Bhagavatam-daily 191 – 11.10.33 – Defiance of God sentences us to fearful life

Thank you. Here Krishna in the Uddhav Gita continues analyzing how the soul is trapped in illusion.
So as long as the soul is in a non-independent state, that means a dependent state, enslaved or entangled state, till that time the soul has fear of Ishwara. Those who in this material conception of life devote themselves, that means they devoted to material things. So as long as they are devoted to material things, they stay in illusion and shucha, shucha means they choke, it’s lamentation, they are absorbed in illusion and lamentation.
So actually as spiritual beings we are sacchitananda and we are meant to be naturally and eternally happy. But when we come under the control of material nature, actually we think we are coming out of control, out of the control and we think of the Lord’s devotional service and the regulations in the devotional service as control and we think that we are coming out of the control of the Lord but actually in that process we are coming under control. So we become asatantra.
We are driven by the modes here and there, dragged towards various forms of enjoyment and sufferings. Actually there is very little enjoyment and there is a lot of suffering in the material existence characterized by the repetition of birth, old age, deceit and death. So as long as we are in the material conception of life, there is fear of the Lord.
Now we may say that actually many atheistic people, they are not fearful of God. They don’t even believe in God. So how can we say here that, how is it said here that as long as the soul is independent of the Lord, the soul is fearful.
Yes, materialistic people may not be fearful of the Lord. They may say that I don’t believe in God also. But still they are definitely fearful of things going wrong.
They may attribute that things going wrong to bad luck, to chance, to nature or they may just consider it all causeless in the sense of having no discernible cause. But they are dreadfully fearful of things going wrong. So that fear of the supreme is very much there when one is caught in illusion in this world.
Now the fear that whatever we are attached to that may be taken away by life’s vicissitudes which are not in our control, that fear causes great dread to the living entity. And as long as the living entity, when the living entity claims to be independent of the Supreme Lord, we become not just dependent on worldly things, but we actually become devoted to worldly things. Indeed, in a very literal sense, sometimes people make idols of film stars, even build temples to the film stars and start worshipping them.
And even if that sort of Samopass even, that sort of devotion worship is not done literally, still the kind of adulation in admiration and obsession that people have for their heroes, be they sports stars or movie stars or even the kind of promotion that is done for politicians. It’s all basically misdirected devotion. The devotion that is meant to be directed towards the Supreme Lord is misdirected towards these people.
And then what happens? Such people are mohiyanti, they are deluded. The delusion is that that which is temporary, that which cannot provide ultimate shelter, we think that it will provide us the supreme shelter and we seek shelter in the temporary, although it is incapable of giving us shelter. And because of that itself, seeking shelter in that which cannot give shelter is itself an illusion.
Just like a person, the bhagavatam elsewhere gives the example that a person who is sinking seeks the shelter of a stone boat. The stone by its own way it sinks and a person who is drowning cannot be saved by a stone boat. So like that, in this world, the worldly things cannot provide a shelter.
Of course, the worldly things are not exactly like stone boats because many worldly things do give an appearance of providing shelter. So wealth, contacts, position, possessions, these seem to give shelter from problems. These seem to give pleasure, but it is temporary.
And that’s why just when we become attached to the shelter and we depend on the shelter and we expect the shelter, at that time suddenly it lets us down, it betrays us, it disappoints us. And that’s why we need, so that is itself an illusion to seek shelter. To seek shelter where shelter is not available is illusion and that causes lamentation.
So when the true nature of material things gets exposed to us, naturally at that time we lament. So the wise living entity decides that rather than becoming, rather than falsely seeking independence of the Supreme Lord, let me seek dependence on Him and therein let me get the real shelter rather than staying like a stray dog. Actually, Prabhupada will stay like a stray dog who is beaten wherever it goes and who has to run here and there and struggle and suffer for getting some morsels of food.
If that dog becomes a stray dog, becomes a pet dog, then that is the stray dog’s great fortune because once as a pet dog it won’t have to suffer, it won’t have to stay entangled, it won’t have to be deluded, be subjected to misery. Now most often it doesn’t happen regularly that a stray dog is adapted as a pet by someone. People usually want as pets dogs which have a good pedigree and those are dogs which have been carefully taken care of in their infancy and those dogs are purchased.
So if somehow a stray dog is fortunate enough to be accepted as a pet by a kind master, that is a stray dog’s fortune. So we as souls wandering a material existence are like stray dogs and we are so fortunate that Krishna is ready to adopt us. Actually Krishna knows that we are His children and we may have forgotten it and He wants us to come back to Him.
So He willingly, joyfully, lovingly accepts us back and thus we become free. The more we take shelter of Him, the more we become free from the miseries of material existence and the more we become sheltered in Him, we get a higher satisfaction that enables us to transcend the miseries even when they are present and ultimately it enables us to rise to the spiritual world, Vaikuntha, which is forever free from all miseries. So the way to end lamentation is to end illusion and the foundational illusion is the illusion that we can live independent of God and we can be happy independent of God.
To the extent we give up this illusion, to the extent we will progress towards the destination that will be free from lamentation and the Bhagavatam, by providing us philosophical