The following is an article comparing the modern media and all of it's advertising strategy with the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra. Ever felt like you are bombarded with a bunch of rubbish each moment you exist in present day life, especially in the city? Well, we have something much for delightful to bombard yourself with. It paints a deeper understanding of the reality in which we live and the alternative lifestyle and cleansing process offered by the Krishna consciousness movement.
Joseph Goebbels, the chief of propaganda in the Nazi Germany for Adolf Hitler supposedly stated: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” Curiously enough, the last century has been a witness to a new phenomenon in the history of mankind -the emergence of mass consumerism and a mass advertising that accompanies it. Some say that an average person is exposed to over 500 ads daily in different forms and shapes. The various ads repeat to us a slogan, or a name of a brand, or even present a certain lifestyle or a medical procedure we should undertake over and over again. Being exposed to such advertisment, people gradually develop a desire to follow and desire the dictation of such advertisment. This mechanism of desire-creation through association is described by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita: "While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment lust develops." (Bg 2.62) People's senses are bombarded by advertising messages and by constant association with them, a person develops attachment to the objects of advertising and later on lusts for them. Therefore those who control the advertisement, control the people's minds. The advertising experts have developed over the years various means to make the advertisement as smooth and almost invisible and with the development of the modern technology, social media are literally harvesting people's personal date to tailor to their exact needs and thus create a tailored brainwashing according to individuals they target. Not only is the living being already entrapped by the layers of matter that make it very difficult for him to come back to his original pure eternal consciousness, but with the present advertising society we live in, he is doubly illusioned. The sublime method of chanting the great mantra of deliverance from this mess, brought to us from the transcendental realm by the self-realized souls established by the names of the Lord, namely Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare is a perfect mental detox from the influence of both the material nature and the advertising we are exposed to. We should vibrate the Hare Krishna mantra and its purports in the exact same way, the advertisers are vibrating the slogans to propagate their products and thus create a desire in people to become attached to the lotus feet of the Lord. The significant difference in these two processes is that while the mundane advertisement simply creates more lust and no satisfaction since any of the material products cannot satisfy the hankering of the eternal spirit soul, the Hare Krishna mantra mental detoxification uncovers our natural state of ecstatic and never-ending ever-expanding love for our original friend Lord Krishna and by glorifying our eternal Lord, the soul also becomes glorified.
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