Astrologers, we’ve heard, are predicting a forthcoming war. If we believe accounts passed on from a well-reputed star-reader in Jaipur, the next world war is on its way. Expect conflicts to start mounting within the next year or so, he says. And by the year 2000 expect 35% of the world’s people to be dead.
Several other astrologers paint similar pictures of doom. Do we believe them?
Maybe. Astrologers can be wrong (a leading pundit predicted Mr. Clinton would lose the ’96 elections), and they can also be terribly right.
So what to do?
Either way, chant Hare Krishna. And do it seriously.
The material world is not a picnic. Some calamity is sure to come upon us, whether it engulfs us globally, strikes us nationally, smashes us in families or groups, or skewers us one by one.
Disaster may come now or may wait till later, but it can’t be avoided. Misfortune is built into the world. Birth, death, old age, disease — all of them miserable, all inevitable.
And our only protection is to chant Hare Krishna — one by one, in families or groups, nationally, or all over the world.
To chant Hare Krishna — or any genuine name of God — means to purify our consciousness, purify our life, revive our lost relationship with God. It means to get serious about getting out of material ignorance and entanglement. It means getting a clear understanding of ourselves as spiritual beings. It means becoming peaceful and happy in this life. And at the end it means going back to Godhead, back to the spiritual world, back to our eternal spiritual home.
No other method of spiritual realization is as effective, and as easy, in the present age as chanting Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.
But people are on a joyride. There’s money to be made, sex to be celebrated, we’ve got movies and parties and corporate conquests. Surf the sea, surf the internet, surf your own cerebral dendrites and synapses.
It’s idiocy. And it’s the kind of idiocy that can well lead to war. While we’re out surfing and enjoying the party, we’re missing the real point of life — spiritual realization. And we’re building up a stockpile of karma that could explode into war at any time.
That stockpile of karma can be dismantled, that explosion defused, by chanting of the holy names of God. By chanting Hare Krishna we can pacify all conflicts — within ourselves, within our families and groups, within our nations, within our world.
Otherwise, on with the party, and on with the wars.
