In2-MeC

Sofia, Bulgaria
6 July 2003

Srila Prabhupada said people think that when their body dies, their selves will cease to exist. They live in fear of eternal annihilation. This is their justification for vicious and destructive behavior in the name of personal pleasure. They think, "Before we die, let us enjoy as much as possible. We only live once. What does it matter what we do, as long as we get as much sense gratification as we can?" A friend of mine in Mayapur keeps a big library at home. One of the books on his shelves is about Berlin in the last days of the Second World War. It's an account pieced together from historical records. So in the spring of 1945 when Berlin, the vainglorious capital of Hitler's so-called Thousand-Year Reich, had been reduced to a bombed-out disaster area surrounded by the Soviet Army, many of the citizens became crazy for last-minute sense gratification. There was a park near the Berlin Zoological Gardens. It is still there today, right in front of the train station called the Zoo Station. Imagine this (it's true, according to the book): it's March of 1945, and an average-looking, average-aged man is walking through the park. Probably he would be a soldier with a little bit of free time; most men by that time were soldiers, even the old men. So he is walking along the footpath. From behind a tree a young woman steps out. She takes the man's arm.   "Please," she begs him.   "Let's go in the bushes and have sex. " She is not a prostitute. She does not want money. She is young, she has not been with a man yet, and she thinks everyone in Berlin will be dead within a few days or weeks, including her. So before she dies, she
wants to experience sex. According to the book, many instances of this sort of thing were recorded in the last days of the war. This is due to a totally materialistic, atheistic outlook.   These people believe death is an endless void. "If I have just a few days left," they think, "let me enjoy any way I can. " Thus atheism blesses human beings with the point of view of animals. When female dogs and cats are in heat, they approach the male dogs and cats in the same way as these Berlin women did. Animals' hearts are vacant of ideals; they are simply driven by the demands of their senses, and they will try to satisfy their senses anytime, anywhere. Srila Prabhupada told of goats herded in line for slaughter. The goat in front is having its head cut off.   Just behind it, two goats are having sex.   Nowadays, although there is no world war, it is nontheless not uncommon, due to the poor moral standards of people today, for women to approach men, even strange men, the same way the women of catastrophic Berlin did. The brahmacaris who distribute books face this kind of thing. Sometimes women brazenly ask the devotee if he will accept "something else" other than money for a book.   In the early 1970s, when I was going door-to-door in the student village of the Florida State University at Tallahassee, a college girl coyly told me she would very much like a book, but unfortunately she had no money, so would I instead take something else in payment?  She was a typical modern young person--she looked intelligent, she was well-dressed, she lived in a well-furnished apartment. Just normal. But it's not normal or intelligent for a woman to behave like this. It is sick, sad, desperate and self-destructive. A normal woman is blessed by the Lord in the heart with the gift of shyness.   But that's just the point: feminine shyness comes from God, and when people become Godless, then feminine shyness is chucked out the window.   This is when women become worse than prostitutes. Prostitutes are not shy, of course, but at least they have a business ethic: "If you wanna play, boy, you gotta pay, boy. " So because peoples' ethicial standards are below even those of the prostitutes, now there is AIDS. There's so little morality in the world today that Krsna sent the AIDS virus to check people's lusty behavior. When people's lust is held in check by their inner moral ideals, they can be called human beings.   When their lust is held in check only by the forces of nature, they are animals.

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