The real cause for mankind's worst nightmare
AIDS – the disease for which there is no aid, the epidemic that is the worst nightmare of the sensual enjoyer, AIDS is not caused by HIV, as most people think. The physical disease AIDS – acquired immunodeficiency syndrome – originates from a subtler malaise AIDS – Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome. Lets see how.
The Bhagavad-gita explains that we are not our physical bodies; we are spiritual beings, integral parts of the Supreme Pleasure Principle, Krsna, who is the only enjoyer and the only source of enjoyment. Our innate longing for everlasting happiness is eternally and completely fulfilled by harmonizing with Krsna through divine love. Our present material existence is a diseased state, wherein our love for Krsna is transmogrified into lust.
Due to lack of spiritual education, most people today assume that enjoyment means bodily enjoyment. But the maximum pleasure that the body can offer is limited to a few fleeting moments – even for those who are in the prime of youth and the best of health and even for those who have the most attractive partners. Unfortunately, due to the unrelenting sensual propaganda bombarding them, they fail to recognize the obvious and inescapable limitation of carnal pleasure. Goaded on by erotic hype, they cast away all ethical, soc ial and religious regulations. This acquired intelligence deficiency – the inability to understand that the pursuit of sensual pleasures is permanently frustrated – makes them helpless victims of AIDS.
Vedic wisdom offers a systematic program of prescriptions and proscriptions to transmute lust back into love. The most important prescription is chanting the names of God like the Hare Krsna mahamantra, which unlocks the treasure of peace and bliss hidden within. And the most important proscription is restraint in sen sual indulgence, which aggravates our physical misidentification and so obscures our natural spiritual joyfulness. Thus spiritual regulations are meant not to deprive us of happiness, but to provide us happiness by facilitating the recovery of our spiritual health.
So to deal with AIDS, we need spiritual education, not sex education. Only when we empower people with spiritual education will they become free from the intelligence deficiency that makes them mistake disease to be pleasure. Real freedom will come, not by becoming free for sex, but by becoming free from sex.
Caitanya Carana Dasa is a disciple of His Holiness Radhanatha Swami. He holds a degree in electronics & telecommunications engineering and serves full-time at ISKCON Pune. He runs a free cyber magazine, The Spiritual Scientist, which gives a scientific presentation of Krsna conscious philosophy. To receive new is sues as they come out, write to iyfpune@vsnl.com.