Sharanagati

When God comes on earth – that means He liberates whole the universe. Still if somebody wants to stay here, he can stay. But the act of liberating the whole universe was done. So principally it’s done; may be technically I’m not part of the whole thing, but the act is done.

Because the actions and the things happening in the universe are floating, manifesting on different levels. So we might see one dimension, but may be we cannot see the further dimensions. We might think that we are sitting here fifteen people, but who knows how many angels and demigods and ancient devotees and future devotees are here? We see only one dimension.

When in “Chaitanya Charitamrita” it is mention the rice festival – some rice they distributed with yogurt and that was a very happy prasad distribution festival – there it is said that there were hundreds and thousands and millions of devotees around. May be they were one dozen – visible for your eyes – but those who were not visible, they were by the millions. May be now I’m a little heretic, but sometimes the Shastras use expressions just to show the dignity and the scope of the thing happening. And we should not take that word by word. So you see, there are different levels of the truth, of reality.

Calculating time is quite a demanding task. Because actually it doesn’t really exist. Still we are controlled by time – this divine energy of Krishna. But time is a little complicated. Still it’s there, although we cannot catch it. The watch is not measuring the time, it’s only showing that something is passing by. And people usually say: “O, time is passing,” while time is laughing: “No, people are passing.”

Desh – or place – is also a very interesting dimension; not only time, but place is also very interesting. Just imagine, when you are out in the nature, how you perceive space? You look around and everything is circular. But when you sit here, everything is rectangular, artificial. So natural dimensions are always round-shaped. When you perceive space, looking around, it’s also circular – this is the natural environment. The tree grows like a pipe, round. But if you cut it and put it on the roof, it is oblong. So therefore built cities, for example, are not so much natural. They also limit and make our consciousness very oblong, very sharp. Not so soft and nice and circular and all-embracing than in nature.

This is something very important to understand space, what is space around us. This artificial space is limiting – giving you the doors, the barriers, the streets – everything is limited here. Natural space opens up for you.

Space has these two functions; one is a limitation, other is an open field. Until we are on a limited platform of consciousness, space will limit us. When you are on a liberated platform, space will become a real desh. Desh or kshetra. Kshetra is the field, field of activity. So in this way space is given for us to perform some activities. You can fill the space around you with your activities. And actually in the material consciousness people also do this – they build cities and factories and this and that – they fill up the space around them. Because they don’t like empty spaces. This is called “the horror of emptiness”. Therefore young guys make these paintings on the wall – graphites – because they don’t like empty spaces. Or artists – usually they want to put all decorations, everything should be decorated. So we want to fill up the space that we have – with activity, right?

So, if life is given to us as a field, we should fill it up with our activities. And these activities should be spiritual activities, if you want to achieve spiritual goals. Therefore we should fill this field, this space around us, with spiritual objects, so to say, with spiritual activities. In this way space will not limit us, but it will help us to express our faith. That is desh – field of your activities.