After Dissatisfaction

The signs of return to sanity are dissatisfaction and inquiry. Dissatisfaction refers to the realization that all is not well. Why must I grow old and diseased? Why must I die? After dissatisfaction comes the desire to inquire, to find a solution. The materialist is also seeking his solution to happiness, but his efforts are all patchwork. He tries to repair his body by going to a hospital, but soon the body will end. The real solution to bodily miseries is liberation from bodily existence. This spiritual knowledge solves things once and for all. When one realizes that this material world is useless to him, then he can come out of maya. Everyone born into a body is in maya, but by dissatisfaction and inquiry one may escape from maya's clutches. The process to do this is God consciousness or self-realization. Therefore, the first step out of maya is to realize that one is in maya. This is not ignorance. This is intelligence. Ignorance is to think that one is living in reality within material life.

Prabhupada refers to the material world as the world of names. To a transcendentalist, buildings, machines, war, peace, politics and family are all just names, like the babble of waves at sea. The way out of maya is not through mental efforts. In the Bhagavad-gita it is stated by Krsna, "My divine energy, maya, is very difficult to surmount, but for one who has surrendered, it is very easy."

The way to get out of maya is outlined by the Supreme Lord Himself in His incarnation as Kapiladeva. In the Third Canto of the Srimad-Bhagavatam, Devahuti, the mother of Kapila, asks Him questions exactly to this point: "How can there be any freedom for the soul as long as the material nature acts on him and binds him?" The living entity may desire freedom from the contamination of matter, but he is not given release. Once he desires to come into the material world, then he is already conditioned by it, and he has no opportunity to get control of it. Bhagavad-gita says that it is very difficult to get out of the clutches of material nature. Mental speculators, concocting in different ways, try to think that everything is void, that there is no God, and that even if there is a spiritual background of everything, it is impersonal. This speculation may go on, but actually it is very difficult to get out of the clutches of material nature. Devahuti asks, "One may speculate in many ways, but where is the chance of liberation as long as one is under the spell of material nature?" The answer is given in the Bhagavad-gita that only one who has surrendered himself unto the lotus feet of the Supreme Lord can be freed from the clutches of maya. When one gradually comes to the point of surrender, he can ask such an intelligent question: "How can one be liberated, how can one be in a pure state of spiritual existence, as long as he is strongly held by the modes of nature?" This is also an indication to the false meditators who artificially think that they are the Supreme Spirit and that they are controlling the activities of material nature. They may think, "Under my direction the sun is moving; under my direction the moon is rising," and they may think that they can become free by such meditation. But it is seen that three minutes after their meditation, they are immediately captured by the modes of material nature, and they become thirsty: "I want to smoke or drink." So they are under the strong grip of the material nature, although they are thinking that they are separated from the clutches of maya. Such a person sometimes thinks that everything is void and that there are no sinful or pious activities. But actually these are just atheistic inventions. The truth is that unless a living entity surrenders unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead as instructed in the Bhagavad-gita, there is no liberation or freedom from the clutches of matter. That is the transcendental fact.

When one misuses his free will and challenges, "Why shall Krsna be the all-in-all? I am as good as Krsna," then desire and envy of Krsna bring about his material bondage. One may be a philosopher or a salvationist or a voidist and think that he is the Supreme and that he is everything, but as long as he has this desire or thinks that there is no God, the cause of his bondage remains, and there is no question of liberation.