different strategies work in outreach with different people, how can we know in advance how best to share bhakti?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. There are some newspaper articles in Slate and other magazines which say that the world has never been as peaceful now as it has been, the world is more peaceful now than it has ever been before, that actually things are improving and the society is becoming more and more peaceful and orderly.
So what is the Vedic perspective on this? Answer? Yes, there are certain statistics which do seem to indicate that things are becoming better. So we have no quarrel with statistics. But at the same time we need to know that statistics is always agenda driven.
If we look at a different set of statistics we can get an entirely different picture. So every person, according to one’s own world view, will try to come up with certain statistics. At the same time, it is true that we often base our judgement of the world situation on sensational events.
So yes, if a terrorist attack happens in one place, if a bomb explosion happens somewhere else, if a natural disaster happens in third place, we start thinking that these are the general pattern of things happening everywhere. For example, people in America, when they hear of some caste violence happening in say, in Bihar, people in America may think that all of India is filled with caste violence. But that is not the case.
There are many parts of the country where there is practically no caste violence. So, just as people can make generalizations about India, similarly we all can make generalizations about the world at large by looking at certain instances of sensationalized high-profile violence, terrorism and scandal and things like that. So, this tendency to judge based on high-profile appearances that can be misleading.
At the same time, having said this, rather than stating that, rather than emphasizing that the world is more peaceful than it was in the past or that in certain parameters things have become better, what we need to recognize is that when we hear that in the past also there was violence, then we should understand that actually there is never going to be any wonderful period, a wonderful phase in the history of the world because the world itself, as the Bhagavad Gita says, दुखालेमशाश्वतम् So, when we say that the world is, even if we agree for argument’s sake, the world is more peaceful now than it was in the past. And that means in the past it was violent and sometimes we have this romanticized idea of the past that everything in the past is good. That is also not true.
So, in this way, this point actually that there was violence in the past that confirms the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching that this world is always दुखालेमशाश्वतम् whether it is past, whether it is present or whether it will be future. This world will be a place of misery. And on one side, through प्रत्यक्ष्य, if we over rely on प्रत्यक्ष्य, we may think there is so much comfort in life because there are so many gadgets, there are so many vehicles, there are so many cars, so many comforts available in today’s society.
And we may think life is very comfortable now. And that will be at one level true, but at another level it is misleading because although there may be physical comfort, there is a lot of mental discomfort. Now, the anxiety levels are enormous in today’s world.
And while people are comfortable physically, they are miserable mentally. The World Health Organization has said that mental health problems are going to be the biggest health challenge of the current century. And certainly as far as mental health is concerned, the world has, is suffering far far more than in the past.
And related with mental health, when we look at other parameters, in terms of behavior, then there are serious statistics. For example, there is a book by Dr. David Myers, he compares the statistics of sociological health in America from 1962 to 2000. And in this book, which is The American Paradox, he states that actually as compared to the 1960s, the percentage of the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has tripled, the recorded violent crime rate has quadrupled, the prison population has quintupled, it’s five times, the percentage of babies born outside marriage has extupled, and depression has soared to ten times the pre-World War II level.
So, here we see that these are all parameters of society’s level of health and well-being. And all of them are seriously, something seriously amiss. The American Paradox is just one of the books.
There are other books by Professor Lane and others who talk about how there is serious wrong in today’s society. So, yes, firstly, even if on some parameters of society things are improving, still if you look at other parameters, especially those in terms of mental health, you will see that there are things which are harmful still, seriously harmful, and those are especially in terms of mental health. And even if we say in the past also there was violence, that simply confirms the point that this is the past, that the world is always lukhaalim.
And the Bhagavatam says the primary characteristic of this Kali Yuga is upadrutaha. Upadrutaha, the last characteristic in the characteristics of Kali Yuga Krishna, the Bhagavatam says upadrutaha. Upadrutaha means disturbed.
So, these disturbed minds are being reflected in terms of depression, in terms of violent crimes, in terms of various aspects of suicidal urges, addictions, and looking at another statistic, if we look at the World Watch Institute statistics, the World Watch Institute says that just in the last century, that means the 20th century, 1901 to 2000, the number of people who were killed in violent conflicts were three times more than all the number of people killed from 1 AD to 1900 AD. So, this features the Second World War which killed around 55 million people. The First World War on which around 20 million people were killed.
Catastrophic amounts of violence and death. So, yes, there may be if we put aside the World War time and then we consider the remaining years, we may say that the number of wars are going down. But overall if we see with the weapons of mass destruction available, the capacity for destruction is much much more today.
And the world may be going temporarily through a phase where the things might be better as compared to the past. And if that’s what the statistics show, that’s fine. But we need to avoid the misconception that just through technological improvement or just through sociological adjustment, we can make things alright over here.
Leave alone, we can make things perfect over here. Yes, relatively sometimes things may be improved and relatively things may look good for some time. But the point of scriptural knowledge is not that things cannot be improved or things will always be going down or things will always have to keep getting worse.
No. Temporarily there might be some improvement in some parameters but overall in terms of mental health, overall in terms of inner calmness, things are degrading. And further, overall this world is always in a and we as devotees should not rely too much on statistics which are based on sensationalized appearances.
We do too much talk on sensational events and try to make very broad inferences from them. Yes, those may be questionable. But apart from that there are other kinds of statistics also which do indicate a sustainable problem in our society.
A sustained problem in our society not sustainable. And that’s why the only sustainable solution is the spiritual solution. That we need to raise our consciousness and become more spiritual and selfless.
Then that will tackle many of the problems that plague the world at a fundamental level. Thank you.