Tales Too Terrible to Tell,
But They Must Be Heard

In my book “Spiritual Economics” I write about economics under the influence of the material energies: goodness, passion and ignorance. These words should not be confused with the English equivalents, but they are the closest translation from sattva-guna, rajo-guna and tamo-guna. Tamo-guna, the mode of ignorance, brings the influence of any bad quality that we can think of (which is the influence of tamo-guna): greed, envy, cheating, stealing, duplicity, graft, violence, destruction and so on.

One of the examples that I use to demonstrate the influence of tamo-guna in economic activity is slavery. In that section I presented a number of examples of modern slavery. That’s a shocking pair of words for most people to hear. We somehow think that slavery is a thing of the past dark ages before people became ‘civilized,’ (whatever that is). But the fact is that more people are enslaved today than at any other time in the past—more than 24 million according to some estimates. Slavery for anything and everything that a human can be used for, but they fall mainly into two categories: sex and labor. What gives some people the the idea that they can own and control others? Tamo-guna. And it's influence is increasing day-by-day.

Today I was writing about slavery again, this time for the new book I am working on—Change the Karma! In preparing I again viewed websites that I looked at about 5 years ago doing the initial research. And not surprisingly I came across a good deal of new information that didn’t exist five years ago, such as the fact that slavery of all kinds is increasing, not decreasing. The government agencies are passing laws to punish the evil-doers but that is simply dealing with the symptom and not the disease. To be honest I am starting to get annoyed at this. The SYMPTOM is not THE PROBLEM! C’mon people! The fact that some people are enslaving others is not the source of the problem! It is a spiritual problem and is due to the influence of evil or tamo-guna in this world. I’ll explain it all in Change the Karma! so be sure to stay-tuned and get that book for all the answers.

Any day that one has to hear about how terribly others are treated is a difficult one. These are such sad stories, but they need to be told so that everyone can wake up and realize what is going on in this world—even if its not going on in your world. That is good because that means that you have the ability to change the world, which is something that these slaves cannot do. To change the world we must eliminate / reduce the evil, or eliminate / reduce the tamo-guna. The best and easiest way to do that is to chant the names of God. Any bona fide name of God will do. The Hindus have one thousand, and so do the Muslims. The Jews have almost a hundred as well. But the best is called the Maha-mantra. Maha means great, so the maha-mantra means the great mantra, the best, the most powerful. The maha-mantra is the Hare Krishna mantra—Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. If you want to see and hear some great chanting go here, or here, and there is plenty more where that came from. By giving some time to this, even ten minutes a day, you will benefit and the entire planet will as well.

To encourage you by helping you realize what this world is becoming, and what, if we do not take measures to change, will soon be coming to a neighborhood near you, I would like you to watch this TED talk given by Lisa Kristine. She is a humanitarian photographer who has made it her purpose to tell people about modern slavery. I am sure you will be impressed. I was...even after I was reading about slavery a good part of the day. If it touches you then please do something to Change the Karma! – chant the Hare Krishna maha-mantra—all day, every day. Don't stop. You will become happy and help to make this world a happier place.

(p.s.: I got he link for Lisa's TED talk from www.freetheslaves.net. It's a good place to start if you want to know more about modern slavery.)