SOULS ON FIRE #115 | A Non Sci-Fi Story
Hare Krishna whanau.
I hope you are all well today. I was inspired to write a story today. Enjoy.
In the year 2023, the world had become almost completely integrated with AI, and people were living in virtual reality at all times. Gender had become a thing of the past, and people were expected to adopt gender-neutral identities and behaviors.
The past was seen as a dark time, a time when men were considered toxic and women were considered weak. The virtues of masculinity and femininity were completely rejected, and people were taught that they should strive to be genderless and neutral. Being simply a man or woman was “archaic” and there were laws and consequences for people who identified in such a way.
This had profound implications for how people lived their lives. Traditional gender roles were rejected, and people were expected to perform tasks based solely on their skills and abilities. But in practice, this often meant that men and women were pushed into the same roles, leading to a lack of diversity, a loss of balance and the disappearance of male and female relationships. Procreation was out. People would hire or purchase AI hybrid babies as pets and would often end up returning them or selling them when they were no longer interested in them.
There were many throw-away babies too due to experimentation with genes. Wealthy folks would sometimes try and create clones of their favorite celebrities and if they came out wrong they would simply send them back. The ideology was that they had no souls anyway and that life was simply a temporary combination of chemicals. We were taught love was the willingness to go to war for the country.
The few people of faith who walked among us had gone along with the state propaganda and lived no different than anyone else. How ever there was a community who were considered freaks and rebels by all. People would ridicule them by calling them monkeys. These people had “pledged their allegiance to the Srimad Bhagavatam” - an ancient text about “simple living and high thinking” These people opposed all modern drugs and vaccines and even shunned electricity in favor of fire for cooking and ghee wicks for light after dark. Everyone was warned about their cult in school and we all thought they were freaks. I would go along with the jokes but inwardly respected them for their willingness to be different.
One night I had a dream where I visited their community and discovered an atmosphere I had never encountered. It was peaceful, quite and serene and I was completely at rest there. The feeling of grass underneath my bare feet was restful and rejuvenating. I felt replenished and alive when I breathed in the air and my ears and mind were noiseless. I felt welcome and cared for by the residents of this other worldly place.
They grew their own vegetables and milked their own cows for milk. They would cheese, paneer, yogurt and butter and offer preparations of rice, dhal, chapatis and mixed vegetables to their deity of Lord Krishna.
In my dream I browsed their bookshelf and picked out a book called Srimad Bhagavatam. As I read about Kardama Muni and Devahuti I saw men and woman living in a way I had never seen before. The wife would make a wish and the husband would make it come true for her. She would reciprocate by fulfilling his needs and together they worked for the pleasure of God. I began to see that the rejection of traditional gender roles was not only misguided but dangerous. It was a manifestation of the demons' influence, which sought to distract us from our true purpose and turn us away from our spiritual path.
When I woke up from my dream, I was deeply disturbed by the fact that I had been being beaten in a war I never knew had been waged against me. I shared the vision with my wife. We both reveled in the fantasy of simple living and high thinking, untouched by the influence of the demons’ technologies and psychological operations. When I went to work that day I began to speak out against the trends of our times, and I found that some of my colleagues were listening. We somehow found the Srimad Bhagavatam online and started to read it. We soaked in everything the book said and we started to discover a new way of experiencing the world, ourselves and each other.
Together, my wife and I began to question the assumptions that had led us down this path of impersonalism and dependence on technologies we didn’t need. As well as seeing the evil all around us, we began to see that the virtues of masculinity and femininity were not toxic or weak, but rather essential parts of our spiritual journey. We recognized that men and women were different, and that these differences were to be celebrated rather than rejected. We embraced the idea that men and women had unique roles to play in society, based on their natural strengths and weaknesses.
I invited my colleagues and friends over to my house and we read the Srimad Bhagavatam together. It was amazing how easily people picked up what was being said in this book that was written 5000 years ago.
As we began to embrace the teachings of the Srimad Bhagavatam, we found that our lives became more fulfilling and balanced. We discovered a sense of harmony that had been missing, and we found that we were able to connect with each other on a deeper level. We started dividing our labour and working towards being parents of a real child in the “risky” and “out-dated” way our schools taught us not to…
Within months my wife had a child in her womb and we now teach our daughter how to read using the Simad Bhagavatam. We chose not to send her to modern schools because the teachers are all transhuman and the food there is fake. We teach our daughter to embrace her feminine strength and work in harmony with nature’s laws. For a 5-year-old daughter named Pankaja Maliney is an expert gardener. She has her own small garden box with spinach and a tomato bush. My wife makes us all Toast with tomatoes and spinach and it’s delicious. Pankaja says when she’s older she wants to be a character in the Srimad Bhagavatam and we tell her she already is.
We had created a new world, one that was grounded in the timeless wisdom a spiritual tradition. We had rejected the false promises of AI and embraced the virtues of devotional service to Krishna by engaging our masculine and feminine propensities in His service. My family live in 2 tiny homes on a patch of land we called Goloka Vrindavan and have nothing to do with the city except for our weekly harinam party where we chant Hare Krsna on the water front. Most people join in nowadays and some have started coming to our Bhagavatam study group.
PS. This story was inspired by this video and this community. If you’re interested in visiting this community, we are driving down there from Northland to attend the annual Kirtan Camp.
