Dear Gurudev, I am really worried about my family. They are caught up in a dark world of lies, manipulation and money. I have had to completely break contact with them and it breaks my heart. They do not listen to me and I see bad consequences in store for them. It is hard to watch all this. Do you have any advice?
First of all, don’t cut-off from them. At least don’t give them the feeling that you don’t care about them and are cut-off from them. That is not going to help them. It is your innate nature to help and you want to help them. For some reason you are born into this family. There is some karma together, so you do what you can to help them, if at all.
That doesn’t mean that you have to be there every day, listen to them and be involved totally. You can have a very friendly relationship. Cordiality will not come in the way of what you want to do. You have your life and they have theirs, but you can be cordial with them and politely refuse what you don’t want to do and help whenever you can help them. This is the skill that we need to learn in our communication and in our actions.
This world is full of people who are so absurd, crazy and mindless. See what they did in Ukraine, they shot down an airplane with so many passengers. What are they doing in Iraq? Gaza? Israel? Can we run away, renounce and go to another planet? No! We have to live on this planet with these people.
Recently, a very famous medical surgeon came to our Bangalore ashram. He gave a talk which was an eye opener. He said how many clinical trials of many medicines are done because of the pressure from the pharmaceutical lobby. He was telling me about a particular medicine, where the chief medical officer manipulated the research and passed the drug saying it is good for health. When he was dying, he confessed that he had committed a great sin and passed a medicine that actually had adverse effects and wanted to repent for his sins. That medicine is still being given to people and freely used all over the world. There are dozens of such cases.
We will invite him here some day to give a talk. Most of the surgeons today in USA and in Johns Hopkins are his students. He is an elderly retired man and is against these pharmaceutical lobbies. He says that when you are working they will come after you and ruin your career. But now that I am retired, I can speak my heart out and feel free to speak what I want.
These pharmaceutical lobbies are destroying the health of people. A whole generation spends their time thinking butter is bad for health and leads to cholesterol and heart problems. We had an elderly Swamiji in our ashram who was 78 years old and had a slight heart problem. His cholesterol was high and the allopathic doctor said, 'You should not have butter', but the Ayurveda doctor said, 'You should have butter. It is good'.
Today in the Time magazine, the research shows that butter is good for you and not margarine. Margarine was used to substitute butter but the research was all wrong.
Similarly, in India they used to have coconut oil. But then a whole research lobby said palm oil should be used and not coconut oil. Now they say, cold pressed coconut oil is better than palm oil.
The chemicals that were used in the last century are proving to be hazardous to health. Now they are using Genetically Modified seeds and products (GMO). And the employees of the company where these seeds are being made say, 'We don’t want to eat it', what does it mean? The employees of Monsanto refuse to eat GMO food in their canteen.
These people are only concerned about money, money and money. Even if people die, they are not bothered. These types of pharmaceutical lobbies, recreational drug lobby, gun lobby is huge in North America. I don’t think you have much in Europe. There are more gun stores than grocery stores in America. Two gun stores to one grocery store and there is a big lobby working for it. All these lobbies are destroying the health of society and they think yoga and meditation are rubbish. We must see that more and more people know of these practices (yoga and meditation) and become happier in their lives. A whole generation thought butter is bad and missed out on eating butter.
