hope for humanity lies within

Look at the mess the world is in today. Do you think it is the uneducated presence that is producing the chaos in the world today? This world is plagued with so many problems that nobody knows what to do anymore. 

Everyone just has to put the blinders over their eyes and think, “Well! I am going to make my life the best I can make it. But as far as the world’s problems... forget it, they're too complicated, the world has gone too far." Even the biggest politicians and scientists in the world are throwing their hands up in the air and saying, “It’s too late.” Look what a mess we have made!!! The ozone is breaking down, the water is polluted, the air is polluted, and there is nuclear radiation filling the earth, ready to break out of its' storage compartments and pollute the ground. 

Population explosions, food shortages, terrorism popping up everywhere, there are wars practically in every corner of the world..! There is crime! There is endless rise in alcoholism and drug addiction! There are horrible and incurable diseases that are threatening the existence of mankind! Do you ever read the newspapers? I’m sure you do. In America, drug addiction is growing so much; some cities are so plagued with drug addiction that they do not know what to do. It’s growing by the day. AIDS is expanding day by day, more and more, and they say by the year 2020, if the disease keeps growing at the rate it is now, one-fourth of Americans will die of AIDS. And so what to speak of pollution in the air, the green house effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising oceans... and actually, one fifth of the land of today within fifty years may be under water. And it goes on and on... and on.  

These are all man made problems, not natural problems. They are manmade due to mis-management; mismanagement of the environment. And where does this mismanagement of the environment come from? 

Mismanagement of the self. People are victims of lust and greed and pride and envy and illusion and anger. People are engaged in horrible activities which are creating horrible consequences, which affect all of the environment for all life on earth. 

There is a need for self-management. If a person learns to find peace within his own heart, if a person understands knowledge of God that is within his soul, then free from all these obstacles (anarthas) within his mind, he can live in this world effectively and with full concentration, with full determination. The energy that is not being diverted into other directions, and which is turned inward, that person is doing real good work for oneself, one’s family and ultimately, the entire human civilization.