THE LESSON

Given by the Corona Virus

Photo by Sylwia Bartyzel on Unsplash

The human being has the ability to learn from his mistakes. Unfortunately, we seldom learn from them. The history of the world has shown that we keep on making the same mistakes time and time again. Let us look back at the last couple of years and see what lessons we have learned and if we really have learned them.

For the fourth time in the history of the world, we faced a very strange situation. The tiniest, most primitive, invisible form of life controlled the behavior of the most evolved, the most arrogant, and the most powerful life form on earth!! I wonder if we have learned the lesson. This year has already started and is already galloping forward. More threats are rearing their ugly heads, but the human being has not changed at all.

Nature has shown us time and again that she is not a dumb, inert lump of mud that whirls around the sun helplessly accepting the atrocities that we keep heaping on her. She is a living, pulsating organism, a million times more powerful than can be imagined by the greatest intellect of this puny human being. For thousands of years, she has suffered our inequities in silence.

But now she is slowly retaliating. Recently, during the past few decades, she has lashed out at us with her earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, cyclones, and severe climatic changes, but we have chosen to ignore these warnings and have callously pursued our own selfish designs without casting a thought to the atrocities we are committing on her.

In the last couple of years, she took a really firm stand and brought our wonderful civilization to an absolute standstill! Despite our great technological advances and magnificent methods of transportation, we could not move anywhere. We were helpless to combat her cleverly thought-out plan to keep us petrified. Nobody could predict what was going to happen, nobody could plan anything. Everyone was forced to accept the situation and wait anxiously for what was going to happen without planning and plotting as we are continuously doing.

However, the unfortunate fact is that we are still unable to accept the blame for what happened to us, both individually and globally. We would far rather put the blame on China, God, or the scientists, but we will not agree that we are the ones who have made this world as it is. We cannot treat Nature like dirt and expect to be treated with love by her. We have been behaving as if the human being has the sole proprietary rights to the world. Every creature that lives on this planet has as much right to live here as we do. Even the tiniest insect has equal rights. We don't own the earth; on the contrary, she owns us. During the brief period between birth and death, Nature has loaned us our bodies to make the best use of them. We have rented this body from her. We are not the owners! She does not ask for rent, yet it is a fact that she will demand that every particle of the rented house be returned to her at the time of death.

Our bodies are made up of the same five elements that make up this planet. Each of these elements has to be kept in perfect condition if we want to lead a healthy life. If the elements outside are polluted by us, obviously our bodies will also be polluted. Intelligent though we claim to be, we fail to understand this. All the problems that assail us come from the ignorance of this simple fact.

One by one, assiduously, we have set about despoiling this magnificent planet that has been given to us. Of course, we have started from the gross and proceeded to the subtle. Our bodies, as well as this world, are made up of the basic five elements of nature. Creation proceeds from the subtle to the gross and not otherwise, as we would presume. Proceeding from the subtlest to the grossest, we get akasa or space/ether, vayu or air, agni or fire, apas or water, and prithvi or earth. Each of these elements has its own specific quality. The special quality of akasa is that it can carry sound. The specific quality of vayu is that of "touch." The special quality of agni is that it can be seen. The special quality of water is that it has "taste," and the special quality of the earth is that it has "smell." We can experience this world made up of these elements because we have been given specific sense organs by which we can discern each of them.

The organ for discerning sound is the "ear," the organ for touch is the "skin," the organs for sight are the "eyes," the organ for smell is the nose, and the organ for taste is the tongue. Only the person who has all these sense organs intact can experience the world as it is. If even one of these organs is missing, his experience of the world will be that much less.

Unfortunately, we have been systematically despoiling each of these elements without realizing that this act will automatically affect the sense organs that correspond to these elements. The entire earth has been cluttered with plastic waste, making it difficult to find mud without bits of plastic even in the countryside. Our water bodies, including rivers, lakes, wells, and the ocean, have been polluted by plastic and other factory wastes being pumped into them. This, in turn, poisons marine life and affects those who consume fish. Drinking water straight from a river or lake is no longer a viable option, and even bottled water purity cannot be guaranteed. The fire element, mainly provided by the sun, remains unpolluted by us, but we contribute significantly to air pollution that obstructs its radiance. The amount of air pollution in cities, spreading to villages as well, is alarming. Lastly, the subtle and pervasive etheric element, present in the sky, is being polluted through the increasing air traffic. We are methodically polluting the most important of our elements, which has a severe impact on humanity as a whole. Our Rishis knew the method of making aeroplanes but refrained from doing so, as they believed that meddling with the etheric sphere would cause human beings to become depressed. It is perplexing that we, considering ourselves intelligent, struggle to comprehend these simple scientific facts. Nature, by sending the coronavirus, has given us another chance to recognize that she controls us, not the other way around. We must understand that caring for and cherishing all aspects of nature—elements, animals, trees, waters, and space—is the only way to have a good and comfortable life. We either live together or die together; the choice is ours.

Hari Aum Tat Sat!