material, no

In this verse the word anahaṅkara means "without ego." The conditioned soul has a false ego, and as a result of his karma he gets different types of bodies in this material world. Sometimes he gets the body of a demigod, and he thinks that body to be his identity. Similarly, when he gets the body of a dog he identifies his self with that body. But for the Supreme Personality of Godhead there is no such distinction between the body and the soul. Bhagavad-gita, therefore, certifies that anyone who thinks of Krsna as an ordinary human being is without knowledge of His transcendental nature and is a great fool. The Lord says, na mam karmani limpanti: He is not affected by anything He does because He is never contaminated by the material modes of nature. That we have a material body proves that we are infected by the three material modes of nature. The Lord says to Arjuna, "You and I had many, many births previously, but I remember everything, whereas you do not." That is the difference between the living entity, or conditioned soul, and the Supreme Soul. The Supersoul, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, has no material body, and because He has no material body, He is not affected by any work He executes. There are many Mayavadi philosophers who consider that Krsna's body is the effect of a concentration of the material mode of goodness, and they distinguish Krsna's soul from Krsna's body. The real situation, however, is that the body of the conditioned soul, even if he has a large accumulation of material goodness, is material, whereas Krsna's body is never material; it is transcendental. Krsna has no false ego, for He does not identify Himself with the false and temporary body. His body is always eternal; He descends on this world in His own original spiritual body. This is explained in Bhagavad-gita as param bhavam. The words param bhavam divyam are especially significant in understanding Krsna's personality.    (More...)

In this verse the word mayaya means "by your causeless mercy." The Mayavadi philosophers explain the word maya as meaning "illusion" or "falseness." However, there is another meaning of maya-that is, "causeless mercy." There are two kinds of maya-yogamaya and mahamaya. Mahamaya is an expansion of yogamaya, and both these mayas are different expressions of the Lord's internal potencies. As stated in Bhagavad-gita, the Lord appears through His internal potencies (atma-mayaya). We should therefore reject the Mayavada explanation that the Lord appears in a body given by the external potency, the material energy. The Lord and His incarnation are fully independent and can appear anywhere and everywhere by virtue of the internal potency. Although born out of the so-called dead body of King Vena, King Prthu was still an incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead by the Lord's internal potency. The Lord can appear in any family. Sometimes He appears as a fish incarnation (matsya-avatara), or a boar incarnation (varaha-avatara). Thus the Lord is completely free and independent to appear anywhere and everywhere by His internal potency. It is stated that Ananta, an incarnation of the Lord who has unlimited mouths, cannot reach the end of His glorification of the Lord, although Ananta has been describing the Lord since time immemorial. So what to speak of demigods like Lord Brahma, Lord Siva and others? It is said that the Lord is siva-virinci-nutam-always worshiped by demigods like Lord Siva and Lord Brahma. If the demigods cannot find adequate language to express the glories of the Lord, then what to speak of others? Consequently reciters like the suta and magadha felt inadequate to speak about King Prthu.    (More...)

The foolishness of gross materialism is that people think of making a permanent settlement in this world, although it is a settled fact that one has to give up everything here that has been created by valuable human energy. Great statesmen, scientists, philosophers, etc., who are foolish, without any information of the spirit soul, think that this life of a few years only is all in all and that there is nothing more after death. This poor fund of knowledge, even in the so-called learned circles of the world, is killing the vitality of human energy, and the awful result is being keenly felt. And yet the foolish materialistic men do not care for what is going to happen in the next life. The preliminary instruction in the Bhagavad-gita is that one should know that the identity of the individual living entity is not lost even after the end of this present body, which is nothing but outward dress only. As one changes an old garment, so the individual living being also changes his body, and this change of body is called death. Death is, therefore, a process of changing the body at the end of the duration of the present life. An intelligent person must be prepared for this and must try to have the best type of body in the next life. The best type of body is a spiritual body, which is obtained by those who go back to the kingdom of God or enter the realm of Brahman. In the second chapter of this canto, this matter will be broadly discussed, but in as far as the change of body is concerned, one must prepare now for the next life. Foolish people attach more importance to the present temporary life, and thus the foolish leaders make appeals to the body and the bodily relations. The bodily relations not only extend to this body but also to the family members, wife, children, society, country and so many other things which end at the end of life. After death one forgets everything about the present bodily relations; we have a little experience of this at night when we go to sleep. While sleeping, we forget everything about this body and bodily relations, although this forgetfulness is a temporary situation for only a few hours. Death is nothing but sleeping for a few months in order to develop another term of bodily encagement, which we are awarded by the law of nature according to our aspiration. Therefore, one has only to change the aspiration during the course of this present body, and for this, there is need of training in the current duration of human life. This training can be begun at any stage of life, or even a few seconds before death, but the usual procedure is for one to get the training from very early life, from the stage of brahmacarya, and gradually progress to the grhastha, vanaprastha and sannyasa orders of life. The institution which gives such training is called varnasrama-dharma, or the system of sanatana-dharma, the best procedure for making the human life perfect. One is, therefore, required to give up the attachment to family or social or political life just at the age of fifty years, if not earlier, and the training in the vanaprastha and sannyasa asramas is given for preparation of the next life. Foolish materialists, in the garb of leaders of the people in general, stick to family affairs without attempting to cut off relations with them, and thus they become victims of nature's law and get gross bodies again, according to their work. Such foolish leaders may have some respect from the people at the end of life, but that does not mean that such leaders will be immune from the natural laws under which everyone is tightly bound by the hands and feet. The best thing is, therefore, that everyone voluntarily give up family relations by transferring the attachment from family, society, country and everything thereof to the devotional service of the Lord. It is stated herein that one should give up all desires of family attachment. One must have a chance for better desires; otherwise there is no chance of giving up such morbid desires. Desire is the concomitant factor of the living entity. The living entity is eternal, and therefore his desires, which are natural for a living being, are also eternal. One cannot, therefore, stop desiring, but the subject matter for desires can be changed. So one must develop the desires for returning home, back to Godhead, and automatically the desires for material gain, material honor and material popularity will diminish in proportion to the development of devotional service. A living being is meant for service activities, and his desires are centered around such a service attitude. Beginning from the top executive head of the state, down to the insignificant pauper in the street, all are rendering some sort of service to others. The perfection of such a service attitude is only attained simply by transferring the desire of service from matter to spirit, or from Satan to God.    (More...)

The glories of the Lord, in the transcendental seventy-five percent portion of the Lord's internal potency, are stated in the Padma Purana (Uttara-khanda). It is said there that those planets in the spiritual sky, which comprises the seventy-five percent expansion of the internal potency of the Lord, are far, far greater than those planets in the total universes composed of the external potency of the Lord. In the Caitanya-caritamrta, the total universes in the external potency of the Lord are compared to a bucketful of mustard seeds. One mustard seed is calculated to be a universe itself. In one of the universes, in which we are now living, the number of planets cannot be counted by human energy, so how can we think of the sum total in all the universes, which are compared to a bucketful of mustard seeds? And the planets in the spiritual sky are at least three times the number of those in the material sky. Such planets, being spiritual, are in fact transcendental to the material modes; therefore they are constituted in the mode of unalloyed goodness only. The conception of spiritual bliss (brahmananda) is fully present in those planets. Each of them is eternal, indestructible and free from all kinds of inebrieties experienced in the material world. Each of them is self-illuminating and more powerfully dazzling than (if we can imagine) the total sunshine of millions of mundane suns. The inhabitants of those planets are liberated from birth, death, old age and diseases and have full knowledge of everything; they are all godly and free from all sorts of material hankerings. They have nothing to do there except to render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Narayana, who is the predominating Deity of such Vaikuntha planets. Those liberated souls are engaged incessantly in singing songs mentioned in the Sama-Veda (vedaih saṅga-pada-kramopanisadair gayanti yam samagah). All of them are personifications of the five Upanisads. Tripad-vibhuti, or the seventy-five percent portion known as the internal potency of the Lord, is to be understood as the kingdom of God far beyond the material sky; and when we speak of pada-vibhuti, or the twenty-five percent portion comprising His external energy, we should understand that this refers to the sphere of the material world. It is also said in the Padma Purana that the kingdom of tripad-vibhuti is transcendental, whereas the pada-vibhuti is mundane. Tripad-vibhuti is eternal, whereas the pada-vibhuti is transient. The Lord and His eternal servitors in the transcendental kingdom all have eternal forms which are auspicious, infallible, spiritual and eternally youthful. In other words, there is no birth, death, old age and disease. That eternal land is full of transcendental enjoyment and full of beauty and bliss. This very fact is also corroborated in this verse of Srimad-Bhagavatam, and the transcendental nature is described as amrta; and as it is described in the Vedas: utamrtatvasyesanah. The Supreme Lord is the Lord of immortality, or in other words, the Lord is immortal, and because He is the Lord of immortality He can award immortality to His devotees. In the Bhagavad-gita also (Bg. 8.16) the Lord assures that whoever may go to His abode of immortality shall never return to this mortal land of threefold miseries. The Lord is not like the mundane lord. The mundane master or lord never enjoys equally along with his subordinates, nor is a mundane lord immortal, nor can he award immortality to his subordinate. The Supreme Lord, who is the leader of all living entities, can award all the qualities of His personality unto His devotees, including immortality and spiritual bliss. In the material world there is always anxiety or fearfulness in the heart of all living entities, but the Lord, being Himself the supreme fearless, also awards the same quality of fearlessness to His pure devotees. Mundane existence is itself a kind of fearfulness because in all mundane bodies the effects of birth, death, old age and disease always keep a living being compact in fearfulness. In the mundane world, there is always the influence of time, which changes things from one stage to another, and the living entity, originally being avikara or nonchangeable, suffers a great deal on account of changes due to the influence of time. The changing effects of the eternal time are conspicuously absent in the immortal kingdom of God; it is therefore to be understood that there is no influence of time and therefore no fear whatsoever. In the material world, so-called happiness is the result of one's own work. One can become a rich man by dint of one's own hard labor, and there are always fear and doubts as to the duration of such acquired happiness. But in the kingdom of God, no one has to endeavor to attain a standard of happiness. Happiness is the nature of the spirit, as it is stated in the Vedanta-sutras: anandamayo 'bhyasat-it is by nature full of happiness. Happiness in spiritual nature always increases in volume with a new phase of appreciation; there is no question of decreasing the bliss. Such unalloyed spiritual bliss is nowhere to be found within the orbit of the material universe, including the Janaloka planets, or, for that matter, the Maharloka or Satyaloka planets, because even Lord Brahma is subjected to the laws of fruitive actions and the law of birth and death. It is, therefore, stated here: duratyayah,   (More...)