From moksha one falls back, from svarga one can be elevated – is kama better than moksha?
Hare Krishna. Question. How can Moksha be worse than Kama? Through Kama, one can go to the heavenly planets and from there one has a chance to be elevated higher and higher, ultimately going to Krishna's abode.
Or one may fall back. But when one attains Moksha, at that time one attains the Brahman, but because there is no facility for reciprocation, so one falls back from there. So in that sense, because from Moksha one may fall back, but from Kama one may not fall back.
One has the possibility at least to rise. So does that mean that Kama is better than Moksha? Answer. No, not necessarily.
There are different perspectives of looking at things. And based on a particular perspective, we need to understand certain statements that are being made. So for example, from the perspective of the possibility of having a service for the Lord, yes, even the heavens are better than the liberation, because in liberation there is no possibility for service, in heaven there is possibility for service.
So from the point of view of Bhakti, yes, we could say that attaining heavens is somewhat better than attaining Mukti. But usually when we see that when the pure devotees are in a trance of ecstasy, they want only the Lord and they reject everything. And usually they put Swarga and Moksha in the same breath, in which they are rejecting things as Krishna Tara.
So from the point of view of Bhakti in the absolute sense, everything other than Krishna is a distraction. And even in the when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu says in the Shikshashtakam, there also he says that I am ready to take births again and again, which means he is ready to reject Mukti. And we see these things are available profusely in heaven.
So whether it is material prosperity and pleasure, whether it is in the earth or in heaven, it is essentially the same thing and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is rejecting that. So from the absolute perspective of Bhakti, anything other than Krishna is something which is undesirable and that is what is rejected by devotees, by the pure devotees. Now from the point of view of the gradual progression of the soul upwards, yes, we know that Karma Yoga, the hierarchy is Karma Kanda, then Karma Yoga, then Gyan Yoga, then Ashtanga Yoga, then Bhakti Yoga.
So in this hierarchy, we have Karma Kanda, which takes us to heaven as lower than Karma Yoga, Gyan Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga. And Karma Yoga, Gyan Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga usually will lead to liberation or if they are mixed with Bhakti, then one may go higher further towards Vaikuntha and Shantaras or whatever, depending on the particular mixture of Bhakti and the Karma, Gyan and Dhyan that is there. So Vishwacharya Thakur talks about two kinds of Bhakti.
He talks about Pradhani Bhut Bhakti and Kevala Bhakti. He talks about how there is Pradhani Bhut Bhakti, then there is Guna Mishra Bhakti, then Kevala Bhakti. So Kevala Bhakti is pure devotion, Pradhani Bhut.
He talks about when the percentage of Bhakti, if somebody is practicing Gyan Mishra Bhakti, but the percentage of Bhakti is less than 50% and the percentage of Bhakti is more than 50%. So percentage of Bhakti less than 50% will usually lead to Brahma Jyoti and percentage of Bhakti more than 50% will lead to Vaikuntha, especially Shantaras from the Ashtanga, Gyan, Yoga processes. So now, moving forwards, so there is no doubt that the conception of Moksha or the attainment of Moksha is higher than Svarga and it is also true that Brahma Sayujya Mukti can also be an eternal destination.
Nakshila Prabhupada does talk about how the soul gets lonely in the spiritual world, sorry, in the Brahma Jyoti and falls from there. At the same time, Brahma Sayujya Mukti is a destination which is talked about frequently in the Upanishads and even Baldev, the avoshan in the Govinda Bhashya commentary or the Vedanta Sutra or for that matter, Vishwanath Chakravartha also in his Gita and Bhagavan commentaries, he talks about how the soul who attains Moksha can stay there and it can stay there for a long long time and that can itself be also an eternal destination. But the point is, it is a destination where the soul is deprived of Bhakti forever.
So in that sense, that is not really a very exalted destination. So from the point of view of attaining Bhakti eventually, yes, the state of impersonal liberation is quite unfavorable for Bhakti and that's why we have Prabhudana Saraswati comparing Kaivalyam Narakayate. So this comparison that Kaivalya liberation Narakayate is like hell, it will be quite jolting for impersonalists because they consider impersonal Moksha, Kaivalya to be their ultimate goal.
But the point is, from the point of Bhakti, because there is no opportunity for devotion and surrendering service, so it is like hell. For a devotee, the greatest nightmare is the thought that I may no longer have any service to Krishna and the devotee never wants to be in that situation and the devotee is protected from that situation by the practice of Bhakti, whether it is in the earth or in the heavens. So from the point of view of becoming free from the modes, this Moksha and the path which takes one towards Moksha is higher than the Kaama and the path which takes one towards Swarga.
But from the point of view of Bhakti, we can say that ultimately, even Swarga is more favorable than Moksha. At the same time, rather than getting into an analytical hair splitting over what is higher, we need to focus on the principle that we simply serve Krishna and if we keep serving Krishna, actually even if devotees, the Goswamis, especially Sairam Goswami and Rupa Goswami, they talk about how when the soul, when the pure devotees go to the spiritual world while going to the Brahma Jyoti, they may even attract souls from there and take those souls towards Krishna by the power of pure devotion. Such things are exceptional but they can happen.
So the point is that we need to always be engaged in Bhakti and within the Bhakti, from the Bhakta's perspective, from the Bhakti perspective, wherever there is a possibility of Bhakti, that is far preferable to wherever the possibility of Bhakti is much lesser. And in that sense, the material world, where the soul still has facility to serve, that is better than liberation of the material world where there is inactivity, eternal inactivity.