When we all lose everything at death, how does making better choices matter at death?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you very much Krishna Prabhupada So do better choices that we make how do they matter at the time of death when we leave everything behind there is an old saying that we make those better choices right we won’t continue them see there is there are bad choices materially there are good choices materially and then there are good choices spiritually so the spiritual if you consider the body mind soul earlier when we die the soul doesn’t die the soul is spiritual what dies is the body so then for the soul the body is like a dress when a dress becomes old we discard it and when we get a new dress like that the soul gets a new dress this is the Bhagavata’s understanding of things and there it is described that the soul whatever consciousness it has developed that consciousness it carries to the next life now all of you see there are different people who are different sometimes two twins both of them have similar upbringings still they are different persons that difference is not just coming from their biology or their society it’s coming from the way they were in their previous life it’s a whole different subject but the point I am making is the things that we acquire they will not go with us in our next life but the spiritual cultivations that we do they are part of our consciousness itself they will go from this life to the next life and in that sense material assets they so if all my good choices are restricted to getting better material assets then ultimately it’s still a bad choice because I have lost everything at the end of a game of chess the pawn and the king both go into the same box so like that at the material level it’s all over but at a spiritual level if I have realized my spiritual core if I have connected with the higher spiritual reality then that spiritual awareness stays with me it goes with me to the next life it helps me to be more spiritual and this journey of many lifetimes we at our core are eternal and we belong to an eternal stratum of reality this is the material temporary stratum of reality so the ultimate success of life is to attain that eternal stratum of reality there our longing for happiness a longing for love that is eternally fulfilled so we are all on a multi lifetime journey of spiritual evolution and the material possession that we get that will be lost but the spiritual evolution that we make that is going to continue with us and if we evolve adequately spiritually then we attain spiritual perfection we go beyond this material realm to the eternal spiritual realm and that’s where we find lasting happiness that’s the ultimate goal of life to attain the zenith of spiritual evolution and go beyond material existence focusing on that spiritual evolution and making choices that accelerate that spiritual evolution they are the ultimate best choices