By Sita-pati das
Food and water are about to become scarce commodities, and access to these will be controlled by governments hostile to devotional service. So without self sufficient farming communities we will not be in a good position. If it means that a person cannot eat if they become a devotee, it just places another barrier in their way.
I have been looking around at the world and reading the Bhagavatam and I can see now that the same story simply replays over and over again – it’s the demigods versus the demons for control of the direction of human civilization.
A person devoid of devotional service and engaged in material activities has no good qualities. Even if he is adept at the practice of mystic yoga or the honest endeavor of maintaining his family and relatives, he must be driven by his own mental speculations and must engage in the service of the Lord’s external energy. How can there be any good qualities in such a man?
– Srimad Bhagavatam 5.18.12
Non-devotees have no good qualities. This is not fanaticism, but a very deep realism, and until we realize this we are still bewildered by an illusion. Devotees are not optimistic, and they are not pessimistic – they are realistic.
The general mass of people, the non-devotees, are situated on a scale between naive and evil. Most people are simply naive, or as Prabhupada refers to them “innocent”. They are easily led and easily misled. Britney Spears is not a bad person, she is just naive. She is naive about the consequences of her actions for herself and others and naive about how she is being used – for financial gain by some, and for a more sinister agenda by others.
Even do-gooders who want to get schools for African children, food for orphans, or other noble goals are naive, and serve to engage other well-meaning people in ultimately trivial work. Unfortunately the net effect is that whatever might be good about them is misused and people are misled.
“The mass of people follow the example of a leader in society and imitate his behavior. They accept as evidence whatever the leader accepts.People in general are not very advanced in knowledge by which to discriminate between religion and irreligion. The innocent, unenlightened citizen is like an ignorant animal sleeping in peace with its head on the lap of its master, faithfully believing in the master’s protection.”
– Srimad Bhagavatam 6.2.4-5
Tellingly, in his purport to this verse Srila Prabhupada recounts:
We actually saw during the partition days in India that although Hindus and Muslims were living together peacefully, manipulation by politicians suddenly aroused feelings of hatred between them, and thus the Hindus and Muslims killed one another over politics.
Going along the scale of non-devotees from naive to evil we encounter a smaller percentage of humankind who are greedy, selfish, and unscrupulous. They manipulate the other 90% of humanity for fun and profit, seizing control of the instruments of power and slanting society in such a way that their influence remains largely unseen.
In 2000 a report was released that revealed that 51 of the world’s top 100 economic entities are now corporations, and only 49 are countries. That’s officially. However, neither in the news media nor in the schools are people equipped with tools of conceptual analysis that would enable them to see the real power plays that are taking place and shaping events. While they are aware of and can name various countries and political entities, the vast majority of people remain in ignorance of the identities and agendas of the new world superpowers. The players who hold most of the cards remain under the table while high profile political leaders grandstand on the stage and draw all the attention to the magician’s wand. People are given a fuzzy lens to view the world through; one that obfuscates what is really going on and leaves them disempowered and frustrated.
Behind this hidden group of powerbrokers, however, is another smaller group of the dedicatedly evil. At this end of the spectrum of non-devotees we go from what Srila Prabhupada refers to as the “innocent” to the “demon”, and within that from the marginal to the hardcore. In the sastra, representing the greedy and unscrupulous group of humans, we find Kamsa and Duryodhana – out for themselves, and not too particular about the effects on others. However, they both had some redeemable goodness within them, as evidenced by Kamsa’s repeated change of heart when preached to by Vasudeva on two separate occasions:
Kamsa begged, “My dear sister and brother-in-law, please be merciful to such a poor-hearted person as me, since both of you are saintly persons. Please excuse my atrocities.” Having said this, Kamsa fell at the feet of Vasudeva and Devaki, his eyes full of tears of regret.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 10.4.23
Duryodhana’s remorseful attempt at suicide after being rescued from the Gandharva by the Pandavas demonstrates his own redeemability. The forces behind them, however, who are taking advantage of their weakness: their amoral commitment to self-aggrandizement, in order to manipulate them, are an entirely different kettle of fish, with a darker agenda.
Kamsa orders the persecution because he has been convinced by his advisors that it is the way to secure his own self interest.
Thus, having considered the instructions of his bad ministers, Kamsa, who was bound by the laws of Yamaraja and devoid of good intelligence because he was a demon, decided to persecute the saintly persons, the brahmanas, as the only way to achieve his own good fortune.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 10.4.43
Kamsa’s advisors and the Danavas who summoned Duryodhana to the nether regions to thwart his attempt to prematurely end his life, reveal that their own true intentions and motivation are something much, much darker than that, however, in the records of scripture:
The foundation of all the demigods is Lord Vishnu, who lives and is worshiped wherever there are religious principles, traditional culture, the Vedas, cows, brahmanas, austerities, and sacrifices with proper remuneration.O King, we, who are your adherents in all respects, shall therefore kill the Vedic brahmanas, the persons engaged in offering sacrifices and austerities, and the cows that supply milk, from which clarified butter is obtained for the ingredients of sacrifice.
The brahmanas, the cows, Vedic knowledge, austerity, truthfulness, control of the mind and senses, faith, mercy, tolerance and sacrifice are the different parts of the body of Lord Vishnu, and they are the paraphernalia for a godly civilization.
Lord Vishnu, the Supersoul within the core of everyone’s heart, is the ultimate enemy of the asuras and is therefore known as asura-dvit. He is the leader of all the demigods because all the demigods, including Lord Siva and Lord Brahma, exist under His protection. The great saintly persons, sages and Vaishnavas also depend upon Him. To persecute the Vaishnavas, therefore, is the only way to kill Vishnu.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 10.4.39 – 42
This stuff is not mythology. It is the history of this universe, a history whose most recent chapter we are living in today. Trying to grapple with what is going on in the world without the vision of the Bhagavatam becomes frustrating because it doesn’t make much sense. We can understand greed and exploitation as motivating factors – but why does the world seem to be a suicidal course that threatens to annihilate everyone – including the capitalists?
These demons, the followers of Kamsa, were expert at persecuting others, especially the Vaisnavas, and could assume any form they desired.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 10.4.44
Looking through this lens the world takes on a different shape. The economic devastation of Germany that lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler, followed by a sudden massive infusion of capital to allow him to militarize to the level needed to launch the Second World War becomes clearly the work of trans-national capitalists, making money while the price of human life rises and falls. However, the concentration camps reveal a darker agenda behind even that. Nobody was making a profit out of that.
Don’t Blame “the Americans”, or “the Muslims”
Part of concealing what is really going on consists of giving people ways of seeing the world that disable them. National divisions is one way of doing this. It obscures the fact that national populations are not homogenous, and obfuscates trans-national alliances. The fact of the matter is that 90% of the people are innocent, or naive, and a smaller percentage is taking advantage of them – regardless of national distinctions.
In the case of the United States, the American people have themselves been cynically exploited for almost 100 years now. In 1913, on Christmas Eve, a law was pushed through an almost deserted Senate which allowed the creation of a privately owned bank to produce the US currency, to be misleadingly called the “Federal Reserve Bank”.
This bank has, since 1914, printed all US currency. The US Government obtains currency by borrowing this money from the Federal Reserve Bank, which creates it out of thin air, and loans it to the American people at interest.
Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes her laws.
Simply allowing private individuals to control the money supply and print money would give them immense power. However, borrowing that same money at interest guarantees that Americans have lost their freedom.
Let us illustrate this with a concrete example: imagine that I am paid $100 per week. The US Government takes $100 from the Federal Reserve Bank at, let us say, 10% interest. The American people now have a federal deficit of $110, increasing with time, and they have $100 in cash. In other words, they can never get enough money to get out of debt.
The money printed by the Federal Reserve Bank is not backed up by anything. The US gold reserves, which belong to the US people and are supposedly stored in Fort Knox, have been impounded by the Federal Reserve Bank “as collateral” against the trillions of dollars of debt that the US has to the Federal Reserve Bank. No-one is able to determine how much gold is there, or really if there is any there at all anymore. The US Congressional Gold Oversight Commission is unable to account for it.
Unfortunately, on earth there is such a scarcity of gold that the governments of the world try to keep it in reserve and issue paper currency. Because that currency is not backed up by gold, the paper they distribute as money is worthless…
– Srimad Bhagavatam 5.16.20-21 purport
Due to the currency devaluation caused by a currency printed out of thin air, the US dollar is now worth US$0.04 of the 1907 US dollar. Yes folks, that’s right. 4 cents.
Gold-standard currency is based on falsehood because the currency is not on a par with the reserved gold. The basic principle is falsity because currency notes are issued in value beyond that of the actual reserved gold. This artificial inflation of currency by the authorities encourages prostitution of the state economy. The price of commodities becomes artificially inflated because of bad money, or artificial currency notes.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 1.17.39 purport
“No Good Qualities” – Funding the Beast
But wait, it gets even better. Marvel at the extent of the exploitation of a slave nation. The Federal Government, in the same year that it authorized the creation of the “Federal Reserve Bank”, introduced a new amendment to the US Constitution, the 16th Amendment, designed to allow the levy of a graduated income tax, previously barred by the Constitution. As a result every US citizen since 1913 has been obliged to surrender a significant percentage of their paycheck each week. The legality of this tax is disputed, but since the tax department has the most guns, their interpretation usually prevails.
Of course you’d think that the citizens were paying for education, roads, defense, and those sorts of things, but in fact these are paid for by local property taxes, gasoline excise tax, and corporate income tax, respectively.
No, instead, 100% of the federal income tax, some US$1 trillion per year, goes to the Federal Reserve Bank in order to service the interest on the debt that the US people have incurred by borrowing US dollars to use as their currency.
Now that’s a sweet business model – for the owners of the Federal Reserve Bank. They have a slave state, and a whole lot of funding for whatever it is that they get up to. It’s hard to say with certitude what they get up to, because no one knows for certain who the owners of the Federal Reserve are.
By having their attention fixated on external enemies through wars on communism, drugs, terrorism and a myriad of other manufactured crises, the domestic population remains unaware of the enemy within their own country.
It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
– Henry Ford, US Industrialist (and Ambarish’s grandfather)
So your upstanding, law abiding, tax paying US citizen is an unwitting accomplice, funding the demonic take over of the world. “No good qualities”: irrespective of your good intentions, the material energy cheats you and robs you. The average soldier or policeman is a well-intentioned person who honestly believes that they are protecting Americans from Islamic terrorists. Only the world is not made up of “Americans” and “Islamic terrorists”, as you might think from watching TV – as the Bhagavatam clearly shows: it’s made up of devotees, demons, and the innocent.
90% of the people are innocent, or naive, and then there is a smaller group of greedy, unscrupulous persons exploiting them for fun and profit – irrespective of national divisions. Behind them is a smaller group of very ill-motivated beings.
“If You Knew What Was Going On…”
While we remained dazzled and distracted by the nonsensical trivia of the day, wasting time and becoming weakened by our involvement with it, in the background evil forces are not just plotting and preparing, but actively advancing their agenda. As the human race is systematically divided, weakened, and prepared for the slaughter they continue their infiltration and consolidation of the positions of power and positioning themselves to deliver the coup de grace: the complete destruction of Krishna’s own arrangement for the conditioned living entities to return back home, back to Godhead – human civilization. In this way they plan to thwart Visnu and His plan for the universe.
So when devotees come to me and tell me: “You don’t have to be so fanatical you know…” All I can think is: “If you only knew what is going on, and what we are about to go through, you would be grateful for every second of preparation that we have.”
The Poisoning of the Human Race
Over the past 20 years the rate of autism has gone from 1 in 10,000 children in the US, to 1 in 166. This is beyond epidemic proportions. This epidemic coincides with the introduction of mercury-based vaccines administered to children. The symptoms of autism bear a suspicious resemblance to those of mercury poisoning. You probably didn’t hear about the epidemic spread of autism in news report on US television. Instead, if you watch TV in the States, you might have heard a recent television news report touting that research reveals that “mercury is actually good for your brain”(!) A mysterious piggyback on the US Homeland Security Act of 2002 protects vaccine companies from litigation arising from their use of mercury in vaccines. If 1 in 166 children now have clinically diagnosed autism, what does this say about the general state of mental health?
The human race is being systematically poisoned through, among other things, their food and water. The latest initiative is to put fluoride in the bottled water sold in shops in Australia. Bottled water came into existence as a product because people did not want to drink the chemically contaminated fluoridated water that is being supplied via the tap in their house. Now that avenue is about to be closed. Hey, if it was really about doing something for people’s teeth, how about cutting back on soft drinks, or getting people to wash their mouth after they eat (cutting back on “fermentable carbohydrates”), instead of pumping chemicals into the water supply?
The atmosphere, as well as being contaminated with the toxic output of heavy industry and nuclear reactors, is also being modified by an openly denied systematic program of aerial spraying.
The Destruction of the Family
The family unit, the means of transmission of knowledge that gives humans context and perspective as to their position in the wider reality, has been destroyed for the general populace, while it remains intact for elites who transmit a poisonous view of reality where the mass of humanity exists for their exploitation. Women are encouraged to “have a career” and “think of themselves”. The family is replaced from the age of 5 with a state run system of indoctrination and socialization. Children are conditioned to isolation from generational structures and placed into stratified social settings that encourage them to subordinate to peer pressure while being disempowered with a flawed conceptual worldview.
The Destruction of the USA
When we see these three groups of people, the devotees, the innocent, and the demons, rather than the false sankhya that is promoted in the schools and the media, we no longer see “Islamic terrorists” attacking the “Free West”, or “America” attacking “Iraq”. Instead we see a small group utilizing the resources of the world to perpetuate a holocaust on people everywhere, including within the US. The US economy is being driven into the ground with $2 trillion of borrowed money already spent on war. The entire structure of the Federal Reserve guarantees that the US economy can be crashed at will by those holding the strings.
The US constitution has been altered. The initial consitution of the United States balances centralized government, with its peril of potential tyranny, with an armed citizenry at whose disposition the Federal Government rules. The citizenry of the US has been systematically disarmed. Regardless of anyone’s personal beliefs on gun ownership or violence, there is no denying that the original political structure of the country has been done away with.
The fundamental right of habeas corpus, or the guarantee of judicial oversight of the executive branch of government through the right to a trial, has been written out of law by sleight of hand, effectively doing away with 9 of the amendments of the US Constitution. Non-US citizens have already been detained in transit through the US and on streets in foreign countries and held without trial and tortured. This has now been made “legal”, and extended to allow any US citizen to have their citizenship stripped from them arbitrarily and “legally” subjected to the same.
Coming Up: Totalitarian Global Government
Around the world, National ID cards will be followed up by implanted RFID chips which will allow every person to be tracked everywhere and to have their lives switched on or off at will. No one will be able to buy anything or travel internationally without one of these.
Recent syndicated newspaper reports loudly announced: “Young shoppers want to pay with chip in skin”. The actual text of the article reveals that “8% of 13 to 19-year-olds were open to the idea of microchip implants“. Of course most people won’t go beyond the headline to find out that the reality is that presently 92% of “young shoppers” are not even open to the idea of it. In this way the human populations are being conditioned to prepare them to accept the next step in their enslavement. The body modification movement amongst the youth in recent years has been about preparing them to accept this implant, which is currently the size of a grain of rice.
Without self-sufficient farming communities survivability will become increasingly difficult. Self-sufficient communities will allow people to avoid having to participate in such a totalitarian economic system.
Harassed by famine and excessive taxes, people will resort to eating leaves, roots, flesh, wild honey, fruits, flowers and seeds. Struck by drought, they will become completely ruined.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 12.2.9
War Over Water and Oil
Over the past one hundred years many alternative technologies have been developed that would render combustion engines obsolete. Powerful vested economic interests who have made their money from oil have resisted this and suppressed these technologies. This has been done with the collusion of government forces because the underlying motivation is not simply economic – it is to drive human civilization toward environmental and economic crisis.
Regardless of whether predictions that world oil reserves will dry up in the next decade prove to be correct, the fact of the matter is that the rising energy demands of the rapidly industrializing nations of India and China place them on a direct collision course with the developed industrial nations of Europe and North America for access and control of the existing oil reserves of the world.
At the same time the climate has been altered in such a way that endemic drought is affecting many of the population centers of the world. Whether this is due to greenhouse gases emitted from combustion engines and other heavy industry or due to the failure of modern governments and populations to perform yajnas, the fact is that it is happening.
Increasing scarcity of oil and water resources will lead to increased armed conflict.
It sounds counter-intuitive doesn’t it? Surely capitalists must realize that if they maximize profits to the point where it destroys the world they too will suffer? Their greed helps make them blind to what is really going on, just as Kamsa thought that he was simply looking out for number one; and just like Kamsa they too are getting direction from beings who really do want to destroy the world.
Mechanized Military
By 2010 the US Air force aims to have a significant portion of their assets mechanized. By 2015 the plan is to have a significant portion of land-based military assets mechanized as robotic drones. At this point volunteer human forces become increasingly dispensable and maintaining the illusion of “defense of freedom” will become less important and the cumbersome and uncomfortable mask can at last come off completely.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, eager to “come out of the closet”, recently commented to an Israeli delegation off camera at a press conference (reported by a BBC reporter present):
Greetings to your president. What a mighty man he turns out to be! He raped 10 women – I would never have expected this from him. He surprised us all – we all envy him!
– Russian President Vladamir Putin, as reported by the BBC
The human beings within the territorial borders of what is now the United States will be as oppressed as everyone else.
What’s Really Going On Behind the Razzle Dazzle
The majority of people are well-meaning but misguided. For some it is about limited “personal” or extended “national” interests. For others at a higher level it is about the interest of their elite family. At a still higher level, playing on the interests below, it is actually about exterminating human existence.
They are envious of the Supreme Personality of Godhead within their own body and the body of others [1]. They are destroyers of the family tradition [2]. They are dedicated to ugra-karma, horrible works meant for the destruction of the world [3]. They are the asuram bhavam asritah [4]. They are atheists. Not agnostics – “I don’t know if God exists or not”, but atheists – actively opposed to the Lord and His divine plan for this universe. They are dedicated to the wholesale destruction of firstly all the elements of varnasrama civilization that enable the human beings to rise in self-realization, and ultimately to the human race itself, an essential element of varnasrama civilization.
The only thing we learn from history is that no one seems to learn anything from studying history. Our history, the Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita, tells one story over and over again. Demons try to seize control of the human society, and the Lord and His devotees are ultimately victorious.
In Kali yuga the Lord has come as Sri Krishna Caitanya, and His sangopangastra consists of the sankirtan-yajna – the chanting of the Holy Names and distribution of Srimad Bhagavatam and prasadam [5]. When He invoked His chakra to dispatch Jagai and Madhai this point was explained by Sri Nityananda Prabhu.
“The Only Way to Defeat Evil Is to Advance in Good”
The mission of this Krishna Consciousness movement is to be recorded in the annals of history as having saved the world in its darkest hour
– Srila Prabhupada, quoted in Servant of the Servant
Right now we have it easy. We have access to technology to mass produce the Srimad Bhagavatam. We have some room to move in many parts of the world. Right now we should be planting seeds, distributing the Bhagavatam far and wide. We should be constructing a decentralized, locally empowered culture based around Srila Prabhupada’s books and the knowledge contained within them. We should be digging in, learning the skills needed for self sufficiency and developing rural communities. The window of opportunity is closing.
What is essential today is not so much the rehabilitation of schools and libraries or shops and factories but the rehabilitation of man; we must re-create man if we are to create a new world community.It is therefore more necessary than ever to realize the all-important relationship of man with God if we want at all to rehabilitate the human race, which is already shattered more than ever.
Forget about watching TV, about sending the kids to school to be slaughtered, about getting mainstream credibility, about integrating with a doomed society that exists only to distract people from what is really going on and destroy their determination, will power and clarity of vision.
The body of a brahmana is not intended to enjoy insignificant material sense gratification; rather, by accepting difficult austerities in his life, a brahmana will enjoy unlimited happiness after death.
– Srimad Bhagavatam 11.17.42
At the time of death our bhajan will be tested. I think we will be lucky, and we will see everything taken away before the moment of the physical death of our bodies. At that time our bhajan will be tested. All that time developing your career – a smoke screen to divert you from really empowering yourself. All that study – useless, except to make you a slave and allow you to get a little bit of sense gratification in order to divert you from realizing your true potential. The only thing that will remain will be the result of our bhajan. We have to build our lives on the rock of the Bhagavatam, not on the treacherous sand of the illusory society we find ourselves in right now.
This Is An Extremely Hostile Environment
We are living in an extremely, extremely hostile environment. Everything that looks good out there is actually meant to kill us, individually and collectively. This world is padam padam yad vipadam. That is the reality, regardless of superficial appearances. Non-devotees have no good qualities. Even the otherwise innocent persons who are well-intentioned are misled and misleading.
We have to get out of the idea that the movement should seek mainstream credibility and acceptance at the expense of preparation for the coming harsh realities. No one will care a fig for all that when the jackboot comes down. Prabhupada’s program and priorities remain as urgent now as they were 40 years ago. Nothing has fundamentally changed except for the fact that the demons have advanced their program 40 years. From the producers who brought you the moon landings (and then “lost” all the original magnetic tape evidence for all moon landings – all 700 boxes of it) comes the new made-for-TV blockbuster production: “9/11”. Purposefully designed to rewrite the script of your life and make you complacent, confused, and disempowered. We do not accept it. We accept the story of the Bhagavatam and the Bhagavad-gita. Duryodhana and his backers will be stopped. Kamsa and his advisors will be thwarted.
The “other side” are not sitting around going: “You know prabhu, you don’t need to be so fanatical…” As Narada Muni said, if we could be as dedicated as the demons are in their fixed determination and execution we’d really be Krishna conscious!
While the sun is still shining make hay! When the rains come whatever we have managed to do now will be what we have to sustain us. Noah spent 50 years building the ark, and all around him people were kicking back and laughing at him. If he had been worried about fitting in and being accepted, or allowed himself to be lulled into complacency, he too would have been washed away in the deluge.
In the future the same people who ridicule us now will look back with intense gratitude for what we did. Do not doubt it – our sacrifice right now is all that stands between the human race and its destruction.
The victory is already won by the Lord’s will – nimitta-matram bhava – just become an instrument in the struggle.
Srila Prabhupada:
The mission of this Krishna Consciousness movement is to be recorded in the annals of history as having saved the world in its darkest hour
That hour is fast approaching.
Thanks for the heads up prabhu – yes, it’s a mess out there. Food and water totally contaminated, even the air we breathe increasingly filled with pollutants and radiation of all kinds. The media barons constantly shape the way we think with their stream of “news”, opinions and “expert analysis”. Then there is the advertising industry. Crime, substance abuse, depression and disease stats are going through the roof. So many demons wreaking havoc. The dogs are having their day for sure. Atheistic propaganda abounds – “The God Delusion” being the latest bestseller to mislead the poor people into further ignorance and suffering. It’s a good time to preach, and it’s going to get even better it seems, at least for the forseeable future :(
good comment above from krishna dharma prabhu.
a good article sita pati prabhu.
a little hard to read the whole thing thru, but i did on second attempt.
worth the read.
“We should be constructing a decentralized, locally empowered culture based around Srila Prabhupada’s books and the knowledge contained within them. We should be digging in, learning the skills needed for self sufficiency and developing rural communities.”
i’d like to see a synopsis of some previous writing sita pati did titled ‘the network is the preacher’. his use of ‘decentralized’ in above quote reminded me of that multi segmented piece on his previous site.
it was quite interesting, but also a little of a difficult read [for me].
agtsp
bill duke
Dear Prabhu,
This article is very well written. It is also very true which makes it hard for even devotees to take a good look at.
I have several questions if you wouldn’t mind me asking. Please contact me at jerryschutt@hotmail.com if you have time.
Thank you,
bhakta Jerry
If you are interested in the content of this article, have a look at the other posts on my site www.atmayogi.com, and especially check out the recent class by H.H. Prahladananda Swami posted at http://www.atmayogi.com/?q=node/94
All the world’s stock markets are at record highs, and growing higher every day (contrary to the dire predictions made year-after-year by the many perenially negative people, including some of the devotees).
The end of the world may come someday, but might not come within our lifetimes. It might be good to have a backup plan in case you are wrong.
The born-again Christians are always preaching we are in the “end times”. The end might not come though for another 400,000 or so years.
Whilst the picture you painted seems dire, we should remember that every period in history is dire. I do not believe that Srila Prabhupada wants us to wait for a cataclysmic event to turn ruraly dependant. In order to be rurally dependant we need to put systems and infrastructure in place to be able to do it. If you cant make a living from doing it then it is extremely unlikely you are going to do it.
From my view the reason why we do not have a thriving rural economy is because as a society we have not put things in place to make it work. As long as we do not make rural life livelihood based then there will not be rural livelihoods and thus rural life remains for somebody else to do.
In Krishnas childhood experience he was dependant on the cows for his living. I take this that we must make our rural life real and that it must make us financially dependant on it. The amish are dependant on the sales of their crops as well as providing their own food. Our rural projects must make a financial model that works in todays society. If it is not done on a project by project basis then we will continue to have a highly talked about goal of self reliance but a practice of farm regressions into non entities.
I believe we can turn our farming projects around by making them livelihood based and supportive of the farmers/growers families.
I appreciate Suresh’s comment.
We know there are demigods and demons struggling in the universe, and we know that modern human civilization is in the grip of Kali yuga.
Srila Prabhupada warned us that there is danger at every step in the material world. “One minute it is green, the next minute there is fire.”
Srila Prabhupada told us, on the basis of sastra, they did not go to the moon. We should believe in sastra, rather than what we read in the newspapers or see on CNN (or Fox . . . or Al Jazeera).
The international banking system, which no longer even makes a pretense of being pegged to any precious metal or other valuable commodity, is a symptom of Kali yuga. Even paper currency is a symptom of Kali yuga! (Imagine: people used to walk around with real gold, silver and even gems in their purses – today’s so-called wealth is machines, annoying gadgets, air-polluting cars and ocean polluting oil tankers).
Krishna Dharma nicely summarizes so many of the ills of this age.
We have the unique medicine for curing all these ills: Lord Caitanya’s sankirtan movement. Mainly, its about sravanam kirtanam, its about harinama sankirtan and distributing Prabhupada’s books.
Just like the communists made powerful mundane propaganda by distributing and discussing the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, ISKCON can save the world by getting everyone to read and discuss Srila Prabhupada’s books.
We do not need to identify ISKCON with various conspiracy theorists. That worries me. When we start discussing these things too much, relying largely on the fertile imaginations of nondevotees, the sound vibration becomes mundane.
Sure there are mysteries about the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 attacks and so on. I would keep an open mind about these things, but not get too wrapped up in speculating about them. At best it is a distraction, and it could easily be an embarrassment for ISKCON if we make it a focal point of our preaching.
I mean, if a devotee has some particular insight somehow, that is one thing, but we should not just become followers of the wacky conspiracy theorists, the tax protesters, the militia movement, the antisemites, the sensationalist talk radio hosts. We have something more important to talk about: Krishna consciousness.
What will we do when the nuclear bomb comes? Chant Hare Krishna!
Sita-pati, I like your preaching. I resonate particularly with one of your conclusions, “We have to get out of the idea that the movement should seek mainstream credibility and acceptance at the expense of preparation for the coming harsh realities.” However, I strongly disagree with your use of Prabhupada’s priorities to justify rural living. You say, “Prabhupada’s program and priorities remain as urgent now as they were 40 years ago.” Yet his two highest priorities were to (1) establish and maintain ISKCON; and (2) increase book distribution and remittances to his BBT. The reality is that book distribution and BBT remittances have decreased. Preaching the dire message of “What’s Really Going On,” is important, but your first conclusion should be that book distribution must increase, and then Prabhupäda’s other priorities like self-sustained living must be established.
Regarding the sankirtana (ISKCON) movement seeking the mainstream, I agree that it is essential to consider that those of us who take part in a demonic civilization will reap its karmic results. At the same time the Vedic tradition (sastra) teaches that yajna purifies sins. Mahaprabhu provides us with sankirtana yajna. Therefore, I invite everyone in this forum to New York City where we can distribute books and perform harinama when the bomb drops. Under those circumstances, that is a white light worth entering!
Thanks for your comments Dayananda prabhu.
As far as Srila Prabhupada’s desires for rural living, I think that we can understand them quite clearly by reading his books, lectures, conversations, and letters. Especially Hare Krishna devi dasi’s compilation “Varnasrama Dharama” is very good as an overview. Without a shadow of doubt rural living is part of Sri Krishna’s and Srila Prabhupada’s vision for ISKCON and human civilization going forward into the future.
If you read the article carefully you’ll find this:
“Right now we have it easy. We have access to technology to mass produce the Srimad Bhagavatam. We have some room to move in many parts of the world. Right now we should be planting seeds, distributing the Bhagavatam far and wide. We should be constructing a decentralized, locally empowered culture based around Srila Prabhupada’s books and the knowledge contained within them. We should be digging in, learning the skills needed for self sufficiency and developing rural communities.”
In other words, book distribution, cultivation and education, and rural living, in that order. I see that as Srila Prabhupada’s strategic development and a worthy blueprint for us to follow.
This article represents my own personal thoughts. Here, where I am, we have book distribution, cultivation and education going on, and ashrams in an urban setting with a preaching infrastructure in place. However, we have no rural “Simple Living” component to our program, and I am feeling this lack. In 2007 we are going to make forays in this direction.
Sita-pati,
I agree that sankirtana-yajna and rural living go hand in hand. On one hand, I’m concerned that ISKCON leaders and brahmanas do not put enough emphasis on sankirtana book distribution among the burgeoning householder communities, particularly in North America. On the other hand, I agree that preaching about simple living may be our single greatest weapon for this century. I’d like to send you a brochure I wrote about the environment, which emphasizes sankirtana-yajna and simple living–short and sweet. Kindly send me your email to dayananda@sankirtana-yajna.com or dayananda@msn.com.
ys, d
“I wish that it will be noted down in history that this Krishna Consciousness Movement is responsible for saving the world. Practically, our Movement is the only hope for saving the world from complete disaster. So you have got all good opportunity now, do everything very nicely.”
Letter, Dec 1972
Confirming Srimad-Bhagavatam’s prediction for Kali Yuga, the tangerine harvest this year features all pulp and virtually no juice.