Man is the Architect of His Own Fortune

 By: His  Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Shrila Prabhupada 

[This has been proofread against the original handwritten manuscript with corrections made for Folio.—Ed]

Man is the architect of his own fortune.

Man is the architect of his own fortune. That is an old well known English maxim and the good fortune that the man has evolved out for him at the present moment can be amply verified as soon as we receive our morning newspapers. The sample good news that we are receiving now in every morning are as follows:

(1) Bihar Government Deny starvation death. (A.B.P. 23.45)

(2) Rice selling at 55 and salt at 80/- per (?).

(3) People living on cotton & Potato leaves.

(4) 600 Viet Minh Troops Taken Prisoner.

(5) 500 mounds of food burnt in granary.

(6) Famine conditions in such and such places.

(7) Progressive decontrol urged in Conferences.

(8) Recovery of Abducted women.

(9) (?) on woes of Refugees.

(10) High Government official Arrested.

(11) Government Crisis in Britain.

(12) Troops Patrolling Streets of Cooch Behar

(13) Mob attacks ____'s House and injures son.

(14) Congress Office Raided

(15) Rationing Official Assaulted

(16) Present Administration (?) and compared with past

(17) 30,000 Nepalese migrate to India.

(18) Persian students defy Government Ban.

(19) Mile long procession in Sympathy with Killed oil workers.

(20) Red offensive Imminent.

(21) Principal Garg Killed by examinees

(22) Daring Robbery at Lloyds Bank.

(23) Rs. 12 lakhs taken away.

(24) Baroda Ex-Rulers Submission to President.

Thoughtful men must now seriously think how we are marching towards the progressive way of human civilization. The influence of modern civilizing process, by the highests(?) of planning commissions, is gradually leading us to a destination summarised as follows:

(1) Destruction of Faith, Truthfulness, cleanliness, Forgiveness, Mercy, Longevity, Strength and Memory.

(2) Accumulation of vast wealth is the standard of recognition for one's parentage, behavior and good qualities.

(3) Black-market in every business deal.

(4) Sexuality in conjugal love.

(5) Only a piece of thread on the body marks the sign of Brahmanism.

(6) Only a red garment as the sign of a sannyṛsî.

(7) No justice in the law Court without money.

(8) Impartinance as the sign of education.

(9) Poverty means dishonesty.

(10) Pride means honesty.

(11) Acceptance by contract means marriage.

(12) Keeping long hairs means beauty.

(13) Exaggeration means truthfulness.

(14) Filling the stomach means self-realization.

(15) Providing the wife & children means ability.

(16) Religiosity means to acquire some extraordinary name & fame.

When we have produced such a glorious sample of human civilization, certainly democracy will mean nothing but accumulating a large number of votes by hook or crook and then capture the political power. As a result of such unruly(unholy?) election heads of political power, will be by nature merciless, greedy and bestowed with the qualities of the plunderers. The unfortunate voters who have not much discriminating power as victimized by the chain of modern civilizing process become subjected to the plundering process of the political heads in the matter of their hearth and home.

These unfortunate people being too much harrassed by governmental taxes and famine, are forced to accept cotton and potato or other leaves as foodstuff. They become forced to accept meat and flesh instead of grains and vegetables and they are obliged to assimilate hydrogenated injurious oil in place milk and ghee. By such eating process they are attacked with cholera, typhoid, dysentry and tuberculosis to meet an end of miserable life.

They are subjected to the pangs of winter and summer, rains and sun besides hunger, thirst, disappointment, frustration. Thus they have to make a sad end of life by over anxiety due to all round scarcity.

That is the sum and substance of the advancement of material civilization. Undoubtedly we have produced by dint of advancement of having the motors, the radios, the cinemas, the railways, the airways, the (? ), the medicines, the toilets, the big buildings, the big mills, agricultural implements, big offices, (?), hodgepodge philosophers, industrialists, poets, scientists, politicians, iron men, statesmen and what not but the net result is no food, no clothing, no shelter, no peace.

Will any thinking and sober man with any sense of human reasoning call this status of human life as civilized? We think not. This unrestricted material progress of civilization must be checked if humanity has to exist at all and the big brains who pose to lead the people in general must now try to understand and recognise that matter is not all in all but it is subordinate to the spirit.

The matter is produced of inferior nature while the spirit is born of a superior nature. The living being whatever it may be is the particle of that spirit qualitatively one & equal with the Supreme Spirit. The living entities are parts & parcels of the Supreme Spirit. The ideology of material civilization must be changed into the ideology of spiritual civilization. Material civilization is based on the ideology of unsatiable desire for sense gratification which leads to anger when such sense gratification remains unsatisfied and from anger it turns to bewilderment which again turns into loss of memory. This loss of memory is complete destruction of spiritual consciousness which is the highest type of ignorance.

Leaders of material ideology came and gone after having enjoyed this material earth for a limited period. The material bodies of such leaders of ideology under various big big names are now turned into worms, stools or ashes and such materialistic leaders who fought so much on their different ideologies did not know what should be permanent basis of civilization. Most of them have gone to the lowest status of the kingdom of hell due to their unholy action of public nuisance. Such leader falsely thinks that this material world is now enjoyed by him and afterwards it shall be enjoyed by his generations without knowing what he is and what are his (?). Such false sense of proprietorship arises out of (?) ignorance by loss of memory of spiritual consciousness.

By falsely accepting this material body as the real self the foolish people engage themselves in the gross materialistic activities resulting in the conditions mentioned above but later on he goes away under the laws of higher authority leaving both the material world and material body behind them. They leave behind only a historical narration of their transient life without any (?) tangible benefit for the human being. The mother earth when the leaders and kings wanted to exploit laughs at these leaders and kings when she sees that the leaders and kings cannot go away but the earth remains where she is.

Dr. S.P. Mookerjee rightly observed in his address at Sri Aurobindo Memorial Convention (dated 24.4.51) as follows: "These spiritual efforts of the great master often defy common understanding. Yet the call of the times was never so imperious at it is now. What India is suffering from today is not so much poverty of the means of material existence. She is suffering much more from the bankruptcy of her spiritual resources. Her spirit has stooped low and is even now stooping low—not to conquer but to encompass a moral tragedy too terrible to contemplate.

"The Government moves in the same vicious circle. Moral standards are at discount. High purpose is resumed exclusively as an adornment of pontifical pronouncement from high offices. The same(?) is virtually littered with the debris of the spiritual achievements of a people that was once great."



Essays and Articles
EA 9: Man is the Architect of His Own Fortune