The causes of suffering V

    “In the dissensions of providence, mankind cannot have any rest” _ is this demoniac mentality of exploiting and enjoying the lord’s divine energy.

       The demons do not know when or where to renounce, or do they knows when or where to accept or receive. When diagnosing a patient, one has to properly judge this accepting and rejecting principle. So, in order to cure the demoniac mentality in human society, which causes the Ravana syndrome of trying to steal Sita devi, it is essential that the demoniac nature be transformed. For any treatment, two important factors are that the patient be in clean surroundings and that his medicines and food be administered punctually. Similarly, to transform the demoniac mentality, people have to be clean, disciplined, and truthful. This end is not served by a advocating the theory of yata mat, tata path that “there are as many ways to salvation as there are opinions” for this way one confuses and deceives the populace. By bringing the clean and the unclean, the disciplined and undisciplined, the truthful and the untruthful on to the same level, one will find it impossible to cure or even treat any patient.

The causes of suffering IV

       There have always existed two types of men, the devotee and the demon. Long ago there lived a big demon named Ravana, who disguised himself as a sannyasi, a renounced mendicant, and tried to steal the wife of the supreme lord Ramachandra. She was the goddess of fortune, Sita-devi. In this way the demond brought about his own destruction.

       But now, in modern times, Ravana’s dynesty has multiplied into millions. This has given rise to many different opinions, which have made the demons inimical towards another. Thus they are all competing tooth and nail, trying to kidnap the goddess of fortune, Sita devi . Each one is thinking, “I am the most cunning, and also I will enjoy Sita-devi all by myself.” But like Ravana, all these demons, along with their entire families, are being destroyed. So many powerful leaders like Hitlar have come, but enamored by the illusion of enjoying and exploiting the supreme lord’s energy and consort---Sitadevi, the goddess of fortune all of them have been thwarted and crushed in the past, are being thwarted and crushed in the present, and will be thwarted and crushed in the future. The root causes of the aforementioned lament_

The causes of suffering III

       I am perfect, powerful, and happy. I am the richest man, surrounded by aristocratic relatives. There is none as powerful and happy as I am. I shall perform sacrifices, I shall give some charity, and thus I shall rejoice.’ in this way such persons are deluded by ignorance. Thus perplexed by various anxieties and bounded by a network of illusions, they become too strongly attached to sense enjoyment and fall down into hell.

      Self-complacent and always impudent, deluded by wealth and false prestige, they sometimes proudly perform sacrifices in name only, without following any rules or regulations. Bewildered by false ego, strength, pride, lust, and anger, the demons become envious of the supreme personality of godhead, who is situated in their own bodies and in the bodies of others, and blaspheme against the real religion. Those who are envious and mischievous, who are the lowest among men, I perpetually cast into the ocean of material existence, into various demoniac species of life. Attaining repeated birth amongst the species of demoniac life, o son of kunti, and such persons can never approach me. Gradually they sink down to the most abominable type of existence.

       These verses from the gita aptly describe the demoniac nature. 

The causes of suffering II

     In the Bagavad gita(16.7-20)    the supreme lord has exhaustively described the nature of such atheistic demons.

    Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behavior nor truth is found in them. They say that this world is unreal, with no foundation, no god in control. They say it is the producer of sex desire and has no cause other than lust. Following such conclusion, the demoniac, who are lost to themselves and who have no intelligence, engage in unbeneficial, horrible works meant to destroy the world. Taking shelter of insatiable lust and absorbed in the conceit of pride and false prestige, the demoniac, thus illusion, are always sworn to unclean work, attracted by the impermanent.

      They believe that to gratify the senses is the prime necessity of human civilization. Thus until the end of  life their anxiety is immeasurable. Bounded by a network of hundreds and thousands of desires and absorbed in lust and anger, they secure money by illegal means for sense gratification. The demoniac person thinks, ‘so much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more according to my schemes. So much mine now, and it will increase in the future, more and more. He is my enemy, and I have killed him, and my other enemies will also be killed. I am the lord of everything. I am the enjoyer

The causes of suffering I

        Mahisasura*, the most powerful demon, who was the personification of the forces of evil, was in fact endowed with intelligence, education, wealth, the  ability to perform severe penances and attract large followings, and so on. His present – day followers, possessing identical qualifications, are no less enterprising and expert in exploiting the divine energy. They carry out elaborate scientific research, misspending huge amounts of money, time, energy, intelligence, men, and so on. But instead of peace and joy, what they discover through these researchers end up producing untold misery for humanity. This is a perfect example of daivi maya’s throwing agency in action. All these evil activities bring great losses to human society. As a result of this evil, the mundane scientists incur grievious sin, which destroys their real intelligence. And this loss of intelligence turns them away from god and robs them of their chance to surrender to him. Thus in the Bhagavad gita (7.15) the supreme lord says:

Na mam duskrtino mudhah

Prapadyante naradhamah

Nayayapahrta jnana

Asuram bhavam asritah

     Those miscreants who are grossly foolish, who are lowest among mankind, whose knowledge is stolen by illusion and who partake of the atheistic nature of demons do not surrender unto me.

  

This material nature is full of miseries 3

       Western thinkers have become gravely concerned about the extent of destruction an atomic explosion can cause. Some leaders are trying to calm the alarm with platitudes about how atomic energy is used solely for peaceful purposes, but this is another form of deception caused by daivi maya, or nature’s law.

         It is impossible for anyone to surmount the two pronged attack of daivi maya- that is, her covering potency and her throwing potency. The more we try to conquer this divine energy, the more powerfully we are defeated by her exciting us through the mode of passion and punishing us with the three –fold miseries, culminating in all devouring death. This struggle between divine energy and the evil forces is eternal. Our inability to understand the struggle has let us lament, “In the dispensation of providence, mankind cannot have any rest.”

          Despite repeatedly tasting defeat at the hand of the divine energy, the evil forces cannot understand why “Mankind cannot have any rest.” Yet in the Bhagavad Gita the supreme personality of godhead clearly explains this. At first he sternly warns the evil forces with these words, daivi hy esa guna-mayi mama maya duratyaya:

  “This divine energy of mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome”; and then in the next line he tells them how to overcome this divine energy, mam eva ye prapadyante mayam etam taranti te: “but those who have surrendered unto me can easily cross beyond it.”

This material nature is full of miseries 2

     

         In other words, when we calculate according to the scripture, India has exercised absolute sovereignty over the entire planet Earth for a period of 3,888,000 years, till maharaja Pariksit’s rule. Hence the meager thousand years of foreign subjugation are not such a lamentable thing. Neither in the past nor at present has India’s political serfdom or freedom been the prime concern of India’s greatest thinkers and philosophers, who well knew the actual value of such things. The king of India up to maharaja Pariksit was able to rule the entire world, and not for a mere couple of centuries but for hundreds of thousands of years. The reason for their rule was not a political one.

      Thus millennium ago the Bhagavad- gita comprehensively discussed the same topic the editor of Amrit Bazar Patrika writes about it in a despondent mood: “If one kind of trouble goes, another quickly follows.” In the Gita (7.14) lord Krishna says, “The divine energy of mine, consisting of the three modes of material nature, is difficult to overcome.” The Sanskrit words daivi Maya used here can be translated into modern term as “nature’s law”. This natural law is so stringent that it is impossible to overcome it, in our big conferences tabling motions that run into volumes. Our advanced technological and scientific efforts aimed at protecting us from the clutches of nature’s law are futile because they are all controlled by by the very same nature’s law, or daivi maya. Therefore trying to utilize mundane science to overpower nature’s law is like creating a Frankenstein. Efforts to extirpate human suffering through advanced technology and bring about lasting happiness have brought us to atomic age.