Chapter Two

“Fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature and My supreme dominion over all that be.” We have a chance to know about Kåñëa provided we read the right literature under the right direction, and if we simply know what the nature of God is, then by understanding this one fact alone we become liberated. It is not possible in our human condition to understand the Absolute Supreme Personality of Godhead completely, but with the help of Bhagavad-gétä, the statements given by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and of the spiritual master, we can know Him to the best of our capacity. If we can know Him in reality, then immediately after leaving this body we can enter into the kingdom of God. Kåñëa says, tyaktvä dehaà punar janma naiti mäm eti so ’rjuna: “After leaving this body, one who is in knowledge does not come again to this material world, for he enters into the spiritual world and comes to Me.” (Bg. 4.9) The purpose of our Kåñëa consciousness movement is to propagate this advanced scientific idea to people in general, and the process is very simple. Simply by chanting the holy names of God—Hare Kåñëa, Hare Kåñëa, Kåñëa Kåñëa, Hare Hare/ Hare Räma, Hare Räma, Räma Räma, Hare Hare—one cleanses the dirt from his heart and gains understanding that he is part and parcel of the Supreme Lord and that it is his duty to serve Him. This process is very pleasant: we chant the Hare Kåñëa mantra, we dance rhythmically, and we eat nice prasäda. While enjoying this life, we are preparing to enter into the kingdom of God in our next life. This is not a fabrication—it is all factual. Although to a layman this appears to be a fabrication, Kåñëa reveals Himself from within to one who is serious about God realization. Both Kåñëa and the spiritual master help the sincere soul. The spiritual master is the external manifestation of God, who is situated in everyone’s heart as Supersoul. For one who is very serious about understanding the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Supersoul immediately renders assistance by directing him to a bona fide spiritual master. In this way the spiritual Copyright © 1998 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust Int’l. All Rights Reserved. 42 candidate is helped from within and without.

According to the Bhägavata Puräëa, the Supreme Truth is realized in three stages. First there is impersonal Brahman, or the impersonal Absolute; then the Paramätmä, or localized aspect of Brahman. The neutron of the atom may be taken as the representation of Paramätmä, who also enters into the atom. This is described in the Brahma-saàhitä. But ultimately the Supreme Divine Being is realized as the supreme allattractive person (Kåñëa) with full and inconceivable potencies of opulence, strength, fame, beauty, knowledge and renunciation. These six potencies are fully exhibited by Çré Räma and Çré Kåñëa when They descend before human beings. Only a section of human beings—the unalloyed devotees—can recognize Kåñëa on the authority of revealed scriptures, but others are bewildered by the influence of material energy. The Absolute Truth is therefore the Absolute Person who has no equal or competitor. The impersonal Brahman rays are the rays of His transcendental body, just as the sun’s rays are emanations from the sun. According to the Viñëu Puräëa, the material energy is called avidyä, or nescience, and is exhibited in the fruitive activities of sense enjoyment. But although the living being has the tendency to be illusioned and trapped by the material energy for sense enjoyment, he belongs to the antimaterial energy, or spiritual energy. In this sense the living being is the positive energy, whereas matter is the negative energy. Matter does not develop unless in contact with the superior spiritual, or antimaterial, energy, which is directly part and parcel of the spiritual whole. The subject matter of this spiritual energy exhibited by living beings is undoubtedly very complicated for an ordinary man, who is therefore astounded by the subject. Sometimes he partially understands it through the imperfect senses, and sometimes he fails to know it altogether. It is best, therefore, to hear from the highest authority, Çré Kåñëa, or from His devotee who represents Him in the chain of disciplic succession.

This Kåñëa consciousness movement is meant for the purpose of understanding God. The spiritual master is the living representative of Kåñëa who helps externally, and Kåñëa as Supersoul helps internally. The living entity can take advantage of such guidance and make his life successful. We request that everyone read authoritative literature in order to understand this movement. We have published Bhagavad-gétä Copyright © 1998 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust Int’l. All Rights Reserved. 43 As It Is; Teachings of Lord Caitanya; Çrémad-Bhägavatam; Kåñëa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead; and The Nectar of Devotion. We are also publishing our magazine Back to Godhead every month in many languages. Our mission is to save human society from the pitfalls of incarnating again in the cycle of birth and death.

Everyone should attempt to go to Kåñëa. We have published an article in our Back to Godhead magazine entitled “Beyond the Universe.” This article describes a place beyond this universe according to knowledge which is in Bhagavad-gétä. Bhagavad-gétä is a very popular book, and there are many editions of it in America and also many from India. Unfortunately, however, many rascals have come to the West to preach Bhagavad-gétä. They are designated as rascals because they are bluffers who do not give real information. In our Bhagavad-gétä As It Is, however, the spiritual nature is authoritatively described.

This cosmic manifestation is called “nature,” but there is another nature, which is superior. The cosmic manifestation is inferior nature, but beyond this nature, which is manifested and unmanifested, there is another nature, which is called sanätana, eternal. It is easy to understand that everything manifested here is temporary. The obvious example is our body. If one is thirty years old, thirty years ago his body was not manifested, and in another fifty years it will again be unmanifested. That is a factual law of nature. It is manifested and again annihilated, just as waves in the sea rise frequently and then recede. The materialist, however, is simply concerned with this mortal life, which can be finished at any moment. Furthermore, as this body will die, so the entire universe, this gigantic material body, will be annihilated, and whether we are fortunate or unfortunate, on this planet or another planet, everything will be finished. Why then are we wasting our time trying to go to a planet where everything will be finished? We should try to go to Kåñëaloka. This is spiritual science; we must try to understand it, and, after understanding it ourselves, we should preach this message to the whole world. Everyone is in darkness. Although people have no knowledge, they are very proud. But it is not advancement of knowledge to go to the moon after ten years of effort and take a rock and come back. The space travelers are very proud: “Oh, I have touched it.” But what have they gained? Even if we were able to live there, it would not Copyright © 1998 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust Int’l. All Rights Reserved. 44 be for long. It will all be destroyed in the end.

Try to find that planet from which one will never return, where there is eternal life, and where one can dance with Kåñëa. This is the meaning of Kåñëa consciousness. Take this movement seriously, for Kåñëa consciousness gives one a chance to reach Kåñëa and to dance with Him eternally. From Vedic literature we understand that this material world is a manifestation of only one fourth of the complete creation of God. The three-fourths portion of God’s creation is the spiritual world. That we find in Bhagavad-gétä. Kåñëa says, “This material world is but a fractional part of the whole.” If we look as far as we can see—up to the sky—our vision is still confined within only one universe, and there are unlimited universes clustered together within what is called the material world. But beyond those clusters of unlimited numbers of universes is the spiritual sky, which is also mentioned in Bhagavad-gétä, where the Lord says that beyond the material world is another nature, which is eternal; there is no history of its beginning, and it has no end. “Eternal” refers to that which has no end and no beginning. The Vedic religion is therefore called eternal because no one can trace back when it began. The Christian religion has a history of two thousand years, and the Muhammadan religion also has a history, but if one were to trace back Vedic religion, he would not find its historical beginning. Therefore it is called eternal religion.

We may rightly say that God created this material world, and this indicates that God existed before the creation. This very word “created” suggests that before the creation of the cosmic manifestation, the Lord was existing. Therefore God is not under the creation. If God were under the creation, how could He have created? He would instead have been one of the objects of this material creation. But God is not under the creation; He is the creator, and therefore He is eternal.

There is a spiritual sky, where there are innumerable spiritual planets and innumerable spiritual living entities, but those who are not fit to live in that spiritual world are sent to this material world. Voluntarily we have accepted this material body, but actually we are spirit souls who should not have accepted it. When and how we accepted it cannot be traced. No one can trace the history of when the conditioned soul first accepted the material body. There are 8,400,000 forms of living Copyright © 1998 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust Int’l. All Rights Reserved. 45 entities—water, 2,000,000 species of life are among the plants and vegetables. Unfortunately, this Vedic knowledge is not instructed by any university. But these are facts. Let the botanist and anthropologist research into the Vedic conclusion. Darwin’s theory of the evolution of organic matter is, of course, very prominent in the institutions of learning. But the Bhägavata Puräëa and other authoritative scriptures of scientific magnitude describe how the living entities in different forms of body evolve one after another. It is not a new idea, but educators are giving stress only to Darwin’s theory, although in Vedic literature we have immense information of the living conditions in this material world.

We are only a fractional portion of all the living entities in the many universes of the material world. Those who are in the material world and material body are condemned. For example, the population in prison is condemned by the government, but their number is only a fraction of the whole population. It is not that the whole population goes to prison; some, who are disobedient, are confined in prison. Similarly, the conditioned souls within this material world are only a fraction of all the living entities in the creation of God, and because they have disobeyed God—because they did not abide by the order of Kåñëa—they have been put into this material world. If one is sensible and inquisitive, he should try to understand: “Why have I been put into this conditional life? I do not wish to suffer.”

There are three kinds of suffering, including miseries pertaining to the body and mind. In Hawaii, in front of my house, a man was keeping some animals and birds for the purpose of taking them to be slaughtered. I gave this example to my students: “These animals are standing here, and if you tell them, ‘Oh, my dear animals, why are you standing here? Go away! You are meant for the slaughterhouse,’ they cannot go. They have no intelligence.”

Suffering without knowledge, without remedy, is animal life. One who cannot understand that he is suffering and who thinks that he is very well off is in animal consciousness, not human consciousness. The human being should be cognizant of suffering the threefold miseries of this planet. One should know that he is suffering in birth, suffering in death, suffering in old age and suffering in disease, and one should be inquisitive as to how he may avoid the suffering. That is real research work.

We have suffered from the beginning of our birth. As a baby, the human being is tightly placed in the abdomen of the mother in an airtight bag for nine months. He cannot even move, there are insects biting him, and he cannot protest. After the child comes out, the suffering continues. The mother undoubtedly takes much care, but still the child cries because he is suffering. There are bugs biting or there are pains in his stomach; the child is crying, and the mother does not know how to pacify him. His suffering begins in the womb of his mother. Then, after his birth, as he grows up, there is more suffering. He does not want to go to school, but he is forced to. He does not want to study, but the teacher gives him tasks. If we analyze our life, we will find that it is full of suffering. Why then are we coming here? The conditioned souls are not very bright. We should inquire, “Why am I suffering?” If there is a remedy, we must take advantage of it.

We are eternally connected with the Supreme Lord, but somehow or other we are now in material contamination. Therefore, we must take up a process by which to go back again to the spiritual world. That linking process is called yoga. The actual translation of the word yoga is “plus.” At the present moment we are minus God, or minus the Supreme. But when we make ourselves plus—connected—then our human form of life is perfect. During our lifetime we have to practice approaching that point of perfection, and at the time of death, when we give up this material body, that perfection has to be realized. At the time of death, one must be prepared. Students, for instance, prepare for two to five years in college, and the final test of their education is the examination. If they pass the examination, they get a degree. Similarly, in the subject of life, if we prepare for the examination at the time of death and pass it, then we are transferred to the spiritual world. Everything is examined at the time of death.

There is a very common Bengali proverb that says that whatever one does for perfection will be tested at the time of his death. Bhagavad-gétä describes what we should do at the point of our death, when we are giving up this present body. For the dhyäna-yogé (meditator) Çré Kåñëa speaks the following verses: