Welcome to the Purely Prabhupada channel. This video series is called “Reality distinguished from illusion for the welfare of all.” My name is Kamra devi dasi, and I am a disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.
This is number twenty of the series. It is called “Walking Away.”
People often choose to walk away from what they cannot change. They switch jobs, they try other churches, they change addresses. They try to find what works for them within the confines of the material world. When I was younger, I used to think that the goal of life was getting as far from New York City as I could. Block after block of not seeing a tree or any wildlife other than a pigeon or a rat, I couldn’t change what it was, and I left there as soon as I could.
But people are still trying, without success and with increasing frustration, to change the nature and circumstances of this world without realizing that it is not possible. They want to try to create heaven on earth, make some utopia within which they can enjoy perpetually and not be strangulated by the poor decisions and artificial control mechanisms of others. Why do they strive for this? Because it is the very nature of the soul to enjoy, to be seeking pleasure, but they do not know that are in the wrong place for this nature to be fulfilled. They do not have the education, the awareness, that there is a spiritual realm that goes beyond even the heavens, that is eternal, blissful, and full of knowledge, where God, Krishna, is the center of everyone’s consciousness. I am not speaking of a spirit realm, the realm of ghosts and hobgoblins, but the realm of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the eternal beautiful youth, who enjoys eternally with His devotees, who also enjoy eternally with Him.
The temporary material world, with all its planets and galaxies, is divided into three parts, upper, middle, and lower. The lower planetary regions are places of great suffering, where it is very hard to remember God because of the difficulties. We go to those planets because of the reactions to our sinful activities. The upper planets, or the heavenly realm, provide means for great material enjoyment and a long duration of life. But there is still birth and death, even in the heavenly abode. It is also very hard to remember the Lord there because of the great opportunity for sensual pleasure. We go to those planets as a result of our pious activities. When the pious credits are used up, the soul has to again return to the earthly realm. The middle planetary system, where we now find ourselves, is a place where there is suffering and enjoyment, but not to such a degree that we are almost forced to forget God. It is a place where we accrue the karmic results of our activities to move to a higher or lower birth. But most importantly, it is the perfect situation from which we can perfect our God consciousness, extract ourselves from the entanglement of both good and bad karmic action and reaction, and make the choice to also leave this place for a much better situation, same as we may have changed jobs, churches, or our address. The education how to do so is available only in the transcendental literatures given to us by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada.
In Bhagavad-gita As It Is, Chapter 8, text 16, given to us by Srila Prabhupada, Krishna is speaking to his friend Arjuna and says-
“From the highest planet in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place. But one who attains to My abode, O son of Kuntī, never takes birth again.”
The abode of the Lord is of an entirely different mood from the material realm. There is not a tinge of anything mundane. In the transcendental abode, all speech is a song and every step is a dance. The colors are brilliant, there is no envy, there is no time factor, and everyone is pushing each other forward in their individual reciprocations with Krishna. Everyone is perfectly situated according to his or her desire to serve the Lord, whether as a flowering shrub, a cow, a deer, a boyfriend, a parent, or a young girl, and rejoices in ecstasy to witness the loving exchanges between the Lord and His other countless servants. The bodily form is a natural manifestation of the mood of the soul in its unique relationship of service and reciprocation with Krishna.
An ancient scripture, called Brahma-Samhita, chanted by Lord Brahma just before the creation, describes Krisna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His abode. Here are some of the verses contained within, as translated by Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, the spiritual master of our Srila Prabhupada-
Krsna who is known as Govinda is the Supreme Godhead. He has an eternal blissful spiritual body. He is the origin of all. He has no other origin and He is the prime cause of all causes.
I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, the first progenitor who is tending the cows, yielding all desire, in abodes built with spiritual gems, surrounded by millions of purpose trees, always served with great reverence and affection by hundreds of thousands of lakshmis or gopis.
I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, who is adept in playing on His flute, with blooming eyes like lotus petals with head decked with peacock’s feather, with the figure of beauty tinged with the hue of blue clouds, and His unique loveliness charming millions of Cupids.
I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, round whose neck is swinging a garland of flowers beautified with the moon-locket, whose two hands are adorned with the flute and jeweled ornaments, who always revels in pastimes of love, whose graceful threefold-bending form of Syamasundara is eternally manifest.
The material world, with all its apparent imperfections, is actually set up perfectly by the Supreme Lord Himself. It is meant to direct the spirit soul back to the Lord’s own abode where the real nature of the soul can be manifest in full satisfaction in union with the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When we become ready to give up trying to change the nature of this world, to fix it, to improve its conditions and endeavor to make a heaven on earth, the education is waiting for us in Srila Prabhupada’s books how to walk away from it and go back to our real home, the ever blissful abode of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
You may access many of these books at PurelyPrabhupada.com.
