Global Meltdown
BY: JAHNAVA DEVI
The Fate of Cash and Credit Traders
Lithograph, Ravi Varma Press c. 1910
May 01, CANADA (SUN) — The material world is filled with threefold miseries: adhyatmika, adhibhautika, and adhidaivika. Adhyatmika miseries are those pertaining to the body and mind (atma), as we are sometimes distressed mentally and other times suffering bodily discomforts. Adhibhautika are those miseries inflicted by other living entities (bhutas), which might be ants biting us in our bed or living entities who are born on other planets that give us misery. Adhidaivika miseries are those pertaining to natural disturbances that originate with the demigods of the higher planets (devas). As long as we're entangled in this material world, we're sure to always be suffering from one or another of these threefold miseries.
In our world today there appears to be a great quickening of the threefold miseries. Nearly everyone on the planet is aware of this phenomenon, whether residing in the smallest village or the most sophisticated city. Increasingly, people's bodies are plagued with disease in the form of cancers, AIDS and viruses that now spread unchecked by antibiotics. The minds of our elders are plagued by Alzheimers, while the children increasingly suffer from Autism. Institutional medicine feeds more and more pills to the masses, all the while poisoning our food and water with fluoride and mercury, aspartame, transfats, etc. Genetically modified foods coupled with the demoniac application of nanotechnology may now be mutating and creating new diseases like Morgellon's.
In the once wealthy United States, productive industry is nearly gone, replaced with debt/credit and consumer-centric service businesses that are now rapidly diminishing. The monetary system is based on nothing of value, and the U.S. dollar is now understood to be nothing more than fiat currency, hardly worth the paper it's s printed on.
There are wars on multiple fronts, with the threat of major new wars escalating each day and fears of nuclear destruction again seeping into the mass consciousness. In the west, the educational system is expensive if not completely ineffective. Eastern culture and education are becoming westernized and are slowly becoming debased. In many developing nations, the population is increasingly overweight, overmedicated, and focused on the least important nonsense life has to offer. Criminals abound, and the fundamental human flaws described in sastra like greed, envy and ignorance, are proliferate.
Perhaps worst of all, a clear pattern has begun to emerge from a body of evidence being pulled together by citizens around the world, which indicates that many of the world's gigantic problems have been intentionally created… put in place over time by a power elite and methodically constructed so as to enslave mankind… control our food, water, air, land, freedom of movement and privacy… all the fundamentals that make life on earth bearable.
Of course, none of this is a surprise to the devotees, who have benefit of the glorious Vedic literatures which describe in excruciating detail just how bad things really are for the fallen conditioned souls in Kali yuga - especially those who have an inkling of the Absolute Truth.
Most devotees have long desired to extricate themselves from the 'social machine', which we understand to be a manifestation of Kali. Many are renewing their efforts to get back to the land, following Srila Prabhupada's sublime model for simple living, high thinking. Like the Pandavas, whose plight resulted in eleven years of exile in the forests where they lived frugally on fruits, many devotees are now preparing to head for the hills and backwaters as our global circumstances continue to deteriorate. Although deserving of all happiness, the Pandavas themselves spent many years brooding over their miserable circumstances. In comparison, we cannot complain when not provided with even our simple comforts in this ocean of suffering.
Fortunately we can avail ourselves of the science of karma, which clearly instructs us in understanding the origin of our miserable circumstances. And when it comes to national karma, it appears that the United States is about to stand as an excellent example of 'action and reaction'. As America's founding father, Thomas Jefferson said, "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
Since running our first Feature story in the Sun on global food and water shortages in October 2007, ("The Forest Fire of Material Life"), we have been astounded at how rapidly the situation appears to be deteriorating. Topics like food shortages, wasting of corn for ethanol, panic buying, commodities exploitation and even famine are now everyday fare in the mainstream news.
Aside from the latest bizarre program of taking food out of the mouths of the hungry by pouring it into vehicle fuel tanks, so many other inconceivably crazy things are going on with the world food supply. Unprecedented crop damage is happening worldwide due, we are told, to global warming and the resulting disruption to weather. With the U.S. now down to just a four-day cache of wheat, massive flooding along the Mississippi River has taken out a large portion of this year's wheat, just days before farmers expected to harvest a bumper crop. Meanwhile, we hear that Haitians are eating mud cakes to stay alive, while the Canadian government is sanctioning the slaughter of thousands of pigs, simply because pork prices offer too low a profit for the farmers. And even this tainted food is being fed to the dogs rather than to the starving humans on several continents.
In raw contrast to this demoniac scene is the devotee's beloved Khamendenu, which represents the Lord's own plans for a properly run society, beginning with protection of the cows. While the devotees work on programs like Care For Cows, the demons like Monsanto are busy bringing the same ruination to milk production as they have to ruining the world's seed stocks.
What were once conspiracy theories are now undisputable facts. The world is facing tremendously complex problems and few viable solutions are seen on the horizon. Greed, ignorance and corruption seem to be winning the battle. As devotees, we know that there's little point in trying to solve these problems by getting ensnared in fighting with the government, or joining the protestors by taking up a placards and hitting the streets. There are many viable ways to express our disgust with the demoniac rulers while staying focused on solving these problems from the spiritual platform. While there's certainly nothing wrong with a heartfelt show of civil disobedience (so fittingly demonstrated in this clip from the movie 'Network'), our real job is to preach Krsna consciousness - and that's a career we've been well trained for by our Sampradaya Acarya.
As Rocana prabhu stated in his Talks segment today, "The more evidence there is that the material world is hellish, that there is no real happiness to be found here and no solution to correct these problems other than Krsna consciousness, then the more ideal the situation is for preaching." In short, this was Srila Prabhupada's advice on how we are to face the problems of the material world.
As Srila Prabhupada stated in his purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.22.32:
"It is not that the miseries of the material world completely vanish when one takes to Krsna consciousness, but for one who is Krsna conscious the miseries of material existence have no effect. We cannot stop the miseries of the material atmosphere, but Krsna consciousness is the antiseptic method to protect us from being affected by the miseries of material existence. For a Krsna conscious person, both living in heaven and living in hell are equal."
We may now be on our way to finding out just how true that is.
