BG 9.14 – Finding Happiness in a World of Misery

Giriraj Swami: 

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya
oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

We shall from Bhagavad-gītā As It Is, Chapter Nine: “The Most Confidential Knowledge.”

TEXT 14

satataṁ kīrtayanto māṁ

yatantaś ca dṛḍha-vratāḥ

namasyantaś ca māṁ bhaktyā

nitya-yuktā upāsate

TRANSLATION

Always chanting My glories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me, these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

The mahātmā cannot be manufactured by rubber-stamping an ordinary man. His symptoms are described here: a mahātmā is always engaged in chanting the glories of the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead. He has no other business. He is always engaged in the glorification of the Lord. In other words, he is not an impersonalist. When the question of glorification is there, one has to glorify the Supreme Lord, praising His holy name, His eternal form, His transcendental qualities and His uncommon pastimes. One has to glorify all these things; therefore a mahātmā is attached to the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

One who is attached to the impersonal feature of the Supreme Lord, the brahma-jyotir, is not described as mahātmā in the Bhagavad-gītā. He is described in a different way in the next verse. The mahātmā is always engaged in different activities of devotional service, as described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, hearing and chanting about Viṣṇu, not a demigod or human being. That is devotion: śravaṇaṁ kīrtanaṁ viṣṇoḥ and smaraṇam, remembering Him. Such a mahātmā has firm determination to achieve at the ultimate end the association of the Supreme Lord in any one of the five transcendental rasas. To achieve that success, he engages all activities – mental, bodily and vocal, everything – in the service of the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. That is called full Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

In devotional service there are certain activities which are called determined, such as fasting on certain days, like the eleventh day of the moon, Ekādaśī, and on the appearance day of the Lord. All these rules and regulations are offered by the great ācāryas for those who are actually interested in getting admission into the association of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the transcendental world. The mahātmās, great souls, strictly observe all these rules and regulations, and therefore they are sure to achieve the desired result.

As described in the second verse of this chapter, not only is this devotional service easy, but it can be performed in a happy mood. One does not need to undergo any severe penance and austerity. He can live this life in devotional service, guided by an expert spiritual master, and in any position, either as a householder or a sannyāsī or a brahmacārī; in any position and anywhere in the world, he can perform this devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead and thus become actually mahātmā, a great soul.

COMMENT

This verse not only describes the qualifications of a mahatma, but it also tells us how we can become mahatmas. The first word satatam means “always,” and the last phrase is nitya-yuktā upāsate which also means “always.” In other words, we have to be engaged always in glorification of the Lord. It may be by directly chanting the holy names of the Lord or glorifying His transcendental qualities, beautiful form, uncommon pastimes, or it may be accompanied by other types of service such as arcanam (deity worship)—nine different types of devotional service—but the primary ones are śravaṇam kīrtanam viṣṇoḥ smaraṇam. Śravaṇam means “hearing,” kīrtanam means “chanting,” and smaraṇam means “remembering.”

Now in order to have the determination to engage perpetually in the service of the Lord one must understand who he is. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam says, na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇum. Everyone is interested in his or her self-interest. That is natural. Every single person in this room is here because he or she thinks they will get something out of it and anything we do, whatever it is, we do it because we think we will get something out of it. And that getting something doesn’t necessarily mean something material in a gross sense. It could be something more subtle or it could even be something spiritual. So, to understand what is our real self-interest, we have to know what is our real self. That is the first point.

Generally, in broad terms, people identify either with the body, the gross body, or with the mind, subtle body. Both of these identifications are mistaken because we, the living entity, is neither the gross physical body nor the subtle mental or intellectual body, but our actual identity is as spirit soul, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. We can understand easily that we are not the body because the body is changing at every moment. When we are born, we have a little baby’s body. Then we have a child’s body, say nine years old. Rāsa-līlā, can you stand up. This is what a nine-year-old body looks like. Ten. A beautiful ten-year-old body I might add. Thank you very much. Then you get a youth’s body, sixteen-year-old, eighteen-year-old. Then you are not in the room to be called upon to stand up. [laughter] Yudhisthira, I didn’t see you. Please stand up. How old are you? Seventeen. This is what a seventeen-year-old body, handsome seventeen-year-old body looks like. Then twenty-five, then after that we don’t embarrass our guests, but I will honor myself when you get to be in your sixties, and a pretty [cool?] specimen at that, this is what you get. But the soul within the body is the same soul. Now I am in a sixty-year-old body and I remember that when I was in a ten-year-old body I used to run and jump and play. I can’t run and jump and play like I did when I was ten years old, but I remember I used to do it. I am the same person. People address me as the same person but the body, this body is completely different from the ten-year-old body I had. And babies’ bodies, the resemblance is so strained that I could show you pictures of three babies, one of them being me, and you wouldn’t be able to tell which was me, because that body and this body are different. But I am the same person. So who is that “I”? That “I” is the soul.

So the soul continues to exist despite the change of body. The soul is our actual identity, not the body and not the mind. The mind also changes. That is also obvious. Our tastes change. When we were five years old, we had a certain taste in music. Then when we were thirteen years old we had a different taste. Then twenty, thirty, forty, and so on. But we are still the same person. That means that we are the soul, not the body or the mind. So our real self-interest isn’t for the sake of the body or even the mind, but it is for our real self which is the soul. 

There is tremendous frustration and stress in the world because people do not know who they are. They wrongly think that they are the body and thinking that they are the body, they do pretty much everything for the sake of the body, but because they are not the body, working for the sake of the body does not bring happiness to the self. 

Recently I have become aware that there have been a number of studies on the topic of what makes someone happy. People have confronted the fact that they are not happy. They have done everything they thought would make them happy but they still were not happy. So now psychologists, sociologists, and whatever, are conducting studies what makes someone happy. They are trying to find some co-relation between different types of activities and happiness because the most commonly believed factors of happiness have turned out not to be co-related to happiness. Of course the big ones are money, money is a big one. Studies have found that once you reach a certain level of subsistence, below that level, yes, if you get some money it can improve the quality of your life because you don’t go to bed hungry, you don’t feel cold at night, but once you have your basic necessities met, the studies have shown that adding more money does not increase your happiness. Yet people have somehow become convinced that they should keep making more money even though they don’t have to, to survive. Even though having the extra money won’t really make them happier, but they still do it because they’ve blend into a system, an illusory system. 

The same applies to other factors. Due to limitations of time I won’t discuss each and every one, but the conclusion is that the things that people think will make them happy later in life turn out not to make them happy. So now they are a lot of studies what makes people happy. Of course they are dealing with a very relative subjective consideration of what happiness is. That is another point. But for the sake of our discussion of the Bhagavad-gītā let us just say that in the beginning if you make a mistake in terms of what your identity is, then even if you do everything else correctly in terms of that mistake and idea, you will get further and further from the result you want. It is just like if you are doing a mathematical calculation and you make a mistake in the first step then even if you perform all the other steps correctly you may end up getting further and further away from the actual answer or solution. So if we make a mistake in the first step which is who we are and if we think we are the body then even if we do everything else perfectly for the sake of the body, we will get further and further away from the actual answer or solution to the problems of life or answer to the question how to find happiness.

The first instruction of the Bhagavad-gītā is you are not the body, you are the soul. As a soul you are part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. Therefore your real self-interest is to serve the Supreme Soul or Krishna. Therefore the Bhāgavatam says na te viduḥ svārtha-gatiṁ hi viṣṇum. People do not know what their real self-interest is, that their real self-interest is to serve Vishnu or Krishna. Now that follows if we understand that as spirit souls we are part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. Then just like the hand is part and parcel of the body so the interest of the hand is to serve the body. If the hand wants to enjoy independent of the body, it cannot. The hand is meant to serve the body. For example, if we have some nice sweet balls to eat, now the hand is meant to take the food and feed the stomach. From the food going into the stomach, the nutrition is distributed throughout the body. But if the hand thinks, “Oh why should I serve the stomach? Why should I do everything for the stomach? I am going to enjoy that sweet ball directly,” it won’t work because the hand is meant to put the food into the mouth so that it goes to the stomach. It is not meant to enjoy the food independent of the stomach. So in the same way, because we are part and parcel of God or Krishna, we are meant to serve Him. By that process we will be nourished, we will feel satisfied, we will feel happy. 

On this basis, on the basis of this conviction, one can engage in devotional service or bhakti-yoga with determination. If you are really convinced that something is good for you then you will do it. People are doing all sorts of austerities to get material things that they think will make them happy, but unfortunately in the end they discover the material things don’t make them happy, but they sacrifice for it. They spend years studying and then they start a business or get a job and for sake of the business or job they work hard. Even if they don’t feel like going to work they go to work. Even if they don’t particularly feel like meeting a potential customer but they do it for the sake of the business.

When we are convinced that something will bring us some benefit, we are ready to make sacrifices. Everyone is making sacrifices all the time. But unfortunately they are making sacrifices for things that in the end don’t bring them the happiness they seek. So this dṛḍha-vratāḥ, this determination. . . of course there are people who don’t have much determination even materially, but everyone has some degree of determination, because without some determination you couldn’t survive. So he has some determination. But what’s the result? Okay, he survived, but what is that achievement actually because the soul is eternal, the soul is going to live eternally anyway. The credit is that you have kept the soul in this body. That is your credit. Okay. But how much of a credit is that? Because there are millions of species of life, there are ants who eat a grain of sugar and there are elephants who eat about eighty pounds of food every day. And all those millions of ants, there are so many ants, we are not even conscious of them until we leave some food out, especially sweets, then you can see hundreds of them coming out of nowhere. They were there somewhere. So there are hundreds and thousands and millions and billions of ants and they are all getting their one grain. I don’t know how many elephants there are left but there are elephants and they are getting their eighty pounds. They are not going to the office or the factory or the shop or the mall or going online, but they are getting their necessities of life met.

In the Upanishads it is stated: nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām,eko bahūnāṁ yo vidadhāti kāmān. Nitya means “eternal.” So amongst so many plural numbers of living entities there is one singular eternal living entity, and cetanaś cetanānām, out of so many plural number of conscious living entities, there is one singular conscious living entity, and that one singular eternal conscious living entity is maintaining and fulfilling the necessities of all the plural number. So, that one who we call Krishna is maintaining all of us whether in the body of an ant or an elephant or a human being.

Now someone may say and it is true that, “Ants are meant to live like that and elephants are meant to live the way they live, but we need to have houses, we need to have clothing. We have other necessities and to meet our necessities we have to work in a different way.” That is true but if we work for God, for Krishna, He will take care of us as we need to be taken care of. If we are doing the work of a mahatma, broadcasting the glories of the Lord, the Lord will maintain us. Even in the material world if you are hired by a company to do their publicity or advertising, the company will pay you. So if we are making publicity for the Supreme Lord doing advertising so to speak for the Supreme Lord, is He not going to maintain us? Certainly He will maintain us. 

So it is the same point that people are working but for the wrong purpose, for the wrong master, which brings me to another point about bowing down. It is mentioned in this verse bowing down. When Srila Prabhupada first came to the United States, he gave a talk in Seattle in 1968 and one young man said, “I don’t want to bow down.” Actually it is a matter of etiquette or culture that one bows down to the spiritual master, bows down to the Deities, bows down to any respectable person. So he said, “I don’t want to bow down.” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “You may not want to bow down but you are forced to bow down.” So it is not a question of not bowing down; it is a question of where to bow down so that you will be happy. When you go to work in a way you have to bow down to your boss. When you do sales you have to bow down to your customers. The customer is always right. Srila Prabhupada said if you do not voluntarily bow down to Krishna, you will be forced to bow down to maya or the material nature. Bowing down to maya means that you have to bow down to repeated birth, disease, old age, and death. You may say, “I don’t want those things.” You are forced to accept them whether you want them or not.

So this is our choice, not whether to bow down or not, we are forced to bow down, the question is where to bow down so that we can be happy even while bowing down, and is mentioned in this verse, Krishna. 

There was a musician named Boy George—I say was. Maybe he is still around as a musician—and he met devotees. Many musicians have met devotees and have been touched by Krishna consciousness. So Boy George was one of them and he came to Vrindavan, the holy place of Lord Krishna’s pastimes on earth, and he stayed at our temple in Vrindavan. He was very shocked to see so many people coming to the temple and not bowing down to the Deities, to the deity form of the Lord. And then he wrote a song, Bow Down Mister. That was the context, “Bow down Mister! Hare Krishna Hare Rama.” [laughter]

You can probably understand that what I am saying about this verse today is that we are doing everything anyway—we are chanting, we are glorifying people. It is getting harder but we will find someone to glorify, some political figure, some altruist, some musician, some actor, some actress, some sportsman. We are glorifying people. When there is an election people come out and they glorify their candidate. When there is a sports competition, people come out and they route for their team and they glorify their heroes in their team. It is everywhere. Whenever there are awards, film awards, music awards, television, they are glorifying. That is a sort of kirtan, a perverted kirtan, but it is sort of a kirtan. So we are doing everything—we are glorifying, we are bowing down, we are endeavoring with determination—but because we have misunderstood who we are and what our self-interest is, we are glorifying the wrong people, the wrong things, endeavoring with determination for the wrong things, bowing down to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

So we don’t really have to change what we are doing that much. What you just have to change is the understanding of who we are and what our purpose in life is, and do the same things, but for a different cause, for a different purpose.

We can understand there is a qualitative difference between glorifying Krishna and whoever—political leader or football player, basketball player, movie actor, movie actress—but what about demigods? In the Vedic tradition there is such comprehensive knowledge that we learn of many different gradations of living entities. Of course the human form is special. Human beings have more developed consciousness so they can actually understand who they are and what the purpose of life is. But there are beings even more developed than the human beings that we know on earth. There are planets with life more developed than life on earth. Of course people are in ignorance. That is a whole other subject but people are in darkness, they have no idea even about the material universe. They have no idea what’s going on, on other planets, but without discussing that in more detail now, although we could discuss it, let us just say that. . . we do have to discuss a little because they are starting from the wrong point. They are starting from matter. They are starting from atoms and molecules and on the basis of atoms and molecules they are thinking how the atoms, molecules are combining and becoming bigger units and then just sort of chance, random, you get. . . it is pretty absurd. That is what they think that we have all happened by chance. It is pretty absurd. So in the same way they think planets have happened by chance and it is by chance that the ingredients for life exist in just the right combination and proportion on earth to sustain life but the other planets, they are just lumps of matter, forming in space. There is nothing there.

According to Vedic knowledge, there are beings on those planets and some of those beings are more advanced than the human beings on earth, much more advanced, and they are called devas, devatās, or in English you could say demigods. Among them some are very prominent and powerful. Lord Brahma, Lord Shiva, Surya, the sun god, Surya namaskāra, Durga, but they are not the Supreme Godhead. They are expansions of the Supreme Godhead just like we are, but they are not the Supreme Godhead. So it is not in our interest particularly to serve them. It is not in our interest particularly to glorify them. It is not in our interest particularly to bow down to them. It is not in our interest particularly to worship them. Lord Shiva is in a little different category, but still, he is not the Supreme Godhead. The other demigods, even Lord Brahma is a living entity, a soul like we are, and it is a post. Anyone of us could become Lord Brahma if we are qualified. 

So this verse instructs us, Krishna is speaking the verse, satataṁ kīrtayanto mām: “Always chanting My glories.” Now this is the statement of Krishna in the Bhagavad-gītā which is accepted as authority in Vedic civilization. It is the textbook of yoga. Everyone is Vedic civilization accepts the authority of the Bhagavad-gītā. This is what the Bhagavad-gītā tells us. But that does not mean although it is clear in the Bhagavad-gītā, it doesn’t mean people don’t have misconceptions, and they do. They abound. 

Once when we were in Bombay quite an affluent, prominent Hindu visited Srila Prabhupada and he asked Srila Prabhupada that, “India is a land of mahatmas but in spite of the presence of so many mahatmas, there are still so many problems in India. Why is that?” And Srila Prabhupada replied, “The reason you have so many problems in India is that you do not know who is a mahatma or who is not a mahatma.” So this sort of hazy, fuzzy idea, anyone, whatever, who has a long beard and hair, whatever, wears robes, is a mahatma or that any deity whose picture you can buy in an Indian import store is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, it is just not the case. It is just not true. You will not get the same result by following a so-called mahatma or an actual mahatma as defined here. You won’t get the same result by glorifying a demigod or worshiping a demigod as you will by worshiping the Supreme Personality of Godhead. You just won’t. The Bhagavad-gītā says, “Those who worship the ghosts and spirits will go to the ghosts and spirits, those who worship the demigods will go to the demigods, and those who worship Me will come to Me.” It is just so obvious.

You can’t buy a ticket to Bombay and think you will get off in Calcutta. The ticket won’t take you to Calcutta. The ticket will take you to Bombay. So if you are worshiping Krishna truly as described in this verse, that is your ticket to Krishna, but if you are worshiping someone else, that is your ticket to somewhere else. It is logical. It is obvious. 

So we have that task of presenting the Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Srila Prabhupada titled his translation of the Bhagavad-gītā, The Bhagavad-gītā As It Is meaning as Krishna spoke it and Krishna is the speaker, the teacher, and as Arjuna understood it. Arjuna is the exemplary student. How did Arjuna accept it? He accepted Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead—paraṁ brahma paraṁ dhāma pavitraṁ paramaṁ bhavān—-and he accepted everything that Krishna said as true. He said, sarvam etad ṛtaṁ manye, that, “I accept as true in total everything that You have said.” And that is how we have to accept the Bhagavad-gītā and that is how we have to present it to get the actual benefit.

So today is a very auspicious day. It is the appearance day of Srila Madhvacharya. Srila Madhvacharya is one of the four main acharyas of India and this verse and purport are very appropriate because his philosophy is called dvaita. In fact you can see pictures of him like this. This is his symbol. Sometimes people do that to us but there it is the peace symbol in their lexicon. But Madhvacharya, he made this his symbol meaning “two.” It is not all one. It is not that the individual soul and the Supreme Soul are one, but two. So this is his mudra. 

There are basically four sampradāyas, approved lines of disciplic succession or paramparā mentioned in scripture. There is the Rudra-sampradāya which begins with Shiva; there is the Brahma-sampradāya that begins with Brahma; there is the Kumara-sampradāya that begins with the four Kumaras, and there is the Sri-sampradāya that begins with Lakshmi. Each has a prominent acharya on earth within written history. So Madhvacharya, he is the acharya in the Brahma-sampradāya. Tomorrow is Ramanujacarya’s appearance day. He is the acharya in the Sri-sampradāya. And then there is Nimbarkacarya and Visnusvami in the Rudra sampradāya and Kumara-sampradāya.

It is described that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the modern founder of the Hare Krishna movement five hundred years ago, He took two elements from each of the four sampradāyas and He distilled the quintessence of each. On this point of dualism, like Madhvacharya’s dvaita, then Ramanujacarya’s viśiṣṭādvaita—-there are different variations—but Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s philosophy is acintya-bhedābheda-tattva. This is extraordinary. Acintya means “inconceivable” and bheda and ābheda means “different and not different” or “one and different.” So you can think that an apple and an orange are different because one’s an apple and one’s an orange. In fact there is some expression, “Don’t compare apples and oranges,” but then again you could think, “Well, they are both fruit, so they are the same.” But it is very hard at the exact same moment to think of them being the same and different. You can see, “Yes, they are the same, they are both fruit, but they are different. One is an apple and one is an orange.” 

So this acintya-bhedābheda-tattva, the reason it is inconceivable is because you cannot simultaneously conceive of something being the same and different at the same time. So this is inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference. We are one with the Lord in quality. We have the same qualities—nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām—-but we are different in quantity because the Lord is infinite and we are infinitesimal. 

Now for us to have a relationship with someone, we have to have something in common. If we don’t have anything in common, if we are not in the same category at least in some respect, we can’t have a relationship. So because we are one in quality with Krishna, we can have a relationship with Him, but because we are different in quantity, He is infinite or He is the whole and we are infinitesimal, we are the part. So that defines the relationship as one of servant and master. When we are in our constitutional position as eternal servants of Krishna, we are happy. That is liberation. Real liberation is not merging and becoming one with the impersonal brahmajyoti light. That is there. We don’t deny it. That is there. But there is no ānanda, there is no bliss in that, and it is also not permanent. One would hope that it would be permanent. First of all it is almost impossible to achieve that impersonal merging. It is practically impossible and in this day and age really next to impossible. 

But it is the same sort of irony that what you think is going to make you happy doesn’t make you happy because even if you merge and become one with the impersonal brahmajyoti you don’t really become happy. You get relief from the miseries of the material world—that is there like nirvana, cessation of material miseries—but there is nothing positive. There is no positive relationship of love that will bring happiness. Everyone wants love. If you imagine yourself as the richest person in the world having everything you could possibly want but you are all alone, you have no one to share it with, you wouldn’t be happy. No one would want to be in that position.

So being in the impersonal brahman, merging, you don’t actually merge. It is described like molecules of sunshine, you are like a spiritual molecule and you merge into this vast expanse of light, spiritual light, which is permeated by or pervaded by other spiritual molecules and you temporarily suspend your individual existence. But eventually guess what, you feel lonely. Even in the impersonal brahmajyoti you feel lonely and you feel restless. People go on a cruise, they want to get away from it all, they go on a cruise and for a while it is great. They leave everything back on the shore, all the problems, all the people and everything else, and it is great, you are just out in the ocean. It is fantastic. But after a while you get bored seeing the same ocean, the same waves all the time. So the brahmajyoti is great. You get away from it all, but it is all the same, and there is no one else to interact with.

So the Bhāgavatam says patanty adhaḥ, that even if you think that you have reached that higher stage of impersonal liberation—patanty adhaḥ—-you fall down again because there is no activity. There is no loving reciprocation. So you fall down again.

Real happiness is in a loving relationship with the supreme lovable person Krishna. One who understands that is a mahatma and as Srila Prabhupada says in the concluding paragraph, it doesn’t matter where you are, it doesn’t matter what your station in life is, whether you are a celibate student or a householder or a renunciate, it doesn’t matter what station of life you are in, it doesn’t matter where you are born or where you live, but if you take up the process described in this verse with determination, you can become a mahatma, and the result of becoming a mahatma is that you will be reinstated in your original position as eternal servant of Krishna, God, and you will live an eternal life of bliss and knowledge in His association. And that becomes our determination.

Hare Krishna. Thank you for your patience. I neglected to ask when the talk was supposed to end but Titikṣava Kāruṇika Prabhu gave me the blessing that whatever I would do would be just fine. So depending on his blessings I spoke some words. But I do feel it would be good if any of you have any questions you can ask them now or later, but now is we are in the now, now.

Gentleman: What are the two points that Lord Chaitanya took from each of the Vaishnava sampradāya?

Giriraj Swami: That would be a long discussion but that is described much by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura in his Navadvipa-parikramā book.

Lady: A mahatma is someone who is always glorifying Krishna. How do we apply this practically?

Giriraj Swami: That is really the best question you or anyone could have asked, how do we apply this practically.

Actually you find the same instruction in the Śikṣāṣṭakam by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ, to always be engaged in chanting the holy name or in glorifying Hari or Krishna.

There are three ways of looking at this. The first is that as you mentioned while you are working you can still think of Krishna. You can be chanting either vocally or mentally. Now you can say, “That is not fair, I am at work and I am thinking about Krishna.” But everyone is always thinking of different things. Even Barack Obama or Steve Jobs or captain of the football, he is not always thinking of. . . he is thinking, “I am hungry. When am I going to get to eat?” Or he is thinking of his wife at home or thinking of his children, thinking of his parents. So, people’s minds are wandering all the time, from the top, from the president or CEO, all the way down. So their minds are wandering to their wife, their children, their parents, what they are going to do on the weekend, what they are going to do for their holidays, what they are going to eat when they get home. So what’s the problem if your mind wanders to Krishna? Everyone’s mind is going here and there and everywhere anyway. So yes, you can think of Krishna in your mind, you can chant in your mind. 

The other thing is that if your goal is Krishna, to be Krishna conscious, but you need to work because you need to keep your body and soul together and live in a situation that will enable you to prosecute Krishna consciousness, so that is also common. When people are working they are also thinking, “What am I going to do with the money? I am going to do this.” So you are thinking, “I am going to maintain my household so I can chant, I can read the Bhagavad-gītā, I buy vegetarian food that I can offer to Krishna and take the remnants as prasāda,” or if there is some extra you can use it to buy books to distribute or to buy flowers for the Deities or go to India on pilgrimage. But the main thing is to be sincere about it and if you are sincere then that time that you put into work to keep your body and soul together to engage in Krishna consciousness is part of the same process. It is not against the principle of kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ. But while you are doing it you can still be chanting. Yes, we have to take rest at night, we have brush our teeth, we have to bathe, we have to get dressed, but if the purpose of it all ultimately is to serve Krishna and please Krishna and realize our eternal relationship with Krishna then the minimum that we need to do to keep the body and soul together and survive in the world is not against the principle of satataṁ kīrtayanto mām or kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ.

Gentleman: Is it in reference to we are not the body, when the body feels the pain and the body becomes old, how does the soul feel? Does it feel sad? Like if you pinch my body, does the soul feel pain? The second question is does the soul choose the body or the body chose the soul? How does the body, mind, and soul react? One more question. What is the difference between mahatma, jīvātmā, and Paramātmā?

Giriraj Swami: What about ātmā ātmā?

We start with the soul, the individual soul. The individual soul is part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. The individual soul is a person. We are persons. The body is not a person. That is one of the defects with the impersonal philosophy. They think that the spirit is impersonal and because it has accepted a body, it is become a person, but when it liberated then it becomes impersonal again. But that is foolishness. It is foolishness. When the soul leaves the body, the eyes, the nose, the ears, the tongue, the arms, the legs, the belly, everything is there, but there is no person there. The person is the soul. The body is just a machine. The body is not a person. The body is just a machine. The soul is the person who makes the body work. 

It is just like a criminal is put in prison. He is a person in prison and when he is released, when he is liberated from the bondage of prison life, he is still a person, but he is not a prisoner. He is a free person. But what does that mean, a free person? It means that he is given freedom on the understanding that he will voluntarily abide by the laws of the state. If he violates the laws of the state he again becomes a criminal and he is again punished.

So we are persons in the state of bondage and we are persons in the state of liberation. It is just that when we are liberated we are free. We are not punished by material nature with repeated birth and disease, old age and death. 

Now when the living entity turns away from Krishna and comes into the material world, he gets a material body and suffers. Does the soul suffer? That is your question. The soul never actually mixes with matter. The soul is always aloof from matter. It is described that the soul is in the region of the heart but the consciousness spreads throughout the body. So, if someone steps on your toe, you feel it. If someone pinches you, you feel it, because the consciousness is pervading the body. It is like the sun is localized but the sunshine pervades the universe, the solar system. So because the consciousness is pervading the body, you feel pains and pleasures, but your experience of pains and pleasures is limited to your body, within the body. That is the jīvātmā, the individual soul. 

But the Paramātmā is in the heart of every living entity. He knows the pains and pleasures in every body. Like you know what you are thinking but you don’t know what I am thinking or what he is thinking or what she is thinking because your awareness is limited to your body. But Krishna, the Supersoul, He knows exactly whatever pain and pleasure every single person in this world and outside of this room and in any and every species of life is experiencing. He knows what they are thinking, He knows what they are feeling, He knows what they are desiring. So that is the Paramātmā, that is the localized Supersoul within the heart of every living entity.

And then there is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna in the spiritual goal. That is our goal, to join Krishna in His loving service in the spiritual world. 

Mahatma is a jīvātmā but his consciousness has been expanded. So he sees everyone equally. He sees everyone as spirit soul, part and parcel of Krishna. That is mahatma. Then there is durātmā. You forgot about durātmā. Durātmā is the opposite of mahatma. It is like cripple-minded. I am just thinking of myself or me and my girl, me and my family. It is limited. But mahatma is broadminded. He sees all living entities as part and parcel of Krishna.

Is there something else?

Gentleman: [unclear]

Giriraj Swami: Yes, it is not a matter of just armchair discussion. It is something that we really have to understand and if we really understand it your life will change. If you understand even just that you are not the body your life will change. Even if theoretically we know we are not the body but we really don’t understand it and therefore we act so much on the basis of the body. 

This is a good question. I will have to qualify what I said to answer your question. There is material advancement and spiritual advancement. Just like on earth someone can be materially developed and spiritually advanced or materially developed and mean and someone can be poor and be spiritually advanced or someone can be poor and can be mean. So the same thing exists on the higher level. The devas that I referred to by definition are pious and godly, but even amongst the devas there is different degrees of advancement, different degrees of living conditions, different standards of living conditions. So roughly speaking the Vedic literature has described fourteen levels of planetary systems and we are in the middle range. The earth is in the middle range but on the lower end of the middle range [laughter]. 

Above the earth the pious people, they are more pious, they are more advanced, they are more intelligent. Everything is of a higher standard” the music, the art, the dance, the philosophy. Everything is higher but they are still not completely pure. So basically they want the people on earth to become pious and godly, but there are also people who are more materially advanced than people on earth who are not all benevolent. Some are malevolent. But because of being durātmās they don’t really even care that much about us. They are mean people but we are too insignificant. So they don’t even really think about us. They are more concerned with their rivals on their level. We are not rivals. We are too insignificant. But those who are godly, they think of us because they are broadminded, they are mahatmas, and they want us to progress and become godly. 

And then the higher you get, the more spiritually evolved they are. On that very high level you don’t get that malevolent type of materially advanced person. They just can’t reach that high. So they can help us. These higher beings, they can help us.

Lady: Do they want to help us?

Giriraj Swami: What I was about to say would answer that as well. The one person we really need to please and win the favor of is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. So these godly people on higher planets with more evolved consciousness, they are also devotees of Krishna. As a devotee of Krishna they, by definition, have the same. . . identify with His purposes. And His purpose is to get us all back home, back to Godhead. Because they are devotees they share in that interest of Krishna’s. But the higher they are means the more pure they are, the more they identify exclusively with Krishna’s purpose and have less personal interest mixed with it. You get what I mean?

Lady: I do.

Giriraj Swami: But when you get to 100 percent pure then other than rare souls who are in the material world only for Krishna’s work, those souls are with Krishna in the spiritual world, and they are 100 percent our well-wishers and benefactors, and they are the ones that we should really be approaching for help and guidance and mercy. Not even the higher ones in the material world.

Lady: The ones on earth?

Giriraj Swami: I was referring to ones with Krishna in the spiritual world. But the ones on earth, they can help us in a more immediate sense. There is a word “Bhāgavata.” The word Bhagavān, God, Bhāgavata has the same root. So Bhāgavata can refer to a book called the Bhāgavata Purāṇa or Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam which is about the Lord and His devotees. The Lord is never alone. He is always with His devotees. But there is also the person bhāgavata and an advanced devotee is called a bhāgavata. There is a verse in the book Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that says that by hearing the book Bhāgavata or by serving the book Bhāgavata or the person bhāgavata, one gets the same result and all the inauspicious things within the heart become cleansed and one becomes fixed in the service of the Lord.

Once a disciple asked Srila Prabhupada, “When we say that the two are the same, and by serving the two one gets the same result, but is one better than the other?” And then Srila Prabhupada said, “The person bhāgavata is better.” And the disciple asked, “Why?” He said, “Because the person bhāgavata can catch you by the ear.”

Even though the residents of the spiritual world are certainly. . . we should always think of them and pray to them, pray for their mercy and pray for their guidance, but the association of devotees on earth is very important. That is because they can correct in practical ways, they can encourage us, and we need that. In fact one of the factors that these studies found that co-related with happiness in their own meager way was having regular association. So we have that but our purpose is noble. Anyone will feel better whatever they are if they have company. That company could lead them all to hell really. It is an illusory type of happiness. But this association is ennobling and uplifting. It is most important.

Just on that subject of association, a twenty-year-old Hispanic girl in Santa Barbara where I have a base, tragically died in a swimming pool. We knew her mother and sister and other family members so we went to the funeral. It was all conducted in Spanish Catholic but at a certain point the priest or preacher started to speak in English and he was addressing the young people. He said that, “You have to be very careful who you choose as your friends.” He said, “A friend is someone you can open your heart to who’ll be with you through thick and thin.” Then he said that, “You should only choose friends that will encourage you to go in the right direction not in the wrong direction.” He said, “If you choose someone as a friend who tells you to do something you shouldn’t do. . .” He was alluding to drugs and those things. He said, “. . . he is not a real friend. Don’t choose that person as a friend.” Another point he made was that, “You should respect and obey your parents. Don’t think that because you know English better than they do or you know the ways of America better than they do that you don’t have to respect them or listen to them. And if your friend encourages you, ‘Oh, they don’t know English, what do they know. They don’t know how to [?]. You don’t even need to listen to them. You just do what you want,’ he is not a real friend.” 

So you have to really be careful. A man is known by the company he keeps. Knowing that you become like the company you keep. So if you associate with godly people, serious devotees, you become a serious devotee.

Thank you for your patience and attentive hearing, intelligent question, inquiry. Hare Krishna.

Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!
Hare Krishna maha-mantra ki jaya!