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AIDS: the true story?

Dear Doug

Thank you for your reply.

I am pleased to hear you are reading something by Vraja Kishor and it has changed
your life. I think you would also very much enjoy the books by Srila Prabhupada,
the Founder-Acarya of the Hare Krishna movement. He has translated all the
important scriptures from India into very readable English and he has also written
many small introductory books which are very nice. See if you can get hold of some
of them. You will find them a great source of spiritual inspiration.

I think we can't do that much about AIDS. It is out of our control. But at least
it might encourage people to be less promiscuous, which is good. If we are always
looking for sex it will consume all our time and energy and we will have no time
to look for God...

I have included a short article you might be interested in. I would appreciate
your comments on it. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.


Madhudvisa dasa


                                  CURING THE SKIN DISEASE
                                  ======================

We have this material body which is made of earth, water, fire, air and either,
and it is obnoxious. If you analyse this material body you will find it is full of
pus and blood and stool and urine, all sorts of horrible things. It's just a bag
full of these things. We are
attracted simply to the skin. We think, "Oh, this skin is very nice," we are very
attracted to such a skin. When we see a very beautiful woman what is it we are
attracted to? We are attracted to her very beautiful skin, nice complexion,
beautiful hair, nicely shaped
breasts, thin waste and so on. Such a women is very attractive but what is it we
are attracted to? It's the skin. Only the skin. There is a story Srila Prabhupada
would quote about this, it's the story of a prince and a beautiful young girl.
There was a prince who once saw a very beautiful young woman. He visited her to
see her but she was very
chaste. The prince wanted to marry this very beautiful girl because he was
attracted to her out of lust. He wanted to marry her and enjoy her body but the
young girl didn't want to marry the prince. So she said to the prince, "Alright,
you want to marry me, you are attracted by my beauty, so I will distil my beauty
in the next ten days, I will distil my beauty into liquid form and then you can
come and see this distilled form of my beauty."


So the prince said, "Alright." Then she said, "If you still want to take me as
your wife then you can take me." The prince replied, "Alright, that's fine, I'll
come back in ten days and certainly I'll take you as my wife my beautiful young
maiden." Then he went away
and as soon as he went away this beautiful young girl started to take very strong
purgatives, medicine which would cause her to vomit and pass stool, in this way
she kept all the vomit and stool in a big pot. She didn't eat anything, she was
simply passing stool and vomiting, so within ten days her whole beautiful body was
destroyed. She was a grey colour, she was very skinny, very weak, you could not
recognize her as the same person.

After ten days the prince came back to visit the beautiful girl. She opened the
door for him. When the prince saw her he said, "I have come to see one very
beautiful lady who I am about to marry." So the girl said, "I am that beautiful
young lady." He replied, "No it isn't
true. How could it be possible?" She said, "Yes I am that beautiful young lady, I
have distilled my beauty, come and see it." The prince thought, "This will be
interesting." She took him to the place where she was keeping the big pot
containing all of her stool, vomit and urine and she said, "Here is my beauty." So
this is the story of liquid beauty, and it is a fact. That is actually the beauty
of the material body, it's simply a bag of pus, stool, urine, blood, mucus,
horrible things. And we are just attached to the skin and as soon as the skin is
no longer beautiful we are not attracted any more.

This is why in Western society, which is simply going on the basis of this "skin
disease," there are so many divorces and so many marriages. A man is being
attracted to a woman on the basis of skin disease. He thinks, "Oh, here is a very
nice woman. She has very nice hair, a very beautiful complexion, a very nice
bodily structure. She is a very
beautiful woman." The woman is thinking in the same way, "This is a very handsome
man, he is very strong, very beautiful, a very attractive man." Then they come
together and for a short time enjoy sex life and soon there is some discrepancy in
the sex life, some difficulty in the sex life, so they say, "I'm sorry darling
it's just not working any more, the magic is not in our relationship any more. I
have to go and find somebody else." Then they have a divorce. In this way
everything is based on the skin, and the skin is temporary. We can never be
satisfied, we can never be happy with a relationship based on this skin disease
because our skin is a very temporary thing. A beautiful girl is beautiful for a
few years only, young girls sixteen, seventeen are very beautiful, twenty, twenty-
one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, then finished. She's not
beautiful any more. So this is a fleeting moment only. It's the same with a man, a
man is beautiful, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen then the beauty is gone.

If we are attracted by the skin only, the beauty of the skin, we are bound to be
dissatisfied because the person, I, the self, I am different from the body. In the
Bhagavad-gita Krishna says the soul, even in this life, is changing bodies. In the
beginning we have a child's body, then we get a boy's body, then a man's body then
we
get an old man's body, so the time of death is simply another change of body. A
self-realized soul can understand this, he can see this. This is a fact. Our
bodies are always changing. You can see. No one can argue with this fact. It's
simply a statement of a very plain fact. I have this man's body now, previously I
had a boy's body, prior to that I had a child's body and before that a babies
body. They are all different bodies. I can see, my parents have the pictures and
they can show you I had these different bodies. Now those bodies have gone. Now I
have this man's body and in due course it will also be finished and I'll have an
old man's body and ultimately that old mans body will be gone and I will be taken
away to another body at the time of death. This is the process of life in the
material world. The bodies are changing but the soul is not changing. I the
person, I am the same person I was in the babies body, I'm the same person I was
in the child's body, I'm the same person I was in the boys body. I can remember
things, I can remember my childhood body, I can remember my boys body. I can
remember the activities I performed in these bodies. These activities are
performed by me, but the body I had then is gone. So we can understand that I, the
self, the person, I am permanent, I am eternal, but the body is always changing. I
am not this body, I am the occupier of this body, I am the driver of this body, I
am the controller of this body, but I am not the body. The body is a machine.
Krishna also states this in the Bhagavad-gita(18.61):


                                      isvarah sarva-bhutanam
                                       hrd-dese 'rjuna tisthati
                                     bhramayan sarva-bhutani
                                       ynatrarudhani mayaya

Here it is clearly described that Krishna is in our hearts and He is directing our
wanderings and we are seated on a machine made of the material energy. So this
body is a machine made of the material energy; earth, water, fire, air, either.
The more subtle elements are also there, the mind, intelligence and false ego, but
the body is material, the body is temporary. The nature of the soul is different.
The nature of the soul is the same as the nature of Krishna. The nature of the
soul is sat [eternal] cit [full of knowledge] ananda [full of bliss] vigraha [with
a spiritual form] because that is the nature of Krishna. We are constitutionally a
tiny part of Krishna. So constitutionally we are the same as Krishna in quality.
But the quantity is different. We are very tiny and Krishna is very great. Because
we are the tiny living entities and Krishna is the great, supreme living entity,
by analysing our qualities, as the tiny living entities, we can understand, at
least to some extent, the qualities of Krishna, the supreme living entity. The
only difference is Krishna is unlimited and we are extremely limited. Krishna is
vibhu, which
means unlimited and we are anu, which means limited. The analogy is given of the
entire ocean compared to a drop of sea-water. If you analyse the drop of sea-water
you can find out so many things about the entire ocean. If you analyse the salt
content of the drop you can understand the salt proportion of the entire ocean
because the substance is the same. You a considering sea-water, only the quantity
is different. You are talking about one drop which is very insignificant and the
entire ocean which is very great. So
we are like that one drop of sea-water and Krishna is like the ocean, because He's
great and we are small.

Krishna's nature is totally spiritual. He doesn't have a body like ours which
changes. Krishna's body never changes. This is a very subtle thing to understand.
Because if we can just understand this one point. If we can just understand that
Krishna's body is transcendental, Krishna's body is spiritual, Krishna's body is
not like ours, Krishna's body doesn't change, Krishna's body is not born,
Krishna's body doesn't die. Our bodies are born and our bodies die, our bodies are
changing all the time, but Krishna's body is never born, Krishna's body never
dies.

Krishna appears within the material world in the same way the sun appears on the
horizon and in the evening the sun disappears on the western horizon. The sun
appears to be born from the eastern horizon every morning and the sun appears to
die in the evening on the western horizon. Actually some primitive tribes would
believe this, that the sun is born in the morning, then it dies in the evening and
the next morning it is born again. A more intelligent person can understand this
is not a fact. The sun has simply gone out of our vision. The
sun has passed over to the other hemisphere. The sun is still shining, but it is
shining on the other side of the planet. It's not shining here in Australia, but
it's shining in the United States and then when it's not shining in the United
States it will be shining here in
Australia. So an intelligent man knows the sun is always shining. The sun is not
born and the sun does not die.


Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
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Chant Hare Krishna and be happy! All glories to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!