Devotion Beyond Death

Nature, or material energy, has clasped us very tightly and is loath to let us get away, yet she gives us another chance in the human form of life. The unfortunate fact is that although trapped in material nature, the living entity does not consider himself trapped. Consequently, Yudhisthira Maharaja, upon being asked what the most wonderful thing in the world was, replied, "Every moment thousands of living entities are being delivered into the hands of cruel death, but those who are alive are thinking, 'I shall not die.' " Thus everyone is thinking that he has a permanent settlement. What could be more wonderful than this in the face of a changing universe? Everyone knows that death is sure-everyone sees his friends, parents and relations dying-but he is at the same time thinking, "I will live a long time." This is nature. The actual fact is that the living entity thinks that he will not die because by nature he is eternal. Unfortunately he has lost his spiritual identity and in the material entanglement, in the body, will be forced to undergo the death of the material body. Bhagavad-gita, however, describes the living entity as separate from the body and not dissolving with the body at death.

The process of gaining real freedom from the body and from the miseries of the body, which ultimately result in death, is this process of Krsna consciousness. In Bhagavad-gita Krsna says that His devotee never perishes. At death, the living entity who has devoted his life to Krsna does not have to return to the cycle of birth and death, as Krsna promises innumerable times in Bhagavad-gita and as the sages remark throughout the Vedic literatures. The conclusion then is that real freedom is in Krsna consciousness, in the realization of one's real identity as a functioning part of the Supreme Whole. Once that identity is realized, the living entity will not have to undergo the frustration of being lost in a world of death and ignorance. By the rendering of devotional service, he is catapulted out of the darkness of the material world into the light of Krsna's effulgence.