by Kuruśreṣṭha dāsa Adhikārī (ISKCON—Boulder)

by Kurusrestha dasa Adhikari
(ISKCON-Boulder)

For the soul there is never birth or death. Nor having once been does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. (Bhagavad-gita 2.20)

Eternity-it is our nature to experience unceasing existence. Krsna explains in Bhagavad-gita that there never was a time when we did not exist and that therefore we were never born. Nor in the future will we ever die; we are eternally existing personalities untouched by the death of the body which encases our spirit. Our eternal nature is called the spirit self; this is our real identity.

One aspect of this eternal nature of ours it that we cannot exist without rendering some service to someone or something. We are eternally servants; this is also our nature. Upon hearing this, many of us become insulted and say, "No! I am free!" But if we examine our lives a little more closely we will see that it is true that we must always serve.

Firstly, we all serve these bodies and the unending stream of desires that accompany them. We feed them, wash them, decorate them, stimulate their senses, fix them when they are broken, and put them to bed when they are tired. So this is the most obvious example of our serving nature. We also serve a myriad of other masters, including parents, friends, teachers, governments, pets, children, lawns, cars, etc. We are all rendering service in one way or another. This eternal nature of rendering service is called sanatana-dharma, which means the eternal religion of the living entity-"that quality which remains always and which cannot be taken away."

Since we are all eternally servants, we should be interested to find out who is the most merciful and benevolent master and in whose service we will be most satisfied.

Krsna explains in Bhagavad-gita, Chapter Seven, verse six, that He is the "origin and dissolution" of all energy. Everything that we receive and give away has its origin in the Supreme Lord. So whether or not we recognize this fact, Krsna is already giving us everything, and therefore He is the most benevolent of all masters. Our most natural position, therefore, is to render service to Him.

When the Supreme Lord appears in the material world, He does so in His original, eternal, transcendental form, which always remains untouched by the illusory material energy. This is confirmed in Chapter Four, verse six, of Bhagavad-gita, where Krsna says:

Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I still appear in every millennium in My original transcendental form.

Krsna is eternally a person, and this personality is the source of all energy, both material and spiritual. This fact is confirmed in all the Vedic scriptures, especially in Bhagavad-gita, Srimad-Bhagavatam and Sri Isopanisad. His form is completely spiritual, and the nature of this form is sac-cid-ananda-vigraha: it is eternally full of knowledge and bliss.

Therefore another aspect of our eternal nature is that we also have sac-cid-ananda forms. In Bhagavad-gita (15.7) Krsna says that we are eternally His fragmental parts. As parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord, we enjoy qualitative oneness with the Lord. So just as Krsna's nature is eternally full of bliss and knowledge, it is also our nature to be eternally full of bliss and knowledge. But whereas Krsna possesses these qualities infinitely, we possess them infinitesimally. Thus there is a quantitative difference.