KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM HH HARIVILAS MAHARAJ’S MORNING BHAGAVATAM CLASS ON SB 2.6.8:
- One would cease to generate altogether if there were not, by the grace of the Lord, a coating, a pleasure-giving substance, on the surface of the generative organs. This substance gives a pleasure so intense that it counteracts fully the distress of family encumbrances.
- A person is so captivated by this pleasure-giving substance that he is not satisfied by begetting a single child, but increases the number of children, with great risk in regard to maintaining them, simply for this pleasure-giving substance.
- This pleasure-giving substance is not false, however, because it originates from the transcendental body of the Lord. In other words, the pleasure-giving substance is a reality, but it has taken on an aspect of pervertedness on account of material contamination.
- In the material world, sex life is the cause of many distresses on account of material contact. Therefore, the sex life in the material world should not be encouraged beyond the necessity.
- There is a necessity for generating progeny even in the material world, but such generation of children must be carried out with full responsibility for spiritual values.
- The degraded form of family restriction by use of contraceptives, etc., is the grossest type of material contamination. Materialists who use these devices want to fully utilize the pleasure potency of the coating on the genitals by artificial means, without knowing the spiritual importance.
- And without knowledge of spiritual values, the less intelligent man tries to utilize only the material sense of pleasure of the genitals.
- The Lord is great, and living beings are subordinate to Him. Therefore, the duty of the living being is just to serve Him only. Unfortunately, the illusioned living beings, out of misunderstanding only, become servants of the senses by material desire. This desire is called avidyā, or nescience.
- And out of such desire the living being makes different plans for material enjoyment centered about a perverted sex life. He therefore becomes entangled in the chain of birth and death by transmigrating into different bodies on different planets under the direction of the Supreme Lord.
- Unless one is beyond the boundary of this nescience, one cannot get free from the threefold miseries of material life. That is the law of nature.
- The path of salvation or the path going back to Godhead always forbids the association of women, and the complete sanātana-dharma or varṇāśrama-dharma scheme forbids or restricts association with women.
- The activities of the world are being carried on by the central attraction of male and female. A male is searching after a mate to his liking, and the female is looking after a suitable male.
- And as soon as a male is combined with a female, the material bondage of the living being is at once tightly interlocked by sex relation, and as a result of this, both the male’s and female’s attraction for sweet home, motherland, bodily offspring, society and friendship and accumulation of wealth becomes the illusory field of activities, and thus a false but indefatigable attraction for the temporary material existence, which is full of miseries, is manifest.
- It is said in the Manu-smṛti that lust cannot be satisfied by any amount of sense enjoyment, just as fire is never extinguished by a constant supply of fuel.
- The advancement of material civilization on the basis of sense gratification means increasing the duration of the material existence of a living entity. Therefore, this lust is the symbol of ignorance by which the living entity is kept within the material world. While one enjoys sense gratification, it may be that there is some feeling of happiness, but actually, that so-called feeling of happiness is the ultimate enemy of the sense enjoyer.
- The positive part is – Lust is only the perverted reflection of the love of God which is natural for every living entity. But if one is educated in Kṛṣṇa consciousness from the very beginning, that natural love of God cannot deteriorate into lust.
- When love of God deteriorates into lust, it is very difficult to return to normal condition. Nonetheless, Kṛṣṇa consciousness is so powerful that even a late beginner can become a lover of God by following the regulative principles of devotional service.
- So, from any stage of life, or from the time of understanding its urgency, one can begin regulating the senses in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, devotional service of the Lord, and turn the lust into love of Godhead – the highest perfectional stage of human life.
SB 2.6.8
From the Lord’s genitals originate water, semen, generatives, rains and the procreators. His genitals are the cause of a pleasure that counteracts the distress of begetting.
CLASS NOTES:
The genitals and the pleasure of begetting counteract the distresses of family encumbrances. One would cease to generate altogether if there were not, by the grace of the Lord, a coating, a pleasure-giving substance, on the surface of the generative organs. This substance gives a pleasure so intense that it counteracts fully the distress of family encumbrances. A person is so captivated by this pleasure-giving substance that he is not satisfied by begetting a single child, but increases the number of children, with great risk in regard to maintaining them, simply for this pleasure-giving substance. This pleasure-giving substance is not false, however, because it originates from the transcendental body of the Lord. In other words, the pleasure-giving substance is a reality, but it has taken on an aspect of pervertedness on account of material contamination. In the material world, sex life is the cause of many distresses on account of material contact. Therefore, the sex life in the material world should not be encouraged beyond the necessity. There is a necessity for generating progeny even in the material world, but such generation of children must be carried out with full responsibility for spiritual values. The spiritual values of life can be realized in the human form of material existence, and the human being must adopt family planning with reference to the context of spiritual values, and not otherwise. The degraded form of family restriction by use of contraceptives, etc., is the grossest type of material contamination. Materialists who use these devices want to fully utilize the pleasure potency of the coating on the genitals by artificial means, without knowing the spiritual importance. And without knowledge of spiritual values, the less intelligent man tries to utilize only the material sense of pleasure of the genitals.
This explains What keeps us in this material world birth after birth. Subject to laws of nature. When we become envious of Krishna we cannot stay in the spiritual world. We are placed in the material world through 6 stages governed by the laws of material nature –
Born, grows, stays, by-products, dwindles, dies. This is inevitable.
Our real identity is to be the eternal servant of Krsna. If we ignore this we are put into the cycle of birth and death. This is unending as long as we engage in mundane sexual activities.
The completion of the sexual act – is to educate the result of it the child about God-consciousness and help them lead a KC life and not contaminate them with modern education and work for these big companies like slaves and have no time for KC. Outsourcing has ruined lives in India. Just to make more money by working in high-tech companies in Bangalore.. They completely ignore spiritual life or they go to phony gurus who give solutions for becoming efficient at work..
SB 1.8.35
The Lord is great, and living beings are subordinate to Him. Therefore, the duty of the living being is just to serve Him only. Unfortunately, the illusioned living beings, out of misunderstanding only, become servants of the senses by material desire. This desire is called avidyā, or nescience. And out of such desire the living being makes different plans for material enjoyment centered about a perverted sex life. He therefore becomes entangled in the chain of birth and death by transmigrating into different bodies on different planets under the direction of the Supreme Lord. Unless, therefore, one is beyond the boundary of this nescience, one cannot get free from the threefold miseries of material life. That is the law of nature.
We are continuously placed in this world due to the influence of material modes. We are completely harassed by the fluctuating modes of material nature. They are never actually pure. Even the mode of goodness is not pure. We go over and over again modes of material nature. Everything we do we are forced to do. We are breathing, blinking eyes, we want to reproduce all these are forced upon us.
Unless we come in contact with a pure devotee, a spiritual master we will not come out of the modes. But the issue is most of the so-called spiritual masters, Brahmanas are not pure. Doing this puja and that puja one can advance materially this is what they are advocating. Unless we remove the envy for the lord and go beyond this material world we continue in this cycle of birth and death. Doing puja for material benefit is not the goal of life, that is described in Bhagavad gita.
BG 18.5
Acts of sacrifice, charity, and penance are not to be given up; they must be performed. Indeed, sacrifice, charity, and penance purify even the great souls.
All prescribed sacrifices are meant for achieving the Supreme Lord. Therefore, in the lower stages, they should not be given up. Similarly, charity is for the purification of the heart. If the charity is given to suitable persons, as described previously, it leads one to advanced spiritual life.
BG 18.6
All these activities should be performed without attachment or any expectation of result. They should be performed as a matter of duty, O son of Pṛthā. That is My final opinion.
Although all sacrifices are purifying, one should not expect any result by such performances. In other words, all sacrifices which are meant for material advancement in life should be given up, but sacrifices that purify one’s existence and elevate one to the spiritual plane should not be stopped. Everything that leads to Kṛṣṇa consciousness must be encouraged. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam also it is said that any activity which leads to devotional service to the Lord should be accepted. That is the highest criterion of religion. A devotee of the Lord should accept any kind of work, sacrifice or charity which will help him in the discharge of devotional service to the Lord.
The difference between, Sacriice for material benefit and sacrifice for spiritual benefit is “Mama”
means the result of this sacrifice is for me. (Health, Wealth, business.. ) All these activities keep you in the material world, this is a curse by the modern Brahmanas to the people. It is not a benediction. Why do Brahmanas do this, they do this for money, it is a transaction, You give me money I will do puja by which you get money. This is a curse. The purpose of human life is to be liberated from human life. If a husband and wife decide to be Krsna Conscious and produce children and teach them to be God-conscious. That is the duty. The goal of this temple is to teach people to serve the Lord. Everyone has an equal chance to develop a spiritual life and eventually go back to godhead.
Civilized Human Being – Engaged in the quest of understanding how they got into this situation and studies vedas to learn it. BG and SB are the texts to read. BG is the quintessential text. Summarized into 2 imp verses –
- Daivehesa gunamayi…. BG7.14 . What is impossible to do is possible to do with the surrender to the lord.
- BG 18.66 – just give up all fabricated dharmas, surrender unto Me. That is the whole message of BG. All bonafide spiritual texts are questions and answers. These are all fundamental questions. Pain and suffering is the main theme of the material world. and the living entity is questioning. At the end of their life, most people are lamenting.
In SB is explained.
SB 1.11.36
Although the queens’ beautiful smiles and furtive glances were all spotless and exciting, and although they could conquer Cupid himself by making him give up his bow in frustration, and although even the tolerant Śiva could fall victim to them, still, despite all their magical feats and attractions, they could not agitate the senses of the Lord.
The path of salvation or the path going back to Godhead always forbids the association of women, and the complete sanātana-dharma or varṇāśrama-dharma scheme forbids or restricts association with women. How then can one be accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead who is addicted to more than sixteen thousand wives? This question may be relevantly raised by inquisitive persons really anxious to know about the transcendental nature of the Supreme Lord. And to answer such questions, the sages at Naimiṣāraṇya have discussed the transcendental character of the Lord in this and in following verses. It is clear herein that the feminine attractive features which can conquer Cupid or even the supermost tolerant Lord Śiva could not conquer the senses of the Lord. Cupid’s business is to invoke mundane lust. The whole universe is moving, being agitated by Cupid’s arrow. The activities of the world are being carried on by the central attraction of male and female. A male is searching after a mate to his liking, and the female is looking after a suitable male. That is the way of material stimulus. And as soon as a male is combined with a female, the material bondage of the living being is at once tightly interlocked by sex relation, and as a result of this, both the male’s and female’s attraction for sweet home, motherland, bodily offspring, society and friendship and accumulation of wealth becomes the illusory field of activities, and thus a false but indefatigable attraction for the temporary material existence, which is full of miseries, is manifest.
We have only 2 choices. That is the limit of our free will –
- Accept to follow instructions of Krsna –
- Refuse to follow instructions of Krsna – completely illusioned, working like asses, suffering all kinds of miseries, but accepting miseries because there is some pleasure in the sex life.
One who is intelligent should see why they are suffering and make a choice to get liberated from this bondage by accepting His instructions.
BG 18.73
arjuna uvāca
naṣṭo mohaḥ smṛtir labdhā
tvat-prasādān mayācyuta
sthito ’smi gata-sandehaḥ
kariṣye vacanaṁ tava
Arjuna said: My dear Kṛṣṇa, O infallible one, my illusion is now gone. I have regained my memory by Your mercy. I am now firm and free from doubt and am prepared to act according to Your instructions.
Arjuna is saying – That is your real prasad Krsna… I am going to do whatever you instruct Krsna. That is the correct use of our free will – to follow the instructions of Krsna.
BG 3.39
Thus the wise living entity’s pure consciousness becomes covered by his eternal enemy in the form of lust, which is never satisfied and which burns like fire.
It is said in the Manu-smṛti that lust cannot be satisfied by any amount of sense enjoyment, just as fire is never extinguished by a constant supply of fuel.
#metoo is an example for this. Millions of women are exploited by these powerful men
In the material world, the center of all activities is sex, and thus this material world is called maithunya-āgāra, or the shackles of sex life. In the ordinary prison-house, criminals are kept within bars; similarly, the criminals who are disobedient to the laws of the Lord are shackled by sex life. The advancement of material civilization on the basis of sense gratification means increasing the duration of the material existence of a living entity. Therefore, this lust is the symbol of ignorance by which the living entity is kept within the material world. While one enjoys sense gratification, it may be that there is some feeling of happiness, but actually, that so-called feeling of happiness is the ultimate enemy of the sense enjoyer.
The Positive part is – Lust is the perverted reflection of the love of God. It is mentioned in BG 3.41
BG 3.41
Lust is only the perverted reflection of the love of God which is natural for every living entity. But if one is educated in Kṛṣṇa consciousness from the very beginning, that natural love of God cannot deteriorate into lust.
Mother and father control their own lusty desires. Work with their children to control their lusty desires. The lusty desires begin from puberty..
When love of God deteriorates into lust, it is very difficult to return to normal condition. Nonetheless, Kṛṣṇa consciousness is so powerful that even a late beginner can become a lover of God by following the regulative principles of devotional service.
Animals cannot be regulated. Humans can be regulated. Regulative principles – 4 dos and donts.
So, from any stage of life, or from the time of understanding its urgency, one can begin regulating the senses in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, devotional service of the Lord, and turn the lust into love of Godhead – the highest perfectional stage of human life.
Animals cannot do this, they do not have the intelligence or the body to do it.
Human beings can engage in Tapasya – voluntary renunciation of negative things and voluntary acceptance of positive things. Eating, mating, sleeping and defending is animalistic life. Chanting, hearing SB, BG asking questions, engaging in dev service are the regulated activities of a person who is on the fast track to go back to Godhead.