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capacity by a great variety of people. After one of the talks, - one Englishwoman sought out Gurudev to request him to speak to a group of young men and women, who, in those days, were called 'hippies.' Gurudev went to meet them. Seeing their lack of self-appreciation and loss of meaning in life, he felt their pain and spoke to them freely. He asked them, “What made you lose respect for conventional society in general? Why have you turned to drugs as a solution? Drugs will only ruin you in body and in mind."
“Ruin us in body and mind?” retorted one angry young girl. “What is left to be ruined in us? Statesmen the world over pack off our young men to fields of battle to gratify their craze for power. They are indifferent to the suffering of the women who are left behind. Our parents are so busy making money and spending it on their pleasures that they have no time or feeling leftover for us. And as for our teachers, being helpless to solve their own problems, how can they help us to solve ours?”
Seeing how attentively and patiently Gurudev was listening to her, she continued her tirade. "Because of the greed of the business community, there are thousands of unemployed, loitering aimlessly, despite the growing affluence in this country. How will you draw them away from their moneymindedness to the path of Enlightenment? And not only that, the priestly class as a whole is ignorant of the social conditions of today. Priests are concerned only with their monasteries and converts. All they do is spread the word of God' in their own dogmatic way. Are they not as worldly as any of us? How can you explain their lust for power and fame and even wealth which they pretend to despise? How is it possible for them to show us the right path? Why should we listen to hypocrites?
“No, there is nothing left in us to be ruined. We don't care for the opinion of society. Why should we? Society has not shown us any sympathy, any understanding. It has no right to criticize us. What do we care for the standard of morality, the conventional lifestyle of those who mean nothing to us? So we will snatch our pleasures wherever we find them; it's only natural.”
Gurudev felt the agony of these young people. They were
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