(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 18 September 2016, Midrand, South Africa, Sunday Feast Lecture, Bhagavad-gita 9.9)
Continued from Surrender unto Me.
When we read about Krsna’s neutrality, we need to understand it in proper perspective. Krsna is looking at all the living beings and thinks, “Please, do not get so entangled in the material energy. Just somehow or other, avoid all this. Use what you need to live but never for a moment think that this is the place to be! The spiritual world is the place where we should be.”
Do not love the place of your birth because birth is not loveable, birth is painful. If you love the place of your birth, you will take birth again and again, bhauma ijya-dhīḥ (Srimad Bhagavatam 10.84.13). The type of intelligence where we love the place of our birth, śva-viḍ-varāhoṣṭra-kharaiḥ (Srimad Bhagavatam 2.3.19), is like hogs, dogs, camels and asses as Bhagavatam is stating. This is not intelligent. Our real love should be reserved for the spiritual world, for Krsna and everything there and the devotees in the spiritual world.
We know what this material world is like by now. When you are a child, you think, “Maybe this is a wonderful world.” But by now, I mean… it is not at all. We are meant to have nothing to do with the material world. Zero! Prabhupada said that we should reduce our material involvement to zero, really. We should have nothing to do with it.
Okay, we have to eat, that is alright as long as we offer it to Krsna. We have to pay the bills. As long as it sustains a life that is offered to Krsna then it is not material anymore. Then suddenly, it becomes spiritualized. So we spiritualize all these things that we use…
I mean everyone can appreciate a new car especially when you have to drive in this rainy weather. To have a super slow phone is also very frustrating, it is nice to have one of the better models. When the house is too cramped, it is nice to have some space. These are all nice but we cannot take it serious, “Oh this is my life… this is what I am living for.” This is not what we are living for, we just use these things. We want things that are nice while we are living in the material world but we cannot take it serious. Krsna is the goal of our life, the spiritual world is the goal of our life, getting out of the material world is the goal of our life. As soon as we get to that point, that is when we purchase Krsna, then Krsna is eager to give up that neutrality because it is an external façade. It is only a façade!
Prabhupada said Krsna is more eager for us to go back to Godhead than we are. Prabhupada said that his father used to tell him that Krsna has ten arms. He said if you want to hold on to material things, can you hold on if you deal with someone with ten arms? Those ten arms can come from all sides and he will get it out of you somehow. But if he starts giving with ten arms, then he will give more than you can receive. So ultimately that is it!
We must just remember all of the above while we are here in the material world; using all the things that we are using; living the busy life that we are living, working, making money, surviving. All our time is for Krsna consciousness. It is about the depth. It is about the understanding. Cultivation is like watering the plant but it is not the bhakti plant itself. Therefore, our Krsna consciousness is not the watering of the plant. Our Krsna consciousness is the conviction inside, it is about our consciousness and then we must water the plant by our practices, by our sadhna. But you may not have a lot of time to water your bhakti plant but do it anyway.
It is easy because we chant early in the morning before the world gets up, so they will never know. In this way, we do these things but the essence of Krsna consciousness is our conviction. The conviction is, let us just understand: Krsna does not want us to be here! We are here because of foolishness. This is not the place to be. Krsna wants us to return to the spiritual world but until we really want to, we will remain here. We will remain here. Let us somehow or other serve Krsna to the point where we purchase him and he will reveal himself, bestow his mercy and take us back to the spiritual world.