Welcome to the Purely Prabhupada YouTube 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 the seventh video of the series. It is called, “Hate the sin.”
We are in this material world, this tiny corner of the creation. Most of the living beings are not here, they are there, where there is no envy, where there is only bliss and eternality, where all the beings are living harmoniously and appreciatively of each other in their loving relationships with the Lord Sri Krishna. A land of vibrant colors and fragrances, of song, of dance, of pure, unadulterated love, and the deepest of emotional exchanges. That is our real home, from where we came and to where we must return in order to be truly happy.
All it takes is a mood anomaly, thinking that we know better than God, or even a smidgen of enviousness towards Him or our fellow residents of the Eternal Abode, and we are sent to this dark corner of the universe reform school. We chose, in effect, to try to become God when we are not God, and to try to Lord it over the material energy. We try to make all arrangements for happiness in this place, but it is not possible. In this reform school of the material world, we must endure birth, death, old age, and disease, which are not present in the eternal realm. In this reform school, we suffer from our temporary body and uncontrolled mind, we suffer from the acts of others, and from natural disturbances that are often called “acts of God.” The entire goal is for us to come back to our default consciousness, our natural loving relationship with God, free of envy. We are meant to eventually graduate this reform school and return to our real home.
Our nature is to enjoy. We are pleasure seeking. However, as we stay in this material reform school longer and longer, we try to enjoy in more and more perverse ways, at the expense of others. But we, the spirit soul, are not by nature corrupt. Our real, loving nature has become covered by many layers of illusion and contaminated desires that will never be fulfilled, much as we try. Our real pleasure comes only with reuniting with the Lord.
In this world today, on this planet, there is so much apparent disharmony. Crimes of all sorts, political intrigues, wars and disputes, on and on. People are calling for justice, people are calling for arrests, there is so much angst, and so much anger. But we are all here because we were not ideal residents of the Spiritual World, of God’s Kingdom. What sinful activities do we continue to commit, even unknowingly, while condemning the wrongdoings of others? Can we recognize, with compassion, the soul who is forced to act helplessly, under the influence of material nature, while at the same time addressing the crimes that mandate punishment? Can we recognize the difference between the sin and the sinner, as taught by Jesus Christ, while, at the same time, administering proper punishment for the crimes committed? Can we humbly accept that we have also sinned, and thus be freed from excessive ego and righteousness as the most corrupt among us face the results of their most horrible actions? Release the consciousness that provoked Jesus to declare, “Let he who is sinless cast the first stone.” And, can we also accept, that maybe our sufferings, under their corrupt rule, are also a result of our own actions, as ye sow, so shall ye reap? In other cultures, that might be called karma, or getting the results of our own works, good or bad.
This material world is very entangling. Every activity intertwines us more, like a sticky spider web. Someone who is ensnared in that web cannot free anyone else. But someone who is not caught up in the web himself can free many entrapped souls, if those souls are willing to give up the fruitless endeavors for the temporary happiness that is an innate attribute of the web of material entanglement.
His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada was a personality of the spiritual world who descended for the sole purpose of offering real happiness to those of us trapped in the web of the pursuit of material enjoyment. He offered us the greatest gift, the teachings, the Vedic literatures, that are destined to be the law books for human society for many thousands of years to come and that can free the souls of this world from birth after birth of continued suffering. He offered the gift of these literatures to us, along with the personal example of how to apply them in a practical way, at great personal inconvenience. Please accept these volumes of transcendental literatures, and become happy, even in this world. Then we can enter the proper path to return back home, back to Godhead, in loving relationship with the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna, where we really belong, the only place where our pleasure-seeking nature can be fulfilled.
