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Understanding How To Live In The Real World And How Material Energy Affects The Mind And Body

By: Victor Epand

So, Pariksit Maharaja now understands that the ultimate solution to the pangs of material existence is the chanting of the Holy Names. So, as far as our becoming Krishna conscious is concerned; we need to be anxiety about the suffering of the souls in this material world and impelled by that anxiety we need to always be thinking of how to get people to chant and hear about Krishna. In other words that is our preaching goal. And in order to achieve this we have to do the needful (utility is the principle). Our goal is not to get people to dress like us, nor to have haircuts like us, nor to talk like us, nor have Gopi dots on their forhead, but to simply come to the point of chanting the names of Krishna purely. In Kali Yuga all other practices are meant to bring people to that point.

Prabhupada understood this perfectly in his strategy. Too often we confuse the means with the end or goal. And in helping people come to the point of chanting purely, to be successful we have to be tolerant, understanding, compassionate, empathic, loving, accepting, etc. And all these qualities that we need to manifest have to come from the heart, they can not be a show. That's a pretty tall order, isn't it? How to do it? Of course we have our sadhana. We also have our sadhu sanga (association with pure devotees the best of whom is Srila Prabhupada).

It really helps to see that other than spiritual desires and actions, all other actions, desires, emotions (that we have and others have) are tragic expressions of the original desire or need to love and please Krishna and His associates. Tragic in the sense that these desires or needs will never be fully satisfied and our search for fulfillment of them will be endless. I said that I would write about overcoming old age today, but I never got to it. I will try tomorrow as this topic is quite lengthy and involves the greater topic of how we deny reality in the name of external spirituality.

I mentioned that I would write about living longer in the present body. In order to understand this topic one has to understand the larger topic of how the material energy affects the bodies and minds of devotees whether or not they are aware of it or even in denial of it.

If we had the siddhis that yogis have such as laghima (become light enough to float on a sunbeam) or mahima (becoming very big or heavy-and I am not talking about getting fat), or prapti (being able to reach out and grab something from a distant locale) we could definitely ignore certain aspects of the material nature.

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