What happens when society rejects God

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. So, today I will speak based on Bhagavad Gita 16, 8 and 9 on the topic of what happens when God dies.
Now, God can of course never die, but I will explain what the topic means. So, 16, 8, 16th chapter in the Bhagavad Gita talks about the divine and the demoniac nature. Daivi and Asuri Parvati.
So, 16, 8 is Asatyam Pratishtham Te Jagadah Puraneshwaram Aparasparasambhutam Kim Anyath Kaamahaitukam. So, Kim Anyath Kaamahaitukam. That once people say that there is no God, there is no ordering principle in control, there is no ultimate purpose of life, then people start living only for short-sighted pleasures, Kaam, for selfish desires.
And then what happens by such a thing? That’s the next verse it describes. Intam Drishti Mavashtabhya Nashtatmano Alpabuddhaya Prabhavanti Ugra Karmanam Shvayaya Jagatohitaha Intam Drishti, when people accept such a vision, Nashtatmano, they destroy their souls. Nashtatmano Alpabuddhaya, they have intelligence, but it is very meager intelligence.
Prabhavanti Ugra Karmanam. And such people start doing terrible things. Shvayaya Jagatohitaha.
And they work for destroying the world. Shvayaya. So, I will talk about this.
Krishna is telling that once we reject God, we reject the spiritual dimension to life, we end up destroying ourselves and destroying the world. So, I will talk about how these two verses have actually been demonstrated in recent world history. So, if we had a time machine and went back about 300 years into the past, whether it was India or the Middle East or Europe, people in general believed in some higher power.
They might be monotheists or they might be polytheists. Does anyone know what is the difference between monotheism and polytheism? Have you heard about monotheism? What is that? Theism? Yes, sorry. Yes, they might believe in one God.
That is what? Monotheism. And polytheism will be what? Many Gods. So, people might believe in one or many Gods.
But the idea that there is some higher power in control, that was very much there. Now, in the 17th century onwards, 17th, 18th centuries, science started developing. And most of the people who were the pioneering scientists, they were all actually believers in God.
In fact, it was their belief in God that made them explore nature. If we think that there is no God in control, that things just happen at random in the world, then there is no need to look for order in the world. Newton was, now we call Newton a scientist, but at that time the field which he studied was called as natural philosophy.
That means philosophical study of nature, of the world around us. And when he saw that fruit falling, he asked a question, what made this fruit fall? So, the answer he got was, now he could have said, what made the fruit fall? Oh, God made the fruit fall. That’s true, in the ultimate sense.
But he was also looking, what is the mechanism by which the fruit fell? And he came up with the principle of gravity. Like that, every single pioneer of modern science was a strong believer in God. In fact, Newton famously said, Oh, father, I think thy thoughts after thee.
I think thy thoughts after thee. So, he saw science, not just his scientific discoveries, as spiritual insights into the way God has fashioned the world. But as the centuries went on, as science started explaining more and more things, some scientists started thinking that by observation we can explain everything.
It is said that if somebody has a hammer, then for somebody with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you have a hammer, everything, just hammer it and it will get fixed. But everything is not a nail.
Isn’t it? So, what happened when scientists tried to explain everything in terms of mechanical laws? So, over a period of time, they started feeling, why do we need God for anything? So, the original understanding was that God and science work complementary. How complementary? Say, if somebody is playing billiards or saying, yeah, a much more familiar game is cricket. Now, if, okay, let me take billiards and I’ll take cricket afterwards.
Why billiards? Because billiards illustrate the example properly. Let’s say, if somebody is observing a billiards game from above, but their expanse is only to the billiards table. And they say, okay, this stick hit the ball at this angle, and then the ball was hit with this momentum, that ball went and hit this ball, and that ball went and hit that ball, and that ball went into the hole.
Now, the entire motion of the objects on the table can be explained in terms of the laws of physics. Now, this ball was hit at this angle with this momentum, and that’s why that ball went into the hole. Now, that explanation is correct.
And you could also give another explanation saying that, oh, this player is an expert player. And this player hit the ball expertly, and that’s why the ball went into the hole. Say, now, in the billiards game, we don’t see the, if you’re looking only at the ball, you won’t see the players.
Now, in cricket, you can actually see the players. So, if somebody, say, hits a ball, and say, in the recent match in the semi-finals India lost in World Cup, so the batsman is batting very well, and he could have hit a sixer, but he miscued the ball, and the ball got out. So, now you could say, why did the ball not go across the boundary? He did not hit it properly.
He did not hit with the right force, or maybe he did not hit at the right angle. So, now, whatever happens in the cricket field, you could explain it in terms of the laws of physics. That is the correct explanation.
But there’s an equally correct explanation that the batsman hit the ball properly, that’s why it went for a six. The batsman did not hit the ball properly, that’s why it did not go for a six. It went into the fielder’s hand.
So, the two explanations, the physical explanation and the personal explanation, they are complementary. Complementary means, both go together. They are not contradictory.
But somehow, as science started progressing, they started thinking that there is no need for the personal explanation. Everything can be explained in terms of the laws of physics. And there was a German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
He said that God is dead. Now, he did not say it in a celebratory sense. He actually says that, he writes in one of his novels.
And he says, in a sense of great distress, he says, that highest of highest all beings, we have killed him. And now, the stain from the blood, because of this great murder, it is so great, that stain, even if all the oceans in the world, we use to cleanse our hands, we will not be able to cleanse ourselves. And the being who holds the sky in place, is now dead, and the whole world is crashing down.
Now, what he meant by that is, at least at that time, the idea was, if you are a scientific rational person, when he said God is dead, the idea was that, now, with science, there is no rational way a person can believe in God. And in that sense, the idea of God as a living person, as a living being, is no longer tenable. It is no longer acceptable.
But he himself predicted that what is going to happen because of the death of God. He said two things will happen. Totalitarianism or nihilism.
And I will talk about how this has happened in the history of the world. And these words might seem a little complicated, but the concept is very simple. Totalitarianism, has anyone heard this word? Sometimes, if a ruler is a very dictatorial ruler, a big dictator, that means, my way or the highway.
Get out. So, those who are like that, absolutely my rule alone. They are the totalitarians.
Totalitarianism is what? Nihilism, nihilism is what? Basically, that life has no meaning. That, ultimately, everything is… Somehow, we are like biological bubbles, we are just births forth, we live for some time and then we die and our life is over. So, he said these two things will emerge in the world.
And we see, I have travelled across the world quite a bit, and you see actually these manifest in the world as well as in recent world history. Now, once the idea of God becomes rejected, what happens? So, basically, now I am not going to go in this class into the logical or the rational proof for the existence of God. I am going to focus on simply this point, that when we reject God, what happens in the world? And nowadays, in the media, in the news, often religion is portrayed in a very negative way.
Oh, because of religion, riots happen. Because of religion, terrorism happens. Because of religion, sectarian violence happens.
And some people actually say, Oh, if there was a world without religion, we would all live happily. Actually, a world without religion has been tried out just in the recent history. And in some ways, most people’s historical memory is so short.
This has been a survey that has been done in both America, Europe and India. So, does anyone know who was George Washington? Who was he? President, but which president? First President of America. It’s interesting that about 50% of college students in America don’t know who was George Washington.
Here in India, it’s like you ask an Indian student and he doesn’t know who is Mahatma Gandhi. It’s an appalling real level of ignorance. But it’s amazing if you have some… Have any of you heard of Harry Potter? So, those same kids know the name of every single character in the Harry Potter series.
Even minor character. Who might be there only for one book and he dies in that book only. But they know that.
But the point I am making over here is our historical memory is remarkably short sighted. So, I’ll talk in terms of the historical memory. So, in 1789, something momentous happened.
Does anyone know what happened in 1789? Well, there is something called the French Revolution. So, now this was the first time when what they did was they officially decided to remove God and have Atheism officially as the ruling doctrine. So, there was a famous French philosopher Voltaire.
There were 2-3 were there. Voltaire was there. Rousseau was there.
Then, Robinesque was there. Now, all of them had one commonality with them. None of them, at least Voltaire to some extent accepted God, but he did not accept the church.
But others, they did not even accept the existence of God. But, they wanted, whenever they would talk about Atheism, they would talk behind closed doors. Why? They said, I don’t want my servants to hear that there is no God.
Why? If my servants hear there is no God, then they will steal from my house. So, they thought that actually belief in God is needed to keep people moral. No.
Fear of God is what will keep people moral. And, if you reject God, then there will be a problem. But still, they discussed this privately with their friends.
Eventually, their ideas became popular. And, after the French Revolution, then, when this revolution took place, somehow, throughout history, religion is used by power hungry people. And, religion gets associated with certain people.
And, religion also gets a bad name. So, the kings were considered to be holy at that time. Although, most of the kings were very unholy.
The kings were extremely selfish, extremely possessive, extremely, you could say, lusty. But, somehow, they were considered to be, how would they become kings? Because, they have been ruled by God. They have been given that position by God.
So, kings had a bad name. And, this was uprising against the kings. And, by extension, it was uprising against religion.
So, many, many, at that time, the main religion was Christianity. But, many, many churches were destroyed. Many priests were killed.
But, many, I mean, not just a dozen, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, thousands of people were killed. And, those who were atheists, see, at one level, humans have a need to worship something. So, what they did, they actually, these Voltaire, Rosé, Robenesque, all these people who were atheists, they had died also.
But, they exhumed them from the earth. Exhumed means, they had been buried, they removed them from the burial. And, then, they made a Samadhi of them.
So, this is atheistic Samadhi places. And, they started worshipping them there. And, this was called as the cult of reason.
Reason means, we are very reasonable, rational people. But, the result was total disaster. In fact, between the next 50 years, in France, more people were killed than all of Europe combined together.
Now, if you see Europe, it’s itself not a very big continent. Now, all of Europe will be about as big as India, maybe a little lesser also. But, it has a lot of influence.
But, anyway, one part, a huge amount of killing happened. And, then, after that, again a powerful king, Napoleon Bonaparte came up. And, then, he tried to conquer all of Europe.
And, then, what happened? All of Europe had to come together to stop him. But, from that time, the idea started that if there is no God in control, then there will be some kind of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism means, humans need someone to follow.
So, if you reject God, then you erect someone in his place. So, France elected Napoleon Bonaparte. And, Napoleon famously said, I am France.
But, what happened? Eventually, he was defeated. He was destroyed. But, he brought so much disaster.
And, then, the same thing was taken forward a century later by Hitler. And, Hitler said that, actually, Germans is the purest race. And, we are meant to rule the world.
Now, Hitler nominally offered some tribute. Sometimes, he would go to church, offer some tribute to God. But, basically, his doctrine was I am the chosen one.
And, my authority should be followed. Now, while this was happening, Russia was going through its own upheavals. And, what France tried in a small way, Russia tried in a much, much bigger way.
What was the, you could say, philosophy that Russia adopted? Does anyone know? Socialists? Little more than that. Communism? Yeah. There are many versions of that same school of thought.
Now, in communism, basically, the idea was, generally, what religion tells us is, or what the idea of belief in God is, not just that there is a God who exists, but that, along with that, there is an idea that this world is a temporary place. And, that there is a better world beyond this world. We can work to make this world better.
But, ultimately, life’s destination is to go to a better place. Beyond this world. But, once that world is rejected, once God is rejected, then what happens? All the energy gets focused on trying to improve this world.
So, now, how do you improve this world? So, Karl Marx was the person who propagated communism. And, his idea was that actually, we should be able to we should be able to reject religion entirely. Because, he said, as long as people are promised that you will have a better other world, they won’t work to make this world better.
Now, that’s not really true. There was a lot of prosperity even in this world. I’ll come to India a little later, toward the end of the class, and we’ll see how Indian history reflects these broad trends.
But, what happened in Russia? They just systematically, first of all, tried to uproot religion. Entirely. Just destroy all religion.
And, in Russia, the communists gained power in 1970. And, they were in power till about 1987. When they collapsed.
Gradually, communism was dismantled. USSR also broke apart. So, in those 70 years, more people were killed in Russia by the Russian government itself.
Then, where the people who were killed in World War I and World War II combined together. It was literally millions. Anybody who had like a small, remote connection, they said, as long as you believe in God, you will not work hard in this world.
And, they said, anybody who has any connection with God, just kill them. Not only that, they said, not only you have to reject God, you have to make our leader into God. Now, the communists had two main leaders.
First was Lenin, and the second was Stalin. Now, Lenin was himself a brutal person. It’s like, say, somebody who is a big underworld don.
And, Lenin was like that. But, Lenin said, Stalin is a terrible person. Never make him the ruler.
Like a goon is telling this person is a goon. That way, Stalin grabbed power after that. After that, what happened was, I was just in America, and several people who are from Russia who have come to America, they tell their stories.
What they did was, they had this whole idea that anybody who is wealthier than anybody else, that is because they must have an exploitative. Now, it could be that some people are wealthy because of exploitation. But, it’s not necessarily like that.
Some people are more talented. Some people are better at making money. Some people are more hardworking.
So, in the world, there is inequality. Always. Now, you can see, in the classroom, there is inequality.
In the sense that, if a teacher asks a question, not everybody can answer the question immediately. Some students answer it more faster than others. Now, this inequality, you might say is unfair.
But, that’s the way life is. Talent themselves are not distributed equally in the world. At least, the same talent is not distributed equally in the other world.
Somebody who may not be so good at maths might be good at music, might be good at something else. That’s different. But, the fact is, inequality is there in the world.
So, they said, why should there be inequality like this? This inequality is unfair. And that’s why, what they decided was, nobody should have anything better than anyone else. So, everybody should have the same kind of houses.
Everybody should have the same kind of clothes. Everybody should eat the same kind of food. Everybody should have absolutely same facilities.
And, anybody who has anything better than anyone else, and, if they refuse to give it, just give. So, what this government tried to do was, basically, you can say, the government tries to become God. And, not only God, they try to become a better God than God.
So, God created this inequality. We will remove inequality. And, we will create equality.
And, this is what was tried in China also. And, what they decided was, the whole thread of thought I am going to move forward is that, when you reject God, you cannot live without God. You will erect some other God.
That’s what people do. So, the situation was so bad, that they decided that, if a farmer produces any grains, the land the farmer tills does not belong to the farmer. It belongs to the government.
And, what is produced over there also belongs to the government. So, in that same house, people may be starving, but the grains will go to the nearby district or big city. And, from there, they will be brought back and they will be distributed.
And, in that process, most of the grains would get spoiled. In fact, in Ukraine, there was a plague which killed five, there was a famine which killed five million people. One of the worst famines in world history.
And, although Ukraine was producing abundant grains, but what happened? They took all the grains away. They said, we will distribute them. But, nothing got distributed.
And, that’s why one commentator, one who was a critic of communism, he said, in communism, George Orwell, he said, all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others. What happened by that is, because there were those people who were in power, who were going to decide who will get how much. Now, they got naturally more power than others.
So, naturally, two classes happened. Those whose resources were going to be distributed and those who were going to distribute the resources. So, when the government is made into God, the result is chaotic.
The result has been, totalitarianism means that the king thinks I am God or the government thinks that we are God. And, the result is disastrous. It has been, if you look at the history of China or Japan, not Japan, China and USSR, and USSR is a huge country.
And, when I go across, when I travel in America, usually there are three time zones. In all of India, there is only one time zone. So, if you call somebody in America, first thing you do before calling someone is check what is the time over there, then you call.
Otherwise, we might be calling them at midnight. So, but in America, there are three time zones. So, in the East Coast, New York, if it is 7.30 in the evening, then in Los Angeles, it will be 4.30. There are three hour differences.
Now, USSR, even Russia right now is so big, that they have seven time zones over there. And, USSR was even bigger. And, atheism was tried as an official state policy over there.
It was the biggest experiment. And, it led to total disaster. Total, total disaster.
Because, what happens, when we reject God, we have to replace God with something else. And, whatever we replace God with, that turns out to be worse than God. There is a saying in English, the devil you know, is better than the devil you don’t know.
जिस शैतान को आप जानते हो, जिस शैतान को आप नहीं जानते हो, उससे भेथर है. So, this is, I can go into more specific stories of what all was done. In fact, even our, we have devotees, who were terribly tortured.
If anybody believes in God, that must be something is wrong in them. And, such people are dangerous threats. So, they have to be kept away from everyone else.
And, they were tortured. They were persecuted. Horrible kind of tortures were done.
So, it was totalitarianism. Atheism in itself, I am not saying all atheists are bad people. That is not a point over here.
There can be some theists who are bad people, and there can be some atheists who can be good people. We are talking about, not how people themselves are. We are talking about what the effect of the world view is.
Now, of course, you could say religious people can also do bad things. But, more often than not, when religious people do bad things, they are abusing their religious teachings. They are doing something selfish, and they are justifying that in the name of religion.
But, in atheism, there is no check to not doing something wrong. Because, if there is no God, then, if I decide that this is the way to make things better. Now, Marx himself said that wealth has to be redistributed.
It will lead to a lot of violence and death. But, it is a price we have to pay. But, the problem was, people kept paying the price, kept paying the price, and there was nothing good that came at the end.
And, that’s why everything collapsed. Now, the other result, one was totalitarianism. Means, you reject God, and you make the government into God.
You create some other either dictator or government into God. The other extreme is nihilism. Nihilism means you reject all order itself.
Any kind of order, any kind of structure, that is bad. That means, again, see, by nature’s arrangement, there is hierarchy in the world. Do you know the word hierarchy? Hierarchy means a structure with some people at the bottom, some people at the top.
Like, you go in office, now, you might be, initially, you might start as a trainee engineer. You might have a chief engineer above them. About a chief engineer, you have a project manager.
Above that, you might have like a hierarchy, the CEO of a company. So, this is a hierarchy. Like, in a college, you might have, you are students.
Above that, you have your assistant professor. Then, you have professor. Then, you have HOD.
Then, you have dean. It’s a hierarchy. So, now, in any system, for it to function, some kind of hierarchy is required.
Some kind of hierarchy is required. Why is it required? Like I said earlier, talents are distributed unequally. So, if somebody is good at doing something, say, for example, now, if there are floods and water has to be drained out.
Now, everybody may, all those who are staying here or living nearby, you may want to work together to drain the water. But, some of you might have more knowledge about the architecture over here. Some of you may have no knowledge about where are the drains over there.
Some of you may have more knowledge about how to actually drain the water out. So, now, if somebody who has more knowledge, then, they delegate. Okay, you do this.
You do this. You do this. Not that they are sitting idle.
They are also working. But, if they have to do the same thing that everyone else is doing, then, their knowledge is not used adequately enough. And, others’ efforts might go in waste.
Or, to give a simple example, say, you have to cook food. And, one of you knows very well how to cook food. And, there are five of you cooking.
The remaining four people don’t know how to cook. If all five distribute the labor equally well, all that will happen is, if you are cooking five items, all five will be poorly cooked. Or, maybe, four will be poorly cooked and one will be well cooked.
If the one person is cooking well. But, if that one person is made the supervisor, and then, okay, get the guide everyone else, then, all five will be well cooked. So, hierarchies are required in every walk of life.
But, when any kind of hierarchy is there, somebody is more powerful, somebody is less powerful. Now, this can be easily used for exploitation. There is no doubt about it.
But, that doesn’t mean, hierarchy itself is exploitative. Hierarchy itself is not exploitative, necessarily. Say, for example, right now, you are hearing a class, or you go to college and you hear a class.
Now, you could say, why should one person give a class and everyone hear? Let everyone speak. Well, okay, we don’t want to have just a one-way, continuous lecture going on for a long time. That might be boring.
But, if one person knows more than everyone else, if that person speaks, then everyone else comes to know something. If, in colleges here, do you rate your professors? No. I have one of my friends, he is a professor in America, quite a prominent university.
So, he said that, after every class, the students go and rate the professor. Every class. And those ratings, how the teacher rates the student, that is considered confidential.
So, if you got poor marks, nobody can go on Google and check how many marks you have got. That is confidential. But, how much rating that professor has got, anybody can Google and check.
So, the professors live in constant fear. You know, if we do anything very strict, the students, the students will rate us poorly. And, what happens is, the students rate us poorly.
Now, that is one factor which is considered. Of course, for their tenure, and for their promotion and everything. But, that is also considered for next batch, whenever students want to join.
If a professor has been rated poorly, nobody wants to join that student. Join that professor. So, now, of course, some professors, some teachers can be very uncommunicative, can be very authoritative, can be bossy.
That’s possible. But, if you destroy the hierarchy itself, then there can be no knowledge possible. Isn’t it? So, same way, any kind of hierarchy, when nihilism comes up, any kind of order is considered to be bad.
So, I was in New Zealand, and I was giving a class, and I was mentioning that, how in the western world, marriages are going down, divorces are going up. Isn’t it? So, I was going to speak this in a class, and one of the organizers of my program, he said, don’t speak, this is not applicable over here. I said, oh, divorce rates are not going up? He said, even in India, if you consider 50 years ago and now, divorces are quite common, or much more common than what they were in the past.
So, he said, no, divorce rates are not going down. Why? Because marriage rates are going down. Nobody gets married.
In fact, one of the devotees got employed over there in the marriage registration department. And he said, this is the coolest job I have got. There is no work only over here.
And then his boss realized, that actually, he doesn’t have much work. So, they transferred him to another department. And that department turned out to be very busy.
What was that department? No, there are no marriages, how will there be divorces? But that was the department. So, they don’t have, you don’t register, you don’t have to actually, people don’t get married. But, it was like a department called the dog registration department.
So, every pet dog that you have, that dog has to be registered. And, there will be people from the government who will come and check whether you are taking good care of your dog or not. Whether, you are qualified enough to have a pet or not.
And if you are not taking care of your dog, the pet will be taken away from you. And then you have to do courses to learn how to take care of your pets. And then, when you pass with proper marks through that course, then you will be given another chance to have a pet.
So, of course, some people do treat animals poorly. But, the point I am making again over here is, that, the family is the most fundamental unit for society to be sustained. Now, in the past, we talked about the joint families.
Then there were nuclear families. Now, even the nucleus is split. And there are protons and neutrons, all wandering around, alone.
So, what happens is, there are a lot of single parents. Mostly it’s single mother families. A few are single father families also.
But, whole generation upon generation of people, if you don’t have two parents, then children don’t grow properly. But the idea about nihilism is what? Nihilism holds that, any kind of order is, any kind of structure, any kind of hierarchy is a bad thing. So, reject hierarchy.
So, husband-wife relationship is a hierarchy. Now, some husbands abuse their wives. But, that doesn’t mean that relationship itself is abusive.
Now, parents have to discipline their children. But, some parents discipline their children poorly. May they over discipline their children.
And in fact, the first day that a child goes to school, any school, even in like, you have kindergarten school, the first thing that the caregiver, the teachers over tell them, as a child is, they, in average, for every child, the first thing that they memorize is the child abuse helpline. Child abuse helpline is, sometimes children are abused, and that’s terrible. But, if the parents start disciplining the child too much, then the child can call the child abuse helpline.
And, immediately, what happens? Within a few minutes, some police will come to your house. And they’ll examine what has happened, and actually the parents can be put in jail. Because you’re abusing your children.
Now, of course, abusing should never be done. That is valid. Perfectly valid concern.
But, the point that has happened over here is, all hierarchies are being rejected. All hierarchies are being rejected. And then, there is no order left in society.
So, if parents don’t discipline their children, then who is going to discipline them? And if nobody disciplines them, see, discipline basically means what? At one level, learning to accept a no. That’s the basic principle of discipline. Discipline essentially means, that I want this, but no, you cannot get it.
A child might want to eat a dozen cookies in one go. But maybe that’s not good for his health. So, no.
A child might not want a toy right now. No. In fact, there are certain characteristics which have been seen to be found consistently among all people who are successful.
It’s not necessary that all people who have these qualities will become successful. But all successful people have some of these qualities. And one of these qualities is the capacity to delay gratification.
The capacity to delay gratification. That means, okay, if I do this, I’ll enjoy right now. But no.
I’ve got something to do. This is important for me. So, for doing this, I’ll delay my gratification.
So, now this, children don’t learn it themselves, the capacity to delay gratification. It has to be taught to them. A child might just want to play now.
Either play physical games, or play video games, or whatever. But the parents have done. No, no, you study.
You study this much, and then you can come back and play. So, the capacity to delay gratification, this is basically what? Saying no. Now, if the parents don’t teach their children to accept a no gracefully, then what is going to happen? Later on, life is going to say no to them.
And they say no to them, then what happens? They can’t bear it. Depression can have many causes. But at one level, depression is, anger directed outward is aggression.
Anger directed inward is depression. When I get angry with someone, suppose if I maybe hit them, hurt them, that is aggression. But when I direct it toward myself, I’m not smart enough, I’m not fluent enough, why does, I never get success in my life.
Whatever I want, I never get it. That is anger directed inward. That is depression.
And one reason that it happens is, your child is always, yes, yes, yes, you want this ticket, you want this ticket, you want this ticket. The child grows up. The child wants something and doesn’t get it.
What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my life? I’m not getting what I want. Everybody goes through life and sometimes they don’t get what they want. So, now again, how exactly is this related with rejection of God? See, any kind of order that is there in the world, any order, any hierarchy, requires accepting that I’m at a lower position right now.
And somebody else is at a higher position. Now, of course, it may be that a person at a higher position may exploit sometimes. But that doesn’t mean somebody at a higher position is inherently exploitative.
No, they’re at a higher position and they’re doing something by that. They could use it for good, they could use it for bad. In the western world, where there is, if there is no totalitarianism, there is almost rejection of all hierarchy, all structure, all order.
And, you know, have you heard this word, gender? Gender. So, how many genders are there? How many? Okay, two male. You could say male and female.
Now, according to the Canadian government, there are 67 genders. 67 genders. And each of them have their own pronoun.
Like he and she, or him and her. So like that, there are 67 pronouns. So there is a pronoun called ZHER.
Z-H-E-R. So, actually when you meet people, if they are from some, they claim to be from one of those genders, you have to ask a person, what pronoun should I address you by? And you have to memorize that word. And you have to use that word.
So now, there could be some people who may have some difficulty in identifying. See, we all have a biological gender. But sometimes some people may have certain psychological tendencies, which may not be exactly of the same gender.
Just like some males might have some feminine characteristics. And some females might have some masculine characteristics. So that kind of blurring is always there.
But each blur that is there, if it’s made into a separate category, it leads to a completely crazy idea. So, now, in the Western world especially, the current situation is that people, any kind of structure, you just reject it. Any kind of hierarchy, you just reject it.
Anybody who is better than anybody else, that’s evidence that you must be exploited. And in fact, because of this, what has happened, currently there is a very vehement court case going on against Harvard University. Have you heard of Harvard? It is like the IITs of India.
Like there are Ivy Leagues. One of the top Ivy League universities is Harvard. So what has happened over there, if they admit students purely by merit, in the Ivy League, practically 99% of the students would be Indians and Chinese.
Because Indians and Chinese are very intelligent and very hardworking. But they say we should have diversity. We want to include people from all backgrounds.
So we want to have Mexicans, we want to have Africans, we want to have African-Americans, we want to have from various parts of Europe. And there was an Indian student who got like 5 CGPA. Got like the best possible marks that you can get throughout his academic career.
And still he didn’t get into Harvard. And so it’s like in India we have reservations. So they have something like that over there.
And they don’t use the word reservations over there. They use the word affirmative action. But these Indians made a court case against this.
You get the best possible marks and still you don’t get admission. And they said, no, no, we are not discriminating. We are only encouraging diversity.
But what do you mean by encouraging diversity? To get somebody who is not qualified, you are actually rejecting somebody who is qualified. And the end result of that is, it’s discrimination that’s happening. So there is, in the current situation, it’s not that things are falling apart, but when every single order is rejected, every single hierarchy is rejected.
The UK government has appointed a new ministry. Like they have a minister. He’s called a minister for loneliness.
So it’s an official government minister. Not only for minister for mental health or psychological, minister for loneliness. But what happened? After they appointed a minister for loneliness, that minister committed suicide because of loneliness.
So it is pathetic the way things are going. So basically, when we reject God, if you don’t destroy people indiscriminately through totalitarianism, then people’s order in life is destroyed because of nihilism. Because unless we have some higher commitment in life, life sometimes gets tough.
And if life gets tough, why should we stick to our responsibility, stick to our commitments? This is different. So for example, many women feel that, why should we have the unfair burden of taking care of children? So, they say, we don’t want to have children. And they don’t want to have children, but they have a strong need to nurture.
A strong need to take care of someone. So they refuse to have children, and then they have pets. Have you heard of yoga? Obviously, you have heard of yoga.
But have you heard of doga? Doga is yoga with dogs. So, many young people, especially young women, they get stressed and they get lonely. Because the female body is made in such a way.
They also want a career now because that’s a culture. But they also want to have children. That need to nurture and care is inherently there.
And nature has endowed them in a particular way. They can take care of children better than men can. Especially in the early formative years.
But they reject that need. And then what happens? They pamper themselves with dogs. So, there is a version of yoga which you do with your dog.
And that is called doga. And there are doga teachers also. Who teach you and your dog together how to do yoga.
And just as there is doga, there is another version called koga. What is koga? Yeah, with cats. Dogs and cats are the most popular pets of people.
So, now, what has sustained human society for a long, long time, we reject that, and then we end up with confusion, chaos, loneliness. And at the very basic level, it’s a big concern in Europe and America that the Caucasian population, Caucasian is those white who came from Europe to America, the Caucasian population is actually decreasing. And it’s happening much more in Europe than in America.
Because America at least, large parts of America are still religious. But Europe is quite aggressively atheistic. Except of course, for the huge influx of Islamic population that is coming in from the Middle East.
Because of the conflicts over there, lot of people are coming in. But apart from that, it’s mostly, the whole population itself is going down. Because you don’t have children, how will you have population? So, now, in India, where we are right now, if we consider India, it’s said to be one of the world’s most religious countries.
So, broadly speaking, the Middle East is very religious. But in the Middle East, religion is something which is imposed by the government. You cannot openly go against the religious culture.
America, certain parts of America are very religious. And that’s largely because there is a significant number of evangelical Christians who do talk about Christianity. Now, India is religious not so much because the government is religious, but because the family structure and the culture was religious.
So, many Indians who go from India to America, initially they want to enjoy life. But once they settle down, they have a family, they have children, they all want to become religious, a little bit at least. Because they want to pass on something to their children.
Their children, they grow up, there is a phenomenon called ABCD. Anybody knows what ABCD is? American Born Confused Desis. So, those children who are born in America, they are like coconuts.
Now, what is the characteristic of a coconut? Coconut is brown from outside, white from inside. So, the children who are born, they have brown skin, so they cannot become entirely like Americans. But they have grown over there, so the culture is like that.
So, essentially, the point I am making is that through the family structure, religion goes on. And to some extent in India, it has been going on for quite some time. But what has happened through the family structure and the community structure.
Family means not just the family, but the extended family, community structure. The religious culture has been going on, but the educational culture in terms of philosophy has almost entirely stopped. And because of that, many people, do we do this? Why? Because our parents did this.
And that one generation earlier, that was acceptable. But most youth, why should we do this? It doesn’t make sense to me. And they stopped doing it.
So, actually, when God is rejected, then basically a big hole is created in the heart. And that can lead to all kinds of chaos. The kind of loneliness, the kind of disorder.
So, basically what happens when God is rejected, either you create some other God in terms of making government or a head of state or somebody into God, or you make your own self-interest into the supreme thing. So, then I myself make myself into God. And in my interest, we become what is called a narcissist.
Just self-centered. And then no relationship can be sustained by that. No family structure can be sustained.
No responsibility can be sustained if people become narcissistic. If any job you want to do also, you need to be team player. You can’t just put yourself in front all the time.
So, basically, in India right now, we have a very strong religious culture, but it is eroding quite rapidly. And we cannot turn the clock back. We can’t turn the clock back.
What we can do is, our culture is like our blood. Normally, when blood is flowing inside the body, you don’t even notice it. But you start noticing it, then you start losing it.
When you start losing it, then you start noticing it. So, at this age, most of you are between, say, probably 15 to 25, 30. This is the time when the hormones are getting released into the body.
And there’s a lot of desire to explore and enjoy. And it’s not that we can’t explore and enjoy, but if we reject our foundational culture, we reject our religious values, we reject God, then the kind of chaos that we will enter into, it’s like a black hole. And how much you get sucked into it, you don’t know.
So, we are saved from a lot of trouble just because of being a part of a structured society. And when that structured society is not there, you just don’t know whom to turn to, whom to trust, whom to turn for, getting some friendship, getting some warmth, getting some shelter. So, what we have with us is, now, it’s not that everything about the religious culture that is there in India is right.
There are also bad things that happen. And sometimes religion is abused by various people, either for making money or for gaining political power, for whatever things. And that happens in every religion.
But, if we can get the philosophical part, that means, here, when the programs happen, you come and get the understanding of the philosophy. Why you do what you do. Then, this will create like a foundation.
And a basic structure will enable you, whatever you want to do in your life, whatever you want to achieve in your life, if you have a foundational structure for your life, then you can move forward and achieve that. But once that foundational structure is broken, then even the smallest things become very difficult to achieve. And when difficulties come, then we might just crumble under the weight of the difficulties.
So, we have a great facility to strengthen ourselves by strengthening our spiritual foundations. And if we do that, then we will have the best possible launching pad for our life, materially as well as spiritually. So, I will summarize what I spoke, and then we can have a few questions.
I spoke on this topic of what happens when people reject God. Dr. Mahabharvika says that then people just start becoming self-centered. And they destroy themselves spiritually, they destroy the world also.
So, I talked about how that has happened across world history. Originally, when science started, it was based on people’s understanding that nature works under God’s guidance. Therefore, if you study nature, you will find some order over there.
So, the scientific explanation of physics and the explanation from God, both were complementary. Like a billiards ball going into the hole, because of the laws of physics and because of the expertise of the billiards player. But over a period of time, some scientists started becoming over-confident.
And they said we can explain everything without God. And God started, because certain religious rituals and practices didn’t make sense, so they started rejecting God itself. So, God is dead, some people said.
But what was the result when God died? That is, you need something else. So, either totalitarianism came up or nihilism came up. Totalitarianism means, you make the government or the head into God.
Head of state into God. And when you give absolute power to anyone like that, that power can be very… So, I talked about how our historical memory is often very short. But just the last century itself, apart from the two world wars, millions and millions, just according to conservative estimates, conservative estimates, in USSR and China itself, a hundred million people were killed.
A hundred million is about 10 crores. And if you go one day to Mumbai and you find Mumbai itself is… There’s nobody there in Mumbai. Whole city.
Not just the main city of Mumbai, but the suburbs also combined together. So, that many people were wiped out. And that is… There’s no statistic actually, just exhaustive, but this is indicative.
So, what happened is, communism said that we will create any kind of disorder that is there in this world, we’ll remove that, and we will become like the equality creator better than God. We’ll become God better than God. But what happened was, they unleashed one of the darkest periods in world history.
Now, that has not happened across the world, but the other thing that happens is, one is, you reject the natural hierarchy in society, and create your own structural hierarchy. Other is, you just reject all hierarchy itself. That’s nihilism.
Reject all order, but then that leads to chaos. I talked about how families are crumbling, marriages are not happening, parents are not able to discipline their children. So, all hierarchies will be rejected.
Then, people can’t grow. Parenting means that you teach the children to delay gratification. But if they don’t do that, then in life, when they can’t accept a no, they go into depression.
When life gives them a no, and they’re not used to accepting a no. Depression is aggression directed towards oneself. So, in India, I talked about how… So, in the West, in the Middle East, so which part of the world are still religious? Middle East is religious, but it’s more like government mandated religion.
America, some parts are religious, because there’s a lot of evangelical preaching that is happening through which people are religious. In India, it’s not so much through preaching, but it’s through the religious culture, that some amount of religion is still there. But there’s a lack of the educational culture going on.
And because of that, when people have questions, and they don’t get answers, then they feel religion is irrational. And they reject religion. But even those people who are very rational, when they go abroad, and then they recognize that without religion, we cannot actually raise our children properly.
So, they start becoming a little more exploratory about their own religion. So, our own culture is like our blood. We notice it when we lose it.
So, if we can assimilate the educational aspect of our culture and learn, then that will give us the strongest foundation, which will act as a launching pad, the structure that we have by our culture, that will be the best launching pad for us, for a successful life, materially and spiritually. Thank you very much. Hare Krishna.
Thank you. Any questions or comments? He was giving an example of once he went there, if you don’t give me donation, then you are coming here. So, he was telling to me when I was visiting, humans created temples.
Due to temples, these things happen. So, if I won’t be given power, then I will destroy. Okay.
So, somebody experienced the pandas in Jagannath Puri saying that if you don’t give me donations, then you are coming to a temple is useless. So, humans created temples. And after creating these temples, there is a lot of chaos that is happening.
Isn’t it? That’s the question. So, should we destroy temples and all this exploitation will not happen? See, it’s very easy to destroy an existing structure because we see some problem with it. But what will you create in its place? Or what is going to take its place? That is something.
See, the current tendency in general is any person who sees any small fault in anything, he will destroy it. It’s basically the leftist tendency to do that. Anything that is being abused, just destroy it.
There are some movies also which show about this. Some people are corrupt. Just destroy the government.
Destroy the corrupt people. It’s called vigilante justice. Vigilante justice means anybody takes the law in their hands and starts killing everyone else.
So, okay. Let’s take this in three parts. I’ll take it from a historical perspective.
Then I’ll talk it from the philosophical perspective. Then I’ll take it from a practical perspective. So, historical perspective, most temples were sustained through charity.
Or for all reasons, it was sustained through charity. But there’s a particular rule to be. That was, generally when wealthy kings or wealthy merchants would come, they would donate land to the needy.
And then those who were priests, they would usually have their families and the land would be tilled by certain labourers. And after the land is tilled, the food would be offered to the deities and the priests and their families would use it. And some of the rest of the food was also, the regains were also given to the land tillers.
Now, when India, India is not exactly a socialist country now, but under, at a particular phase in India, the state was very strongly socialist. So, under a particular government, they decided to have like a resettlement act. They said, if any landlord has more land than this, then that means that person is being exploitative.
And that land should be taken away and should be given to the people who are actually working on the land. Now, you could say that the landlord system was exploitative. But, peculiarly, when they made this ruling, they brought temples under it.
They didn’t bring churches, they did not bring mosques. So, many of the big temples, they had, many of the big temples, if you actually go in the temples, a lot of worship happens. See, this was a problem with our Indian temples as compared to, not a problem in a problematic sense, but in a comparative sense.
That, if you have a church, you just need one priest who can counsel the whole congregation. But, if you have a temple, you have deities, there is a lot of worship that has to be done for the deities. You need a lot of people for that.
So, all the families that were looking out for the deities, suddenly, they became revenue-less. Because all the land was taken, given to the land dealers. Now, what do you do at that time? So, many of them just gave up the priestly profession and they started taking up other professions.
If you go to America, you will see a large number of people in America are from Andhra. And most of them are, not necessarily all of them, but many of them are Andhra Brahmins. So, there were thousands and thousands of temples in South India.
But, suddenly, those temples had no revenues left. So, these people went abroad. They were intelligent, they were dedicated, they went into studies and they went abroad.
So, basically, for these people who are the Pandas right now, this is what they have been doing for generation after generation after generation. And suddenly, they have no revenue left. So, what do they do? The only source of revenue, the government gives them some maintenance, but it’s a pittance.
It’s not enough at all. And again, there is another problem is that the government did not take up the management of, most mosques and churches are managed by their own committees. But many of the temples in India, they were taken over by the government.
And then, what the government did was that they took the revenues that come in donation, not just what is given to individual Pandas, or individual priests, but what is given in the hundi. So, they did that. And there is corruption, much of the donation just vanishes.
And in some states, this is basically a state subject, it’s not a central government subject. So, in some states, they have made the rules that we want all the religions to grow equally. So, now Hindus are the maximum.
So, Hindu temples get the maximum donation. So, they use donations which are given in Hindu temples, and they use it to build churches and mosques. So, instead of using it, if you get a donation from a particular temple, you should use it to put that temple back again.
But it doesn’t happen like that. So, historically, there are a lot of malpractices that have happened, not necessarily from these priests, I am not excusing the conduct of these priests. I am explaining.
Just an explanation is not an excuse. So, in spite of that, the way they are, it’s bad. The way sometimes they threaten, sometimes they just abuse, sometimes they exploit, that’s not good, that’s terrible.
And I gave a talk in NIT, Ravakela, more than 1,200 students were there, 1,200 students were there. And this was the most common question. Almost a dozen students came and asked me this question personally.
They said, if you go to Puri temple, the Pandas are so abusive with us. But if you go to a church, the priests over there are so welcoming and so respectful and so kind. They said, why should we go here and not there? So, most of the priests are very well funded.
Actually, an average, average Christian priest’s salary is equivalent to a software engineer’s salary. And of course, why should it compare to a software engineer? Because this is a well-known incentive they have that if a priest makes up to 25 people, 25 Hindus into Christians, then they get a reward. That they call the spiritual reward.
What is the spiritual reward? A free trip to Europe and America. So, there are historical factors for this. Along with that, if you consider from a philosophical perspective, there are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of temples in India.
And some places, some amount of abuses happen. But, there are people who go to these temples. See, one thing is, nobody is forcing people to go to temples.
In fact, there is so much media that is negative propaganda. There are movies like OMG and DK which talk about negativity. And still people are going to the temples.
Now, why are they going there? Because they are getting something. If we consider that everybody has a tough life. Most of India is still not very economically well-to-do.
Even people who are economically well-to-do, they are stressed out. People who are not economically well-to-do, they are stressed out financially itself. So, when people have such a tough life, why would people spend time and energy to go to temples? You might say, oh, they just have blind faith.
Well, okay, you can call whatever. We are seeing religion more as a socio-historical phenomenon, not as an intellectual, rational phenomenon. Unless people are getting something out of it, they won’t go keep going there.
So, okay, you had a negative experience with religion. With the temple. But you destroyed that which is a source of positive experience for millions of people because of that.
Now, if you had a bad experience, you don’t go to the temple. You have a right for that. I empathize with anybody who has had a bad experience.
But people, they are going to temples because they get something out of it. And just because of your negative experience, what right do you have to deprive them of that? And at a practical level, so this is from a historical perspective and from a philosophical perspective. People are getting something, that’s why they are going.
And then lastly, from a practical perspective, it’s very important for us to try to have places where we can get our own tradition, our religion, our philosophy accessible in an appealing way. If that is not there, then we will lose people. So that’s why Srila Prabhupada, when he started the Krishna Consciousness Movement, he always wanted a welcoming atmosphere in the temples.
So like you have a youth center over here, we try to have a welcoming atmosphere. If somebody comes, people talk with you, people answer questions. So, if only when we have this kind of welcoming facility, then people’s questions get answered.
And then these questions, these kind of ideas of the globe temples, that comes, it is a provocative expression of a negative experience. And we have to address that negative experience. There’s a prominent American atheist, he said that, if I had a choice between removing religion from the world and removing rape from the world, I will remove religion.
Because religion causes so much harm. That is his idea. It’s an outrageous idea.
But you know, if you look at his life story, he had terrible experiences with religion. So, we cannot generalize from our experiences to universal principles. But if somebody is doing that, we don’t have to demonize them.
We have to understand that they must have had some terrible experiences. Because we are doing this and we try to help them contextualize their experience. You had a question? Anybody else? We have a few minutes.
So, thank you very much for your attention and participation. Shri Prabhupada Ki Jai! Gaur Bhatt Vrindaki Jai! Jai!