Re: Advice for the Youth and Students

Respected Swamiji and all Vaisnavas,

     Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!

Jai Visnupada Srila Prabhupada!

Jai Swami Gaurangapada!

All glories to our Guru Parampara!

Please accept my respectful obeisances!

        In the following series of threads I will post up all my experiences related with illicit sex and the problem of masturbation faced by the younger generation and its disastrous effects on spiritual progress, how I was finally made aware of the huge magnitude of sin I had committed and how I have vowed to stop these things. I request your grace on this most sinfull and mad soul so that he becomes elegible for proper devotional service.

        Being a person born and living in a country like India, I will first start by saying that talking about one's problems with sex, particularly with adolescents, is something that is still almost like taboo and most people are highly reluctant to talk about it. It is a generally perceived notion that such talks concerning these 'delicate' matters will destroy one's decency and sattvic spirit and make one very vulgar and corrode all morality. Like in my case, my parents simply gave me hints like, "You know such attractive feelings can come at your age....", but basically that's just a lead and the rest is, "Figure it out by yourself." As a matter of fact hearing a word related to these things faced by teenagers is enough to make a person lose their appetite. It seems to have a highly disturbing effect. For this reason, it is expected that people get to know these things from their peers or just by experience.

         What is not realised though is that in the present generation, atleast within my experience, things have gone so bad that I was severely mocked for having told a classmate that I wanted to quit masturbation. But people are not willing to talk openly about this, and so these problems never come out into the open. They lurk in the shadows and grow subtly, eventually what we have is an entire genereation of people obsessed by lustful passions (which have now become accepted as one's birthright). When I first entered high school, lust related problems were something only in colleges. But before I left high school, I saw my juniors falling victim to lust and illicit sex in various forms.

         What is responsible? TV, movies, the media, and a lot of exposure. These days the world is increasingly advocating that seeking pleasure through sex is one's birthright. For this reason, youngsters have begun to revolt agains the idea of abstinence and celibacy. Let me point out that a woman has the right to divorce her husband if he does not satisfy her desire for lust or vice versa -- that is one of the clauses in the divorce laws.

          Even children are exposed to these things in a wrong manner and this influences their growth when they step into adolescence. In the beginning it starts out by experiencing attraction to the opposite sex by sight. Any form of association with the opposite sex in the wrong way creates lustful agitation and excitement. This in turn starts the agitation. Finally when the lusty feelings become very strong, they start showing up in dreams. These wet dreams lead to nocturnal emissions. Eventually the teenager starts accepting these things as normal. As the lust increases, soon teenagers start thinking that it is now a necessity to satisfy the agitation as soon as it arises. Therefore they resort to artificially agitating them and passing out the vital seminal fluid which is so important for the body. This is what is called masturbation and this is how it develops. It starts accidentally and then becomes voluntary, then habitual.

          Lust is something that is never satisfied. Every single act of lust, whether it be thinking or passing semen, causes it to grow tremendously and soon the sexual urges lead teenageers to watch pornography or when there is association with the opposite sex, it can lead to pre-martial sexual affairs and the like. In very bad cases, things go so far as to become incest. Otherwise, these days homosexuality has become very common with people campaigining for it to be legalised. If sex pleasure is accepted as right, why should there be any restriction on how to satisfy the sex desire is what people ask these days.

          When things reach their ultimate climax, one may even become agitated by animals or even worse, even dead bodies! It is known as necrophilia and I have heard of one particular teenager who was put in the mental hospital for this type of tendency.

           Therefore when we talk about giving advice to the youth and the students, we see that we are faced to deal with issues like these which an earlier generation could not have even imagined. I am a college student and I am daily exposed to such things in and out. Everyone is obsessed with sex and looking at this, I think the youth need much more help for their own spiritual benefit than what anyone could have estimated.

           So in my next post, I will describe my own horrible experiences in this matter. I hope you devotees will not view me as being vulgar as I have absolutely no intent to patronise illicit sex in any form by the use of blunt language. Rather I intend to put a stop to this. Things are so serious that these problems have to be faced head on and smashed to the ground. Treating them delicately by hiding them in the shadows and just giving hints alone will not be enough to solve the problem. The problem has to be exposed for a correct diagnosis. And when it is exposed, the issues turn out to be far more serious than what one thinks.

           Thank you very much for being so kind and patient as to read this article,

In the service of the devotees in destroying our mundane lust,

Srinath

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