Somebody asked me, maybe a week ago, why
the tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanoes affect Asia, Vietnam, China and Japan.
The simple answer to that is those countries destroy nature more than anything
else in the world. They eat the whale, kill the dolphins and destroy the dolphin
population. For that reason there is a negative feel around the whole country.
Because of their destruction of nature they have tsunamis and natural disasters
in their countries.
Every country is represented as an individual.
For example, when you go to the Bhagavad Gita, in the opening chapters, it talks
about Dharmashaktra and Kurushaktra. There was no battlefield in India. The
battlefield is our physical body. We also can accumulate negative energy around
us and destroy ourselves. Please don’t misunderstand me and think I’m trying to
make you vegetarian. It’s nothing of that nature. We also have Ten Commandments,
and the first of those in the Hindu following is ahimsa – non-killing, non-injury,
to anything that is moveable – and that includes animals. We should not even
destroy an animal but we in this present time now, especially right now, the
Tamil-speaking people and later on the Hindi-speaking people, will do poojas
where they will slaughter and that is against ahimsa. I’m not propagating vegetarianism,
I’m telling you what our scriptures say. As you do those things you’ll create
negative energy for your children and they will bear the karmic consequences of
that.
Sometimes we just follow blindly. If I ask
them why they are doing this pooja, why are they slaughtering? They will tell
me their father and mother did it, and their parent’s parents did it. The only
difference between them and their grandparents is that they just slaughter, but
their grandparents recited special mantras to overcome the effect of the karma.
The maharaj, the priest, won’t tell you that. He’ll do all the poojas – he does
his part and you must do your part. Why doesn’t he stay and witness the
slaughter? Because he knows within himself that it is wrong, but he won't tell
you that because then you won’t employ him for your next pooja, and because it
is against your family tradition not to do it. He’ll say. ‘Let me take my darshan,’
then sit in his Mercedes Benz and he is gone. And some other guy comes and does
the slaughtering. Look at him, the slaughterer, and see whether he is like you
or different from you. You’ll see that he looks very abnormal because what he
does has taken an effect on him, and the negative energy has built up around him.
I’m telling you this because we are living in Canto 12 of the Srimvad Bhagvatam, and
it tells you that this is the time. Religiousness will diminish. If you asked
your granny why she breaks the mielies (corn cobs) before boiling them she’ll
say it’s because her granny did it, and so on. The first one who started breaking
the mielies did it because their pot was too small. We’re too scared to stop
our traditions, and that is why you are having a bad time. Your bad time occurs
in a cycle whether you like it or not. It’s a 9-year cycle, for some people 18
years – 9 years of good and 9 years of bad. Whether you like it or not you’ll
get caught in that cycle. Then you’ll get caught in this current cycle of Rahu,
Guru and Ketu sitting in Cancer, moving into Leo in a few days time. When you
have a situation like this it has nothing to do with your 9-year cycle. It will
effect you. You will all be affected by January 2016, whether you like it or
not – all of you. Therefore, this is what will sustain you: pooja, reciting of
mantras, and praying.
If you have a Friday service, it is your
commitment, your appointment with God. Even if Brazil is playing Germany, or if
Manchester United is playing Liverpool, keep your appointment. Really, this
is how it is. We are more fanatical about Manchester United than we are about God.
And we have some members here like that today, they’re wearing yellow shirts
but normally they’re red. Let us be fanatical about God. You need to understand one thing: if you
believe in God and you die tomorrow, when you go ‘up there’ if there’s no God
then there’s no problem. But if there is a God, you’ll benefit. And it works
the other way too: if you don’t believe in God, and there is no God then you’re
fine, but if there is a God then … big trouble for you. Remember that.
The
Gayathri Mantra, the Sri Ram Mantra and the Maha Mantra are the 3 mantras that
will sustain you in this life. So if you or your family is slaughtering, you
must go and decide whether you want to do it or not. My mother and father used
to slaughter, but from the age of 14 I decided I’m not going that route and I
told them that when they die I’m not carrying on that tradition. By the time my
father passed on in 1990, they had also changed and were no longer
slaughtering. By the time my mother passed away we were total vegetarians. My
parents realized the ahimsa we talked about will effect us. So go and think
about this, especially if you have children because it will come out in the
children. And the karmic consequences are not very good because you will also
suffer in the process.
Somebody said to me they do a pig prayer:
at midnight they do one prayer, and in the
morning they eat that meat because its blessed. To me that was very funny. They
have a janda flag on the same property, but they cover it with a white cloth.
If God is so small that He can be contained in a white cloth, then I won’t pray
to that God because I’m bigger than Him. He’s omnipresent, omniscient and
omnipotent, and yet we think we can confine him to the 3 walls where the janda
is so we can do the slaughtering prayer. The worship of Hanuman covers a
distance of 156 600 km – that’s his energy. And the other day we had a chart
here to show you how it is calculated. So if you really worship Hanuman, his
energy is from here to the sun. When they said he made one leap they’re talking
about that energy. He has to be here and at the sun at the same time. So if you
have a Hanuman janda no white cloth works. Your actions will come back to bite
you – like a cobra, it will be very painful.
Hari Om.
