Kula-pavana:The Guru Debate Within Our Movement

[Beggar]

THE SEARCH FOR SRI KRISHNA

WORLD WAR III: LET IT BE

 

Student: Many people are worried about nuclear war.

They think it may come very soon.

Srila Sridhar Maharaj: That is a point on a line, a line on a

plane, a plane in a solid. So many times wars are coming

and going; so many times the sun, the Earth, and

the solar systems disappear, and again spring up. We are

in the midst of such thought in eternity. This nuclear

war is a tiny point; what of that? Individuals are dying

at every moment; the Earth will die, the whole human

section will disappear. Let it be.

We must try to live in eternity; not any particular

span of time or space. We must prepare ourselves for our

eternal benefit, not for any temporary remedy. The

sun, the moon, and all the planets appear and vanish:

they die, and then again, they are created. Within such

an eternity we have to live. Religion covers that aspect

of our existence. We are told to view things from this

standpoint: not only this body, but the human race,

the animals, the trees, the entire Earth, and even the

sun, will all vanish, and again spring up. Creation, dissolution,

creation, dissolution—it will continue forever

in the domain of misconception. At the same

time, there is another world which is eternal; we are

requested to enter there, to make our home in that

plane which neither enters into the jaws of death, nor

suffers any change.

In the Bhagavad-gita (8.16) it is stated:

abrahma-bhuvanal lokah

punar avartino ’rjuna

mam upetya tu kaunteya

punar janma na vidyate

“Even Lord Brahma, the creator himself, has to die.

Up to Brahmaloka, the highest planet in the material

world, the whole material energy undergoes such

changes.”

But if we can cross the area of misunderstanding and

enter the area of proper understanding, then there is no

creation or dissolution. That is eternal, and we are children

of that soil. Our bodies and minds are children of

this soil which comes and goes, which is created and

then dies. We have to get out of this world of death.

 

ZONE OF NECTAR

We are in such an area. What is to be done? Try to

get out. Try your best to get out of this mortal area. The

saints inform us, “Come home dear friend, let us go

home. Why are you suffering so much trouble unnecessarily

in a foreign land? The spiritual world is real; this

material world is unreal: springing and vanishing, coming

and going, it is a farce! From the world of farce

we must come to reality. Here in this material world

there will be not only one war, but wars after wars,

wars after wars.

 

There is a zone of nectar, and we are actually children

of that nectar that does not die (srinvantu viisve

amrtasya putrah). Somehow, we are misguided here,

but really we are children of that soil which is eternal,

where there is no birth or death. With a wide and

broad heart, we have to approach there. This is declared

by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and the Bhagavad-gita

the Upanisads, and the Srimad-Bhagavatam all confirm

the same thing. That is our very sweet, sweet home, and

we must try our best to go back to God, back to home,

and take others with us.

[Pretender]

And yet. Regardless of individually preferred subjective belief system, the economic house of cards does seem to be about to completely collapse in a very bad way. Can anyone ignore the signs? Many apparently prosperous people will experience immediate povery possibly worse than the previous Great Depression experienced by our forefathers who were made of stronger stuff including basic decency and strong character, i.e. "spine" or "sand," whereas the past sixty odd years of apparent material bounty have produced generations of soft, spineless people of poor intrinsic decency and character extremely ill-equiped to deal with severe hardship. Personally, I don't live my life as an alarmist, but it is very ossible that things are about to get very bad for an unbelievable amount of people who have never had to suffer hardly any real hardship. People in general nowadays hardly know how to prepare their own food, what to speak of growing it. This summer I think I'll be putting in a vegetable garden. At least. Ugly ugra-karma currency might not be worth the paper it's printed on and so of little real value to purchase life's basic needs. If it really does collapse, it will be worse for the city-dwellers. Much worse.