Sharanagati

We have many duties. But our main goal is to forget about ourselves. And if you are successful in this respect – what’s the problem with this? Just like children – sometimes they are so devoted to their games or playing that they forget to eat and to sleep and everything, right? Their dedication is so high. But then comes the realistic mother: “You had forgotten to eat your dinner.” This time mother is just like a disturbing element. In the same way if somehow we can … and now I’m not talking about some worldly duties, but what is our main duty? To devote ourselves to God and forget about ourselves. But then comes the realistic family, or friend, or whoever around us and says: “Hey, hey, hey, not so fast!”

But we should understand that even the body is not functioning on the foodstuff that you eat. This is only very crude energy that you put inside your body. Because what is the energy input into the body? Prana, foodstuffs, drink. What else – because these are still material. What else is there? Iimpressions – this is also energy input into the body – impressions. A certain kind of foodstuff are your impressions. This is more like mind level. And as we select our foodstuffs – or should select our foodstuffs – the same way we should select our impressions, what we accept. Like if you eat foodstuffs which are appropriate for a dog, that is not appropriate for you. Or what is appropriate for a tree, for example, that substance you cannot incorporate in your body. Or, for example the vegetables – from the earth they can transform the energy into eatable form so that you can take that energy. But if you take the earth – nothing will happen. So these transformation circles are there in order to serve, to come to some proper level to transform the energy and then it’s easier to digest it not only in physical sense.

The same way we should select and we should find the real spiritual food, which is transformed for us to be easily digested. There are certain kind of birds, that can take the foodstuff, put it here, little pre-digest and then give it back to the children. Then it’s very easy for the kids to take it; in the same way if somebody predigests the spiritual ideas for us and provides like this, it’s very easy to accept.

There is always a fight and there are some clashes between the absolute platform and the relative platform. But I think that we should be intelligent enough to always choose the spiritual alternative, but in such a manner that we do not harm, do not hurt the relative duties.

But, you know, everybody is satisfied if the husband is forgetting to eat in order to make more money. But if somebody wants to fast for Krishna: “O, that is detrimental to your health! Take more care of yourself.” So, if we make some sacrifice for our OWN sake, that’s acceptable; if we make sacrifice for God sake, that’s dangerous. This is the general mentality of people, that no, we depend on our own resources. But ultimately we depend on divine resources.