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Everyone should go to the forest at least as a vānaprastha. Forest-going means to take one-hundred-percent shelter of the Supreme Lord. Going to the forest is compulsory for everyone. It is not a mental excursion upon which one person goes and another does not. Everyone should go to the forest at least as a vanaprastha. Forest-going means to take one-hundred-percent shelter of the Supreme Lord, as explained by Prahlada Maharaja in his talks with his father. Sada samudvigna-dhiyam (Bhag. 7.5.5). People who have accepted a temporary, material body are always full of anxieties. One should not, therefore, be very much affected by this material body, but should try to be freed. The preliminary process to become freed is to go to the forest or give up family relationships and exclusively engage in Krsna consciousness. That is the purpose of going to the forest. Otherwise, the forest is only a place of monkeys and wild animals. To go to the forest does not mean to become a monkey or a ferocious animal. It means to accept exclusively the shelter of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and engage oneself in full service. One does not actually have to go to the forest. At the present moment this is not at all advisable for a man who has spent his life all along in big cities. As explained by Prahlada Maharaja (hitvatma-patam grham andha-kupam), one should not remain always engaged in the responsibilities of family life because family life without Krsna consciousness is just like a blind well. Alone in a field, if one falls into a blind well and no one is there to save him, he may cry for years, and no one will see or hear where the crying is coming from. Death is sure. Similarly, those who are forgetful of their eternal relationship with the Supreme Lord are in the blind well of family life; their position is very ominous. Prahlada Maharaja advised that one should give up this well somehow or other and take to Krsna consciousness and thus be freed from material entanglement, which is full of anxieties. (More...) Prahlāda Mahārāja recommended that his father accept vānaprastha life because as a gṛhastha he was becoming increasingly demoniac due to bodily attachment. Prahlāda recommended to his father that accepting vānaprastha life would be better than going deeper and deeper into gṛham andha-kūpam, the blind well of life as a gṛhastha. Prahlada Maharaja replied: O best of the asuras, King of the demons, as far as I have learned from my spiritual master, any person who has accepted a temporary body and temporary household life is certainly embarrassed by anxiety because of having fallen in a dark well where there is no water but only suffering. One should give up this position and go to the forest [vana]. More clearly, one should go to Vrndavana, where only Krsna consciousness is prevalent, and should thus take shelter of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. (More...) Hiranyakasipu thought that Prahlada, being nothing but a small boy with no actual experience, might reply with something pleasing but nothing practical. Prahlada Maharaja, however, being an exalted devotee, had acquired all the qualities of education. (More...) One who has unflinching devotional faith in Krsna consistently manifests all the good qualities of Krsna and the demigods. However, he who has no devotion to the Supreme Personality of Godhead has no good qualifications because he is engaged by mental concoction in material existence, which is the external feature of the Lord. (Bhag. 5.18.12) So-called educated philosophers and scientists who are simply on the mental platform cannot distinguish between what is actually sat, eternal, and what is asat, temporary. The Vedic injunction is asato ma jyotir gama: everyone should give up the platform of temporary existence and approach the eternal platform. The soul is eternal, and topics concerning the eternal soul are actually knowledge. Elsewhere it is said, apasyatam atma-tattvam grhesu grha-medhinam: [SB 2.1.2] those who are attached to the bodily conception of life and who thus stick to life as a grhastha, or householder, on the platform of material sense enjoyment, cannot see the welfare of the eternal soul. Prahlada Maharaja confirmed this by saying that if one wants success in life, he should immediately understand from the right sources what his self-interest is and how he should mold his life in spiritual consciousness. One should understand himself to be part and parcel of Krsna and thus completely take shelter of His lotus feet for guaranteed spiritual success. Everyone in the material world is in the bodily conception, struggling hard for existence, life after life. Prahlada Maharaja therefore recommended that to stop this material condition of repeated birth and death, one should go to the forest (vana). (More...) In the varnasrama system, one first becomes a brahmacari, then a grhastha, a vanaprastha and finally a sannyasi. Going to the forest means accepting vanaprastha life, which is between grhastha life and sannyasa. As confirmed in the Visnu Purana (3.8.9), varnasramacaravata purusena parah puman visnur aradhyate: by accepting the institution of varna and asrama, one can very easily elevate himself to the platform of worshiping Visnu, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Otherwise, if one remains in the bodily conception, one must rot within this material world, and his life will be a failure. Society must have divisions of brahmana, ksatriya, vaisya and sudra, and for spiritual advancement one must gradually develop as a brahmacari, grhastha, vanaprastha and sannyasi. Prahlada Maharaja recommended that his father accept vanaprastha life because as a grhastha he was becoming increasingly demoniac due to bodily attachment. Prahlada recommended to his father that accepting vanaprastha life would be better than going deeper and deeper into grham andha-kupam, the blind well of life as a grhastha. In our Krsna consciousness movement we therefore invite all the elderly persons of the world to come to Vrndavana and stay there in retired life, making advancement in spiritual consciousness, Krsna consciousness. (More...) Link to this page: https://prabhupadabooks.com/?g=6650 Previous: [none] Next: [none]
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