What We See and Think Of, We Become Excerpt from an article by Urmila Devi dasi (Iskcon Desire Tree) “Maharaja Pariksit heard the pastimes of Krsna and imitated them. Our son saw the worship of Krsna and imitated that. These activities transform ones consciousness from matter to spirit. Children should see Krsna and hear about Him, because theyll become what they see, hear, and think about. Krsna explains this in the Bhagavad-gita” (8.6): Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O son of Kunti, that state he will attain without fail. Prabhupada comments : “A person who at the end of his life quits his body thinking of Krsna attains the transcendental nature of the Supreme Lord, but it is not true that a person who thinks of something other than Krsna attains the same transcendental state. This is a point we should note very carefully.... Maharaja Bharata, although a great personality, thought of a deer at the end of his life, and so in his next life he was transferred into the body of a deer.... Of course, ones thoughts during the course of ones life accumulate to influence ones thoughts at the moment of death, so this life creates ones next life.” Televisions ideas, sounds, and images are not of Krsna. In Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television,Jerry Mander writes: “When you are watching TV, ... you have opened your mind, and someone elses daydreams have entered.... Your mind is the screen for their microwave pictures. Once their images are inside you, they imprint upon your memory. They become yours.... Whats more, the images remain in you permanently.... Please bring to mind any of the following: John F. Kennedy, Milton Berle, Captain Kangaroo, Captain Kirk, Henry Kissinger. Were you able to make a picture of them in your head? ... Now would you make the effort, please, to erase these TV people from your mind? Make them go away. Erase Johnny Carson or Henry Kissinger.... Once television places an image inside your head, it is yours forever.” Just as children absorbed in spiritual images imitate them, children absorbed in television images imitate those images. Mander writes, Childrens games are largely based on their experiences. If they live in the country, their games will involve animals. If they go to movies, their games will reflect that. If they watch television, you can see it in their games. In all cases, the characters and creatures they are imitating are based upon the pictures of them which they carry in their minds. We must ask whether we want our children to become like a television character, or like Krsna. Do we want them to attain the spiritual world after death, or take a body according to their television-influenced thoughts? Nice thought to meditate on… Hare Krsna
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 04:51:42 +0000
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