free ezine The Spiritual Scientist

[Guest guest]

Respected Maharajas, Prabhujis and Matajis

 

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

I am a brahmachari youth preacher and author at ISKCON Pune and have been

running a ezine called The Spiritual Scientist, which tries to give an

intellectually appealing presentation of Krishna conscious philosophy.

 

This ezine is very suited for forwarding to upcoming devotees or interested

new people. I am sending below a brief description of the ezine along with a

sample issue. If you want to , please send a mail to

spiritualscientist-

 

 

Seeking your blessings for continuing and expanding this humble service,

your servant

chaitanya charan das

 

 

 

"THE SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST

A Magazine for those who think

 

This magazine is intended to

 

- To demonstrate that the Vedic teachings are not a set of dogmas and

irrational assertions, but a complete science.

 

- To guide Indians with a Western bias toward a scientific and

systematic understanding of their spiritual heritage.

 

- To view developments in the modern world in fields as diverse as

physics, psychology, genetic engineering, social unrest, financial

instability, individual incompleteness etc., from the perspective of

spiritual science.

 

- To demonstrate the relevance and utility of spiritual science in our

times.

 

Our articles have been published in -

 

1. Selected articles in Back to Godhead, the international magazine of

ISKCON " (The latest being "where technology falls short" in Mar-Apr issue)

2. Selected articles in The Times of India (the top English newspaper in

India) in "The Speaking Tree" column - once a month

3. Every article since the start of 2006 - in The Maharashtra Herald,

another Indian newspaper, in its "Soul Curry" column

 

 

**

**

*THE SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST*

 

 

 

*A Cyber Magazine for Those Who Think*

 

Vol.4 No.21

 

*SILLY POINT

*

 

The promos of a movie showing a popular film star smoking have led to

protests: "Why is smoking being foisted on impressionable young minds?"

 

The silly point is that we protest about the star shown as a smoker, but not

about the same star being shown as a drug-dealing gangster or an underworld

don. When movies blatantly exhibit sex, rape, addictions, crime, violence

and murder, and when movie stars are today's perverse role models, isn't it

silly to be shocked when the same happens in society? Not long ago, Indians

were shocked by the news of a Mumbai schoolboy murdering his own mother -

just to get money to enjoy like the hero of his favorite movie. Before that,

Americans were aghast at a chilling real-life perversion of the violence

routine in Hollywood - schoolchildren shooting their teachers and

co-students. Movie-makers may rationalize that movies just reflect social

trends, but can it be denied that they often initiate, perpetuate and

aggravate the vicious circle?

 

The sillier point is that we readily believe what movies show and stubbornly

disbelieve what life shows. We imagine "and they lived happily ever after" -

the utopian ending of most movies - will materialize in our lives, while

reality glares at us all around - no one lives ever after and no one lives

happily. After all, no man is a hero to his own wife and no woman is a wife

to her own hero. We believe that we will one day enter the heaven of

enjoyment shown in the movies, while the hell of suffering in the world

around threatens to suck us in at every moment. We vicariously enjoy as the

movie hero as he miraculously dodges every calamity and exults in his

three-hour immortality, while we actually shudder as the daily news of

natural and human disasters exposes our helpless mortality.

 

 

The silliest point is that we forget the person who never forgets us - God,

and we remember the people who never remember us - movie stars. We enthrone

ephemeral heroes as the kings of our heart, while we banish the eternal hero

Krishna from our heart. We search in a false cyber world, for love,

excitement, enjoyment and protection, while we blind and deafen ourselves to

the source of all love, excitement, enjoyment and protection living within

our own hearts. When selfish movie-makers invite us to their hi-tech

illusory paradise, we squander our hard-earned money to enjoy it for a few

moments. But when the supremely selfless Lord invites us to His eternal

spiritual paradise, we are not ready to invest even a few thoughts to probe

into its reality. When we read about a half-man half-spider performing

impossible antics in the comics section of a newspaper, we adore him. When

we read about the half-man half-lion incarnation of God performing

chivalrous pastimes in the sacred scriptures, we deride Him as

mytho-logical. Are we logical? We have time to tune to newer and newer

channels while watching TV, but we have no time to tune in to Krishna's

channel of devotion in our own heart.

 

Its not just silly, actually. Its tragic. If we don't give up our silliness,

we will have to cry for it. Worse, we will have to continue our silliness -

and its attendant suffering - for many more lives.

 

 

Fortunately we have an alternative. Irrespective of how silly we become,

Krishna remains our benevolent Lord unconditionally. So He gives us an easy

way out - His holy names. Attentive devotional chanting of the Hare Krishna

mantra acts like a divine torchlight, which exposes the material silliness

around us and reveals the spiritual substance within us.

 

 

Intelligent people embrace chanting as the most intelligent activity and

tune into and enter a blissful world far superior to the "enter"-tainment

world, that is the default tuning of the silly.

 

 

 

 

 

To view previous articles, visit

 

http://www.iskconpune.com/HTML/ss.html

 

Invite your friends by requesting them to send an email to:

 

SpiritualScientist-

 

 

 

*The Spiritual Scientist*

 

*Investigating Reality from the Higher Dimensional Perspective of Vedic

Wisdom*

*Published by ISKCON Youth Forum (IYF), Pune *

*Dedicated to *

*His Divine Grace A C Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada,*

*The Greatest Spiritual Scientist of the Modern Times*

*Founder-Acharya: International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON**)

*

*Magazine Committee:*

*Radheshyam Das (M Tech IIT, Mumbai), Director, IYF *

*Chaitanya Charan Das (BE E&TC), Editor, The Spiritual Scientist*

 

*Tulsi das, Team leader, Tata Technologies Ltd.*