(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 20 March 2013, Cape Town, South Africa, Srimad Bhagavatam 8.12.6)
When the disciples of Prabhupada saw him lying on his bed, in his final days, they said, ‘How can such a terrible condition happen now? How can this happen?’
Prabhupada said, ‘Don’t think it will not happen to you because it will.’ So, this is the situation. Pure devotees also go through the processes of the material energy. Pure devotees are also embodied. Pure devotees also face hardships – heat and cold, hunger and thirst, disease and old age – they face it all! But they are not taking it seriously because they know that is just the body, it is happening to the body. So this understanding of, ‘I’m not the body,’ really means that whatever happens is not serious, ‘I‘m not the body,’ and therefore the whole material world which is related to the body, is not important!
The material world, we can just write it off but something which we can use for the service of Krsna, those things we will take but for the rest of the material world, write it off.
Pure devotees dedicate their lives to service. We may not recognize them at first but then they emerge very clearly for all to see. Those extraordinary persons who give their lives, who begin faithfully, who carry on faithfully and then still go on faithfully until the end – those persons become glorious!