If people commit murder in the name of religion, what is their destination?

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Transcript

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If some people do terrible sinful activities, sometimes they do murderous activities, they do it in the name of religion, the reaction for this will be hell. So, how will they come out of this? Because they are very strongly convinced about what they are doing. They will go on to Samsara Chakra.
Yes, the first thing about the Bhagavad Gita is that the Bhagavad Gita is very transectarian. It is very universal. It talks about behaviours in terms of generic characteristics.
For example, in the 17th chapter, it is about religion in the three modes. So, we talk about religion in three modes. It’s interesting that Krishna talks about faith in Tamoguna, faith in Rajoguna, faith in Sattvaguna.
So, it is not just a particular hardline religion where people are terrorists. In practically every religion, there are extremists who may be violent. And they may be in Tamoguna.
So, it is not just our ideological beliefs that determine our destination, it is our functional living that determines our destination, how we are living. So, I may claim that I believe in God, but if I am living in a murderous way, I am living in a violent way, I am living in an exploitative way, then that is going to bring reactions. That is going to cause depravity.
That is going to bring… So, for example, there are these Jihadis. When they conquer a particular area, they kill the men and then they violate the women. And according to some Jihadi ideologies, the women whom they violate, they are the gifts for winning the war that Allah has given them.
So, before violating a woman, they pray over the woman. Then they violate her and then they again pray, thanking Allah. So, can you imagine the magnitude of the indoctrination that has gone into their heads? So, where if one’s ideology can destroy one’s basic human sensitivity, one is causing brutal pain to a defenseless woman and one is thinking that it is a gift from God for me.
It’s inhuman, it’s a horrendous distortion of mentality. So, that’s the extent to which a person can get distorted by ideology. So, one may just have a lip service to God.
But what is one’s life? If one is living for such bestial activities, then just overcoating them with God doesn’t make any difference in one’s life. So, how one lives, that is very important. So, yes, they will get consequences for their actions.
But in due course of time, everybody learns the school of hard knocks. After going down to various levels of suffering, when they evolve again, they will come to some other place and there they will get an opportunity. Ultimately, no matter how grievously sinful people may be, Krishna doesn’t abandon them.
Krishna is always there as a super soul in their hearts and from there he helps them. So, eventually when they want to turn towards him, he will be there to guide. But it also shows that people can become so totally destroyed by their circumstances, their intelligence, their conscience, their sensitivity, everything can get destroyed.
It’s very sad when such things happen. What we can do is we try to provide within our circle of influence, we try to share spiritual knowledge, spiritual culture as much as possible and then sometimes it is very easy to curse the darkness. But suppose, you know, just now say, the power is there, Mumbai goes off.
Everywhere there is complete darkness. Now what will we do? We cannot remove the darkness everywhere. But just because we can’t remove the darkness in all of Mumbai, does that mean we will all stay in darkness? No, we will turn on our mobile flashlight or we will get a candle or something like that.
So, just because we can’t remove the darkness in the world, doesn’t mean that we have to live in the dark. So, we should light our own surroundings and we should try to share that light with others as much as possible. So, in general, we can be aware of the world situation to bring gravity in our spiritual practices.
But focusing too much on things which are not in our control can make us feel powerless and can take away our inspiration to do the things which we can do. So, it is far better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.