KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HH HARIVILAS MAHARAJ’S MORNING BHAGAVATAM CLASS ON SB 2.7.18:
- When the Lord snatches away one’s hard-earned material possessions and favors one with His personal transcendental service for eternal life, bliss and knowledge, such taking away by the Lord should be considered a special favor upon such a pure devotee.
- Material possessions, however alluring they may be, cannot be permanent possessions. Therefore one has to voluntarily give up such possessions, or one has to leave such possessions at the time of quitting this material body.
- The sane man knows that all material possessions are temporary and that the best use of such possessions is to engage them in the service of the Lord so that the Lord may be pleased with him and award him a permanent place in His paraṁ dhāma.
- The more one spiritually advances by devotional service to the Lord, in exchange for his temporary possessions, the more one is freed from the attachment of material illusion.
- To achieve this stage of life one must be firmly convinced about spiritual existence and its permanent effects.
- To know exactly the permanency of spiritual existence, one must voluntarily practice possessing less or only the minimum to maintain one’s material existence without difficulty. One should not create artificial needs.
- Artificial needs of life are activities of the senses. The modern civilization is based on these activities of the senses, Hence it is the civilization of sense gratification.
- Perfect civilization is the civilization of ātmā, or the soul proper.
- The Bhagavad-gītā primarily deals with the intelligence of man, leading one to the progressive path of civilization of the spirit soul. And Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the complete human civilization dealing with the subject matter of the soul proper.
- As soon as a man is raised to the status of the civilization of the soul, he is fit to be promoted to the kingdom of God.
- Bali Mahārāja accepted this civilization of the soul in exchange for his great material possessions and thus became fit for promotion to the kingdom of God.
- Those who have attained the comforts of a material civilization made for sense gratification should try to attain the kingdom of God by following in the footsteps of Bali Mahārāja, who exchanged his acquired material strength, adopting the process of bhakti-yoga.
- The Supreme Lord is unlimited. Only a very expert personality, retired from the activities of material happiness, deserves to understand this knowledge of spiritual values. Therefore those who are not so well situated, due to material attachment, should be shown the ways of transcendental realization, by Your Goodness, through descriptions of the transcendental activities of the Supreme Lord.
- A cent-percent devotee of the Lord is immune to the dreadful material miseries of repeated birth and death.
SB 2.7.18 TRANSLATION:
Bali Mahārāja, who put on his head the water washed from the lotus feet of the Lord, did not think of anything besides his promise, in spite of being forbidden by his spiritual master. The king dedicated his own personal body to fulfill the measurement of the Lord’s third step. For such a personality, even the kingdom of heaven, which he conquered by his strength, was of no value.
Bali Mahārāja, by gaining the transcendental favor of the Lord in exchange for his great material sacrifice, was able to have a place in Vaikuṇṭhaloka with equal or greater facilities of eternal enjoyment; therefore he was not at all the loser by sacrificing the kingdom of heaven, which he had possessed by his material strength. In other words, when the Lord snatches away one’s hard-earned material possessions and favors one with His personal transcendental service for eternal life, bliss and knowledge, such taking away by the Lord should be considered a special favor upon such a pure devotee.
Material possessions, however alluring they may be, cannot be permanent possessions. Therefore one has to voluntarily give up such possessions, or one has to leave such possessions at the time of quitting this material body. The sane man knows that all material possessions are temporary and that the best use of such possessions is to engage them in the service of the Lord so that the Lord may be pleased with him and award him a permanent place in His paraṁ dhāma.
In the Bhagavad-gītā (15.5-6) the paraṁ dhāma of the Lord is described as follows:
nirmāna-mohā jita-saṅga-doṣā
adhyātma-nityā vinivṛtta-kāmāḥ
dvandvair vimuktāḥ sukha-duḥkha-saṁjñair
gacchanty amūḍhāḥ padam avyayaṁ tat
na tad bhāsayate sūryo
na śaśāṅko na pāvakaḥ
yad gatvā na nivartante
tad dhāma paramaṁ mama
One who possesses more in this material world, in the shape of houses, land, children, society, friendship and wealth, possesses these things only for the time being. One cannot possess all this illusory paraphernalia, created by māyā, permanently. Such a possessor is more illusioned in the matter of his self-realization; therefore one should possess less or nothing, so that one may be free from artificial prestige. We are contaminated in the material world by association with the three modes of material nature. Therefore, the more one spiritually advances by devotional service to the Lord, in exchange for his temporary possessions, the more one is freed from the attachment of material illusion. To achieve this stage of life one must be firmly convinced about spiritual existence and its permanent effects. To know exactly the permanency of spiritual existence, one must voluntarily practice possessing less or only the minimum to maintain one’s material existence without difficulty. One should not create artificial needs. That will help one be satisfied with the minimum. Artificial needs of life are activities of the senses. The modern advancement of civilization is based on these activities of the senses, or, in other words, it is a civilization of sense gratification.
Perfect civilization is the civilization of ātmā, or the soul proper.
The civilized man of sense gratification is on an equal level with animals because animals cannot go beyond the activities of the senses. Above the senses is the mind. The civilization of mental speculation is also not the perfect stage of life because above the mind is the intelligence, and the Bhagavad-gītā gives us information of the intellectual civilization. The Vedic literatures give different directions for the human civilization, including the civilization of the senses, of the mind, of the intelligence, and of the soul proper.
The Bhagavad-gītā primarily deals with the intelligence of man, leading one to the progressive path of civilization of the spirit soul. And Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the complete human civilization dealing with the subject matter of the soul proper. As soon as a man is raised to the status of the civilization of the soul, he is fit to be promoted to the kingdom of God, which is described in the Bhagavad-gītā as per the above verses.
The primary information of the kingdom of God informs us that there is no need of sun, moon or electricity, which are all necessary in this material world of darkness.
And the secondary information of the kingdom of God explains that anyone able to reach that kingdom by adoption of the civilization of the soul proper, or, in other words, by the method of bhakti-yoga, attains the highest perfection of life. One is then situated in the permanent existence of the soul, with full knowledge of transcendental loving service for the Lord. Bali Mahārāja accepted this civilization of the soul in exchange for his great material possessions and thus became fit for promotion to the kingdom of God. The kingdom of heaven, which he achieved by dint of his material power, was considered most insignificant in comparison with the kingdom of God.
Those who have attained the comforts of a material civilization made for sense gratification should try to attain the kingdom of God by following in the footsteps of Bali Mahārāja, who exchanged his acquired material strength, adopting the process of bhakti-yoga as recommended in the Bhagavad-gītā and further explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam.
Yesterday we talked about how one cannot be a loser in KC. One of the worst things to be is to be a loser. Everyone wants to be a winner. There is a lot of information in SB
This verse BG 2.40 is very important- it guarantees if you engage in devotional service, the benefit of that DS always remains with you. In the next life you will start from where you left off.. This cannot be equal in the material world, no one can guarantee this. In
SB 1.5.16
The Supreme Lord is unlimited. Only a very expert personality, retired from the activities of material happiness, deserves to understand this knowledge of spiritual values. Therefore those who are not so well situated, due to material attachment, should be shown the ways of transcendental realization, by Your Goodness, through descriptions of the transcendental activities of the Supreme Lord.
This just eliminated 99.99 percent of the people in the world..if you ask anyone, people say I want to be happy.. How can you be happy when you are born crying.. When you are forced to get sick.. People call sense gratification as happiness… but they do not know sense gratification is always followed by misery… We are not dealing with opinions, we are talking truths.. If you want to be happy, take to KC and minimize the material needs..
One must be retired from the activities of material happiness. Everyone is engaged in sense gratification – Eating meat, having intoxication, illicit sex – this is their happiness. But all this is misery… Alcohol is a surge as long as it goes through the bloodstream it kills brain cells.. One time when I (HVM) was a kid, 12 years old, one guy came in the house and asked for a bottle of whisky, he took it and poured it into a glass and drank it fast forward 20 years he died of cancer… this is the sadness that people face when they have these bad habits.. There are hundreds and thousands of people trying to get into the USA from Mexico, why? They think that the USA is a place of sense gratification. The USA has become a capital of sense gratification. Anyone can come here with nothing and get everything. The Government is giving things for free for sense gratification. If you do not feed the alligator meat it will come and bite you. That is the situation now..
I just retired from the activities of material happiness. Only that person deserves it. SP said – first deserve and then desire.
This one verse is explaining everything in the world today! There is no doubt about Supreme Lord in the SB. In other texts they are not sure who is the supreme lord – indra? Shiva? Chandra? Too many varieties to pick from.. They worship all of them. They do all pujas.. What they do all jagaran night… they pass the time — they gamble, they drink, they eat ganja.. This is their celebration for Shiva ratri on these days you can eat meat and drink liquor.. That is what is happening in Hinduism.. They are making travesty of all the holy festivals in India…
Theological science is a difficult subject, especially when it deals with the transcendental nature of God. It is not a subject matter to be understood by persons who are too much attached to material activities. Only the very expert, who have almost retired from materialistic activities by culture of spiritual knowledge, can be admitted to the study of this great science. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is clearly stated that out of many hundreds and thousands of men only one person deserves to enter into transcendental realization. And out of many thousands of such transcendentally realized persons, only a few can understand the theological science specifically dealing with God as a person. Śrī Vyāsadeva is therefore advised by Nārada to describe the science of God directly by relating His transcendental activities. Vyāsadeva is himself a personality expert in this science, and he is unattached to material enjoyment. Therefore he is the right person to describe it, and Śukadeva Gosvāmī, the son of Vyāsadeva, is the right person to receive it.
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is the topmost theological science, and therefore it can react on the laymen as medicinal doses. Because it contains the transcendental activities of the Lord, there is no difference between the Lord and the literature. The literature is the factual literary incarnation of the Lord. So the laymen can hear the narration of the activities of the Lord. Thereby they are able to associate with the Lord and thus gradually become purified from material diseases. The expert devotees also can discover novel ways and means to convert the nondevotees in terms of particular time and circumstance. Devotional service is dynamic activity, and the expert devotees can find out competent means to inject it into the dull brains of the materialistic population. Such transcendental activities of the devotees for the service of the Lord can bring a new order of life to the foolish society of materialistic men. Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His subsequent followers exhibited expert dexterity in this connection. By following the same method, one can bring the materialistic men of this age of quarrel into order for peaceful life and transcendental realization.
Next verse is also quoted in BG 2.40
SB 1.5.17 (Theme of success)
One who has forsaken his material occupations to engage in the devotional service of the Lord may sometimes fall down while in an immature stage, yet there is no danger of his being unsuccessful. On the other hand, a nondevotee, though fully engaged in occupational duties, does not gain anything.
Real success is not earning, money, power, fame, writing best selling books.. They are all about how to attain sense gratification.. Investing in the stock market, flipping houses… all these books are misleading.. “How to win friends and influence people” everyone used to buy that book and read it.. Nowadays gurus are writing about and even our devotees are … how to reduce stress.. How do we care about it.. Reducing stress so you can perform better earn more and again sense gratification..
As far as the duties of mankind are concerned, there are innumerable duties. Every man is duty-bound not only to his parents, family members, society, country, humanity, other living beings, the demigods, etc., but also to the great philosophers, poets, scientists, etc. It is enjoined in the scriptures that one can relinquish all such duties and surrender unto the service of the Lord. So if one does so and becomes successful in the discharge of his devotional service unto the Lord, it is well and good. But it so happens sometimes that one surrenders himself unto the service of the Lord by some temporary sentiment, and in the long run, due to so many other reasons, he falls down from the path of service by undesirable association. There are so many instances of this in the histories. Bharata Mahārāja was obliged to take his birth as a stag due to his intimate attachment to a stag. He thought of this stag when he died. As such, in the next birth he became a stag, although he did not forget the incident of his previous birth. Similarly, Citraketu also fell down due to his offenses at the feet of Śiva. But in spite of all this, the stress is given here to surrendering unto the lotus feet of the Lord, even if there is a chance of falling down, because even though one falls down from the prescribed duties of devotional service, he will never forget the lotus feet of the Lord. Once engaged in the devotional service of the Lord, one will continue the service in all circumstances. In the Bhagavad-gītā it is said that even a small quantity of devotional service can save one from the most dangerous position. There are many instances of such examples in history. Ajāmila is one of them. Ajāmila in his early life was a devotee, but in his youth he fell down. Still he was saved by the Lord at the end.
SB 1.3.39 (Promise of Success)
Only by making such inquiries in this world can one be successful and perfectly cognizant, for such inquiries invoke transcendental ecstatic love unto the Personality of Godhead, who is the proprietor of all the universes, and guarantee cent-percent immunity from the dreadful repetition of birth and death.
No one can make this promise… but here it is being promised…
Purport
The inquiries of the sages headed by Śaunaka are herewith praised by Sūta Gosvāmī on the merit of their transcendental nature. As already concluded, only the devotees of the Lord can know Him to a considerable extent, and no one else can know Him at all, so the devotees are perfectly cognizant of all spiritual knowledge. The Personality of Godhead is the last word in Absolute Truth. Impersonal Brahman and localized Paramātmā (Supersoul) are included in the knowledge of the Personality of Godhead. So one who knows the Personality of Godhead can automatically know all about Him, His multipotencies and His expansions. So the devotees are congratulated as being all-successful. A cent-percent devotee of the Lord is immune to the dreadful material miseries of repeated birth and death.