Verse: Devotion To Krishna Is The Ultimate Goal Of Life
Date: December 9th, 2012
Place: MAYAPURA, INDIA
Transcription: Ranga Radhika dasi
Editing: Ranga Radhika Dasi
Hare Krishna!
So how was your parikrama today, circumambulation of the Holy Dhama? Parikrama means going around. So you started from the birthplace of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and then where did you go to? Srivasangam, then Advaita Bhavan, Gadadharangam. Ganganarayana, you also went with them? Who was explaining about those places? Then you went to Chaitanya Matha. So how many steps you took while travelling? [laughter] And with each step you acquired the piety that is
more than one thousand horse sacrifices. So this is the benefit of coming to the Holy Dhama.
Hare Krishna! So take full advantage of this - maybe they can lock that door. All those people come all the time. Haribol! Somebody go and lock that door up. One cannot just walk into the class any time they want. It shouldn't be done. When you go to a movie, do you go in the middle of the movie? When do you go to the movie? You go fifteen minutes before the movie starts. Why? Because if you miss the first scene then you may miss the whole thing. Similarly, in a class if you miss the first part of the class then you won't understand what's the rest of the class for. Take your spiritual life seriously.
So today's topic is - does everybody know what today's topic is? Oh, written on the board. The topic is: devotion to Krishna is the ultimate goal of life. How do we set our goal? What is the meaning of goal? [A devotee walks in] So from tomorrow don't be late for the class. You all are students or is it your habit to go to the class after it starts and sometimes bunk the class also?
So spiritual life begins, yesterday we discussed, spiritual life begins with the spiritual inquiry, brahma jijnasa, the sincere inquiry about our spiritual identity. Now when we make sure about the spiritual path, then what should be the goal? The goal should be the highest point, isn't it? When you play football where is the goalpost? At the end of the field. This side takes that to be the goal and that side takes this to be the goal. To reach that highest point is the goal. So when we consider the goal of life, what should be the goal of life? There can be many secondary goals but when we talk about the goal of life, the ultimate goal of life. Ultimate means the very end, the very Absolute. So when you do something, why do you do something? To gain something. Generally, when you are going to college, you are going to university or you are running your business, why you are doing that? You are doing that to achieve something. Sometimes, of course, you do things aimlessly, but that is not important. Aimlessly we should not do something. There must be an aim; to achieve the goal.
Now, we have to consider, that the human form of life is a very special opportunity. I am sure all of you believe in reincarnation. How many of you believe in reincarnation? Practically all of you believe in reincarnation. Reincarnation means the soul's return to this world. So that means you were here before and you came to this life. And in the future what will happen? Will you stay in this body forever? Although everybody thinks that he is not going to die, but death is inevitable. Some day we all are going to die. What will happen after death? We leave this body. Then what will happen? The soul will get another body. We cannot decide ourselves what kind of body we will get. Everybody would want to be born as a prince, isn't it? If given a choice, everybody will want a fantastic opportunity. But can we select an opportunity ourselves? No. Although everybody wants to become a king, but so many people are born as a pauper. And not only that, so many people will get other kinds of body, an animal body. That's a possibility. We make it an animal body. We make it a reptile body. Can you imagine the body of a snake? Can you imagine the body of an insect? Can you imagine the body of a worm? And what to speak of a body of a tree or a plant? But these are all possibilities.
While instructing Sanatana Goswami, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu mentioned there are 8.400.000 species of life. That means there are 8.400.000 possibilities of bodies. Out of that only four hundred are human bodies. Now out of all these types of bodies, trees, plants, reptiles, aquatics and so forth, animals, are any of those bodies desirable now that you have got a human form? If somebody comes and tells you, "Okay, prabhu, do you like to become born as an elephant? Would you like to be born as a tiger?" Maybe somebody wants to be born as a tiger, but you haven't considered the hardships that a tiger has to go through: living in the forest, no house to live in, winter, summer, no shelter. And just to get the food he has to struggle so hard. So these are all different possibilities. But now that you got the human form we have the intelligence to decide whether we want any other type of body.
Now let us consider why the human form is so special. Okay, if I ask if anybody wants to have a sub-human species, will anybody want it here? No, because the term itself will decide. Sub-human, meaning it is less than a human being. Less than a human means lower species, degradation, demotion. So who wants to become demoted from his present situation? Everybody wants to be advanced. Nobody wants to regress, right? If somebody comes and tells you that from third year now you have to become degraded to second year, will you want it? Does anybody want to fail? Instead of progress does anybody want to regress? No. So that's why we should be very careful. Now that we got the human form of life we should not become demoted to any other species. We should progress.
Now how will that progress be guaranteed? The progress will be guaranteed by our actions. It is our action that will promote or demote. Just consider, while in your college, if you prepare yourself nicely in the exams or throughout the year, what will happen? At the end of the year you will be promoted to the next grade. But if you don't prepare properly then what will happen? Then you are running the risk of remaining in the same or getting thrown out of the college. Is it there that if you fail twice then you're thrown out? No? You can carry on as many years as you want? Then what happens? If you fail then what happens? Okay, IIT, how many of you are IIT students? [devotee: eight years you can carry on] Eight? [devotee: inaudible] Okay, out of four? So every year you can fail twice. [laughter] Okay, very good. But in the human form we don't have that facility. You fail once, in this life if you don't prepare yourselves properly then what will happen? You'll become demoted.
Now how many of you remember yesterday's class? I was pointing out the human life is meant for athato brahma jijnasa; the human life is meant for spiritual development. That is the purpose of human life. We have two options. You know what are those two options? Lead your life centered around your body or try to become situated in your spiritual identity. These are the only two options we have in this life. You can lead a life centered around your body, which means sense gratification. Centered around body means giving pleasure to the body. And how do we give pleasure to the body? There are four possibilities of giving pleasure to the body. Eating, sleeping, agree? Eating is fun. Similarly, sleeping, mating (sex life) and defending. That is, defend the body's benefits, the body's facilities. Now these are the propensities, these are the activities that is the indication of the life centered around the body. And the other possibility is to aspire for spiritual development, aspire for self-realization. Self-realization - who is the self? Is the body the self? Who is the self? [audience: the soul] The soul is the self. Our real identity is the soul. And realization, spiritual realization; the realization of the soul, recognition of the soul, identification of the soul and aspire for the ultimate achievement of the soul. These are the two possibilities.
Now, out of these two possibilities what should an intelligent person aspire for? What should an intelligent person aspire for out of these two possibilities? Any response? Out of these two, what should one aspire for? I gave two possibilities, two options. What are the two options? [devotee: inaudible] Okay, aspire for self-realization. The life centered around the benefit of the body, advantage of the body, gratification of the body is called the animal propensity because the animals also do that. Don't the animals sleep? Animals can eat a lot. I remember there was a - anyway, I don't want to get into that. Anyway there was a competition of eating, eating sausages between a man and a bear. [laughs] The bear beat the man to all. Before the man could even finish one tenth of it, the bear had finished the plate. And it was a huge pile. And this man was supposed to be a ferocious eater, a big man, but compared to a bear...So a bear can eat so much more than a man when it comes to eating. Sleeping; again a bear! You know a bear can sleep for six months a year. Throughout the six months of winter a bear sleeps. Mating, in sex life the animals are much more efficient than human beings. And defending, yes, man maybe defending himself with nuclear weapons and all kinds of weapons, but an animal can defend himself so expertly in so many ways. If you go to the forest, do you stand a chance in front of a lion, in front of a tiger, in front of an elephant? So we can see that the animals can fulfill these animal propensities in a much better way than a human being can.
So animal propensities cannot be the goal of life, but in today's world when you see everybody else how they are leading their lives, people are making a lot of money, but most of the people they are making money for what? How do they spend their money? They spend their money on eating. They go to expensive places. There are some places I have been told in America that sometimes in some hotels, in some banquets one can pay as much as six, seven hundred dollars per plate, per person. Six, seven hundred dollars! Six, seven hundred dollars means about thirty thousand, forty thousand rupees per
plate. So this is how people are spending their money. They want to make money to spend it. Then sleeping, again, they are making big houses, big palatial buildings, but why do they build these houses? To go and sleep. Again in the West it is
a very common phenomenon. You see all these big palatial buildings. Each building is costing thirty, forty million dollars, but empty. Only the servants are living there. The owner is out six o'clock in the morning to work, to make money, to attend his business. And sometimes they come back at ten o'clock, eleven o'clock at night. So they come and what? They just sleep. Or people stay in big hotels spending so much money just to sleep. So many arrangements are made just for sleeping and sometimes when they can't sleep then what happens? They take intoxicants. They can't sleep. Okay, take some heroine, take some opium and alcohol of course, nimbu pani. [laughter] I said alcohol is like nimbu pani. And then mating, all these arrangements. The human society is actually revolving around this propensity, sex life. So many stories are there. So many histories are there. You know the history of Homer's Iliad? What is it based on? One beautiful girl, one beautiful queen called Helen. She was somebody's wife. She was the wife of the king of Greece, Agamemnon. And the prince of a country called Troy, he came, Paris, he fell in love with this woman. They fell in love with each other and she ran away with him. And the big battle took place. In that battle so many people died. One whole country was destroyed - why? Just because one person wanted to have sex life with another woman. There are so many such anecdotes in the history. Like in order to get a beautiful woman they got into a war. Even Mahabharata also in a way, you can say, the episode is centered around Draupadi. And mating, defending. And everyone is trying to defend himself from imminent death. But that is what for one? Defend what? For the body, defend the body from dying. You know what is the biggest industry today? The most lucrative, money spending industry? The most lucrative, money spending industry today is the medical industry. And next to that is the food industry. No, next to that actually is the intoxication industry. Then comes food. People spend more money on intoxicants than on food.
Okay, let's go to the main point, medical industry. Why the medical industry is so lucrative, so profitable? Because nobody wants to die! And everybody, because nobody wants to die, they are taking medicine. They are prepared to spend any amount of money to be alive. But Bhagavatam is saying that the human form of life should not be wasted for these animal propensities, ahara-nidra-bhaya-maithunam-ca. Ahara means eating. Nidra means sleeping. Bhaya means defending from fear and maithun, sex life. They are pasubhih samanah, they are animal propensities. They are there in the animal society. Animals are leading their lives for these four activities.
Now should a man lead his life just for fulfilling these animal propensities? Yes or no? How many of you are no? Very good. So then what should be the goal of life? As Srimad-Bhagavatam is describing, labdhva su-durlabham idam bahu sambhavante manusyam. [SB 11.9.29] Manusyam means human form of life. Labdhva, now that you have received this human form of life, su-durlabham, su-durlabham means, durlabha means rare and su-durlabham means extremely rare, bahu-sambhavante, after many, many possibilities, there is a possibility of eight million possibilities, out of those eight million possibilities, transcending those eight million possibilities, now we got this human form of life. So what should we do with this human form of life? Should we lead the human form of life to go back to those eight million lower species of life? Or should we try to achieve something higher? How many of you are for trying to achieve something higher? Very good.
So now the question is: what is that higher goal? So the human form of life, therefore, is a wonderful possibility, wonderful opportunity. Why it is a wonderful opportunity? Because human beings have developed intelligence, developed consciousness. You know what is the specialty of human consciousness? Consciousness has been divided into different categories. The lowest category of consciousness is the consciousness of trees and plants. Their consciousness is covered. They are conscious but their consciousness is covered. Are the trees conscious? Yes, they are conscious, but when you look at the tree does it look conscious? Can you ask a tree, "Hey, what's your name?" A tree will never answer. So the tree is not answering, it is [unclear]. It doesn't answer. You take a knife and start cutting it, it doesn't respond. Why? Because its consciousness is practically covered. Then beyond that stage of covered consciousness is shrunken state of consciousness. Shrunken. Shrunken means becoming compressed, smaller. The consciousness is there, but the consciousness is in a shrunken state. From insects and worms to the animals, they fall in that category, in a shrunken state of consciousness. The Sanskrit word for that is sankucitta-cetana. What is the Hindi word for shrunk? sankucitta. [Maharaja explains in Hindi that there is this word "sankocha" which means shy, you withdraw yourself] Then comes the human beings, beyond the animal category. Now human consciousness is very special. Human consciousness has therefore been compared to a bud. Have you seen a bud of the flower? How does the bud look like? The petals are shrunken, sankucitta, the petals. But it has the ability to bloom. That is the advantage of human form. You can expand your consciousness, but in order to expand your consciousness you need two factors. Or for a bud to bloom, what does the bud need to bloom? You keep a bud in a dark room, will the bud bloom? No, generally, say consider a lotus bud, if you keep the bud in a dark room the lotus will not bloom. But when the lotus is exposed to the sun then the lotus begins to bloom, provided the lotus is in water. If the lotus is not in water it will not bloom. So for the bud to bloom into a flower it needs two factors: shelter of the water and exposure to the sun. So for human beings, therefore these two things are, for human consciousness to develop there is a need for the exposure to the sun and shelter of a bona fide spiritual master. Under the guidance of a bona fide spiritual master you become exposed to Krishna. Then the consciousness begins to bloom.
So that is the fourth stage of consciousness: when you take shelter of a bona fide spiritual master and thus become exposed to Krishna, then what happens? What is happening to you all? Are you becoming spiritually more aware? How many of you are thinking that you are getting more information about your spiritual identity? Is your consciousness developing, right? Very good. Why is it happening? Because you have been now exposed to Krishna under the guidance of the Vaishnavas. They are the spiritual masters. The Vaishnavas are giving you the informations, right? The devotees of Krishna are giving you the informations. As a result of that your consciousness is developing. And when you continue in this way, pursuing this path, what will happen? Ultimately your consciousness will be fully exposed to Krishna. You'll become fully Krishna conscious. You'll become a pure spirit soul, a pure devotee of the Lord. Do you believe in that? So that is the final stage of consciousness; fully bloomed consciousness.
So you got the five stages of consciousness? What is the first stage? How many of you remember? Raise your hands. Okay. [devotee: covered] Covered consciousness. Then what is the second stage of consciousness? Why so many other hands are not going up? [devotee: narrow consciousness] Okay, narrow is good, shrunken. Take note; s, h, r, u, n, k, e, n. Shrunken state of consciousness. Then what is the third stage of consciousness? [devotee: bud] Bud, bud state of consciousness. And which living entities fall in that category? Human beings. In Sanskrit it is called mukulita-cetana. Mukula means 'kali.' [Hindi word for bud] Then what is the fourth stage of consciousness? The blooming stage of consciousness. What is the Sanskrit expression for that? Vikacita-cetana. And the fifth stage of consciousness? [devotees: fully bloomed consciousness] Fully bloomed state of consciousness. Now who has this opportunity? Does an animal have this opportunity? Who has this opportunity? [devotees: human beings] That is why the human form of life is so special.
Otherwise, what is the definition of a human being? How many of you remember? Although I didn't mention in the class but there is an understanding, there is a common saying: man is a civilized animal. Otherwise a man is a civilized animal. An animal kills its prey and eats it. Man goes to a very exclusive restaurant and eats his food. The action is the same - eating. The goal of life becomes the same: eating. Sleeping: an animal sleeps in a cave in the forest and a man lives in a palace in a metropolis. Mating and defending. So obviously these animal activities should never become the goal of a human being. Rather, the purpose of human life should be to achieve the ultimate goal of spiritual emancipation, spiritual awareness, recognizing his own spiritual identity and recognizing his relationship with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. That is the meaning of the word self-realization.
Prabhupada wrote the "Science of Self-Realization." That is the goal of human life: to pursue the science of self-realization. Not computer science or medical science or electrical engineering or chemical engineering, mechanical engineering. Okay, you all are doing it. That's fine. But should that be the ultimate goal? These are the temporary goals, because to earn money you have to have an occupation. If you prepare yourselves nicely through your studies then you get a decent, dignified life. But that should not be the ultimate goal. What should be the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal should be to recognize your spiritual identity.