Is the coronavirus a laboratory construct as a conspiracy theory floated around suspects? Does the unpredictable coronavirus have an outer space connection?
The overall number of global coronavirus cases has surpassed the 170.2 million mark, while the deaths have gone past over 3.54 million. India is now the second most corona-affected country after the USA as it surpassed Brazil, Russia, Italy and the UK. As a ripple effect from India, an epicenter of the 2nd wave of the coronavirus new variant B1.617.2 of increased transmissibility and airborne changing its version mysteriously (The LANCET), COVID cases including deaths surged in Nepal.
The open border between Nepal and India and the so-called ‘roti-beti’ (marital) connections and heavy trafficking of people, whereas the Nepal government of all times becoming adamant to implementing the rule of Passport Visa unlike Bangladesh with India, becoming lenient and comfortable to India, has been critical among other deficits such as strategic planning and effective implementation in time, but resorting to enforcement of strict prohibitory orders as ‘hit or miss’ initiative. Vaccines also may not mean that we could handle COVID biologically and epidemiologically as it has transmuted itself into many different strains.
Controversies
My mom is worried about controversies
Is the coronavirus a laboratory construct as a conspiracy theory floated around suspects? Does the unpredictable coronavirus have an outer space connection? Mighty paranormal forces and their sciences as extraterrestrial UFOs (aliens), their increased sightings amid the coronavirus pandemic in the planetary system including Earth, although it may seem fictitious, are active. Possibly, the coronavirus suspected to be an extraterrestrial microbe which contaminated Earth by space-fare humans, or robotic emissary deployed in the Space Programs including targeting colonization of Mars by sending humans in 2030s and establishing on the Moon with a permanent human community or robotic industries is of concern.
If contaminated, countries (China, the USA and Russia, the leading ones) launching Space Programs as competitors, becoming also a breeding ground of Space Warfare, are accountable as the rights of billions of world populations to live their secured, safe and healthy lives will be at risk. Outer Space Treaty-1966 must be therefore critically revisited in these perspectives. Haughty minds becoming fearful of an asteroid hitting the Earth someday leading to possible deaths or extinction of lives just as of dinosaur, and for that matter self-justifying planetary explorations to get inhabited there such as the Moon and Mars, as if the Earth is likely to be redundant and should be abandoned, is ridiculous!
Unjustifiable is also the test of the Manhattan Project (Jul 1945) which was the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which led Oppenheimer to recall verses from the Bhagavad Gita, notably being: "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds". Albert Einstein perhaps realized when he admitted after reading Gita management and spiritual scripture: “When I read the Bhagavad Gita, and reflect about how God created this universe, everything else seems so superfluous”. Consistent to Gita, our ‘Swadharma’ in terms of duty, responsibility and righteousness is to live on Earth where we are placed by Divinity and not misuse or harm it. ‘As your deed is, so is your destiny,’ (Upanishad), meaning that the world would have to pay a high price for harmful practices and sinful acts.
On the flip side of the phenomenal scientific innovations, the enormity of the adverse impacts of global challenges that have been back-firing us are, but not limited to, mysterious COVID, the climate change and global warming impacting ecological, aquatic and symbiotic environment of all beings, mass poverty and inequalities, various forms of violence and crimes, devastating ‘nuclear’ weapons production, rivalries and imperialism, are not yet receiving serious attention.
Materialism Vs Spiritualism
The present world is enslaved and stimulated by ‘consumerism’ and ‘materialism’ and their equivalents. When one is in excessive contact with material nature, he tends to act in many sinful ways without hesitation, and sometimes even against his will. A mystic’s perspective of the coronavirus pandemic implores us to think deeply. COVID-19 is not simply a biological and epidemiological issue, but much beyond to be discoursed from different perspectives and spectrums, and solutions identified accordingly.
COVID-19 including SARS-CoV is probably due to not becoming conscious of the potency of the almighty, the Prakriti (matter), which is created and governed by Purush (spirit), a Vedic era concept, which brings about evolution and change in the empirical universe. Purusha, the dweller in the body, breathing life into matter is the source of all consciousness (Bhagavad Gita). The existence of nature is a projection or Sankalpa (wish) of the Supreme Godhead and His expansions of unlimited energies where humans have a transient existence (Upanishad), unlike Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Christianity (the Bible) establishing a ‘dualism’ of man and nature whereby it made possible to exploit nature, as it says, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you”. Planet Earth has been infested with ‘violence’. Killing for profit and transitory pleasure of cuisine - unique mammals, bats and pangolins in Wuhan, China in 2019 is suspected to have originated the coronavirus; if not, it might be a laboratory construct as a conspiracy theory suggests which is however under probe by the US.
Diviners believed that probably the coronavirus pandemic has come to trim over populations and the growing felonies. As a mystic retaliation, COVID-19 also restricted even kissing the mouth without wearing masks such as among newlyweds in the church and elsewhere and handshaking. It implores us to rethink how we have structured our lives and societies in the face of emerging challenges. Inclination to a self-isolated world with minimalist life approach, a departure from classy modernism, consumerism and materialism as opposed to adherence to spiritual persona, has its relevance.
Aptly inspirational is King Alexander the Great (356 BC) and his last words while lying on his deathbed when he asked his generals: “Bury my body, do not build any monument, keep my hands outside dangling out of my coffin so that the world knows the person who won the world had nothing in his hands when dying”. Lessons: don’t run behind materialistic things. Don’t just live for yourself, learn to live for others. Don’t let people take life for granted. Likewise, Emperor Ashoka the Great gave up armaments and bloodshed to Buddhism. Suzy Kassem beautifully sums up in his narrative: “I was transformed the day my ego shattered; and, all the superficial, material things that mattered to me before ceased to matter”. What is the value of life when we are not even sure if we are going to make it for the next day?
Optimism
Due to the lockdown period in 75 years since World War II, evidence-based positive changes such as healing of ozone layer holes, cleaner and blue sky and starry nights, clean air for breathing as the level of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) particles in the atmosphere decreased up to 50%, river water getting cleaner and transparent such as in the Ganges where dolphins reappeared, decline in noise pollution, and number of violence or crimes on the decline. How to retain and promote such qualities in the post-COVID-19 era is exigent, but vital. COVID patients and infected ones, not as disdained, but emphatically need more care, love and services to save their lives adhering to ‘Karuna’ as it signifies loving and caring each other - compassion the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism suggests us. All human beings have a single destiny as they are on the same planet Earth having the right to co-exist and the world as ‘one family’ (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in Sanskrit). (The author writes on integrated development issues)
