Freedom From Bondage

By Navasi Dasi - 30.12 2016

Freedom From Bondage Means Having Krishna

As devotees, we talk a lot about getting free from the material energy, free from the influence of maya, free from our attachments to material sense pleasures and their objects.

Why do we want to do that? What would be the reason?

Sometimes it can be confusing. It may seem like we’re taking all this too seriously, when really it’s all Krishna’s creation and life in this world can have so many pleasures to offer us.

Here is an example that perhaps will illustrate the reasons.

Suppose you are in a relationship with someone. You think you love them, and they love you. You have all kinds of hopes and dreams about all the things you will do together. They seem to be so wonderful, and they tell you all kinds of things that you will do together, and ways you will be happy and enjoy your love together.

You are very pleased by all this, it seems very amazing. You begin to imagine all these ways things will be, and you become very attached to all of it. You make plans, you invest energy, you change your life around being with them.

After some time, it starts to become obvious to you that there are some “flaws” in the situation. Well, maybe the person that says they love you starts lying to you. Then they start cheating, and being involved with others. You’re very attached to them, and all of the things you’d hoped for, so you go on, trying to overlook it. Maybe they say they are sorry, and they make new promises. “I will never lie to you again” they say. “I will never hurt you or cheat you again” they say.

So, you continue on, investing your energy, your love, your time, your faith. You believe in the things they tell you. You believe in your future with them. You think to yourself “well maybe I am not so happy right now, but I soon will be”…. or “someday I will be”.

One day, you realize that your suffering has become very great, and you life seems dark, empty. You feel lonely inside. All the hope you once had seems drained. All the efforts you’ve been making seem to change nothing. Still the lies, still the cheating, still the empty promises.

Finally, something happens that changes everything. You meet someone who is different. This person, there is something radiant about them. You feel a strong attraction to everything about them. When you see them, you feel happy, light. The sun starts to shine again in your world. You suddenly notice there is a moon, and you spend hours gazing at it. Everything seems alive and full of wonder and beauty.

All of this happens when you even just think of this new person… so you start thinking of them more and more. The more you think of this new person, the less all the pain the other person is inflicting on you seems to matter.

Suddenly, you don’t care so much when they lie to you. Somehow, when they cheat, it does not seem to hurt you so deeply. When they yell and scream and try to argue with you and make you upset, you find that all you have to do is think of your new love, this person you have discovered, and are not so affected by their rages and torrents of fury.

Pretty soon, you are spending time with your new love, you can’t wait to see them, to be with them. Everything about them is just so exciting and wonderful to you. They are kind to you, loving, caring. They don’t lie, they don’t cheat, they don’t fly into rages and mistreat you.

But… you still don’t know…. it seems pretty drastic to think of just walking out of the relationship you’ve been in. There is some security there, you have all these plans you’ve made. There are all these “things” and “people” connected to you and your life with them. Well, you would have to give it all up to be with your new love.

The more you think about your new love, the more time you spend with your new love, the less these “things” seem to matter. They all start to seem gray, dull, lifeless. You don’t resent the old person anymore. They don’t even have the power to upset you. All the promises and hopes start to pale in comparison to the new beauty you have found from the relationship you are having with your new love.

Finally, nothing matters anymore at all. You don’t care if you lose everything. You don’t care if the rest of the world hates you. All the plans and dreams and promises have lost their meaning entirely. The person you had been with showers you with expensive gifts, and they have no allure. They offer you everything you had ever wanted, and you find that you no longer want a single bit of it. Not one thing they offer means a single thing to you any longer. All you want in the whole world is just to be with your new love. You have become free from the bondage of the old relationship.

That new love is Krishna. : )

(you knew I was going to say that didn’t you ;)

We are all longing for Krishna. All the things in this world will only give us temporary pleasure and happiness. All the while, we will be lied to, cheated, and punished. That’s really what’s happening. The material world is a lie. It’s a false dream of happiness. It keeps us from our real love with promises of things it will never deliver, and lies about the nature of our relationship with it.

When we start seeing Krishna, thinking of Krishna, spending time with Krishna, the material world starts to lose it’s power over us. All the things it has to offer begin to pale and have less meaning. The become much less valuable.

We have found our one and only true love.

We start to feel the real happiness and beauty and love that Krishna has to offer. Krishna doesn’t lie or cheat or mistreat us. We only feel happiness when we are with Him. This is our eternal relationship. This is what we are all seeking after, we have just forgotten where to find it.

Now we know. We know Krishna. Even just thinking of Krishna makes us feel happy, what to speak of being with Him. That is real freedom from the bondage of the material world, and real (and lasting) happiness is the result.

Hare Krishna : )
——————

Krsna, The Supreme Personality of Godhead

By being deviated by the seasonal overgrowth of long grasses created by māyā, a person identifies himself with the māyic production and succumbs to illusion, forgetting his spiritual life.
Krsna Book 20: 
māyic

Lectures

Bhagavad-gita As It Is Lectures

So many straws and vegetables, they gather together. And sometimes the same vegetables and straws are thrown asunder. So here also, we assemble here as society, friendship and love exactly like that. It is simply māyic, illusory combination, temporary combination.
Lecture on BG 1.26-27 -- London, July 21, 1973: 
māyic
In later ślokas Kṛṣṇa has described how to get out of this mayic perverted reflection (of the material world) and go to the real tree, the real enjoyment with real varieties in the spiritual world.
Lecture on BG 15.1 -- Calcutta, February 26, 1974:

Prabhupāda: ...here, ūrdhva-mūlam. Just like if you have to keep yourself, the legs are up and the head down, somebody keeps you like this, how long you will feel comfortable? If you, somebody takes your legs and catches you and your head down, then it is not very comfortable. So this whole material world is like that, ūrdhva-mūlam. The mūlam should have been down, but it is up. Therefore it is discomfortable. And another explanation is the, it is perverted reflection. We have got experience of the ūrdhva-mūlam. I think I have explained that, that a tree... On the bank of a river or the bank of a pond, tree is standing, but the reflection, we find that the same tree has become ūrdhva-mūlam and adhah-śākham. So by this statement, Kṛṣṇa says that this is not real. That reflection in the water, of the tree, is not real. Real tree is up. Similarly, real enjoyment, real varieties—everything is in the spiritual world. It is simply reflection. It is not fact. Therefore our enjoyment here is called māyā, or illusion. So in later ślokas Kṛṣṇa has described how to get out of this mayic reflection and go to the real tree. That has been described later on. Go on.

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

If we are in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, even if we are in the midst of mayic activities, it will not affect.
Lecture on SB 2.1.2-5 -- Montreal, October 23, 1968: 
mayic
Because people's senses are blunt, contaminated with these māyic qualities, they cannot understand Kṛṣṇa.
Lecture on SB 6.2.11 -- Vrndavana, September 13, 1975: 
māyic
Because Kṛṣṇa comes with His own spiritual energy, sva-dhāmnā, to this material world, He is above sattva-guṇa even and is not subjected to this māyic influence.
Lecture on SB 7.9.22 -- Mayapur, February 29, 1976: 
māyic

Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Lectures

Kṛṣṇa is absolute and does not accept this mayic body. That is the power, omnipotency of Kṛṣṇa.
Lecture on CC Adi-lila 7.5 -- Mayapur, March 7, 1974: 

You'll find in Dr. Radhakrishnan's book, when Kṛṣṇa says, man-manā bhava mad-bhakto mad-yājī māṁ namaskuru (BG 18.65), he says, "Not to the Kṛṣṇa person, but the Absolute which is within the Kṛṣṇa." He does not know that Kṛṣṇa is not different from His body. That he does not know. Kṛṣṇa is absolute. Sambhavāmy ātma-māyayā (BG 4.6).

yadā yadā hi dharmasya
glānir bhavati bhārata
abhyutthānam adharmasya
tadātmānaṁ sṛjāmy aham
(BG 4.7)

Sambhavāmy ātma-māyayā (BG 4.6). He does not accept this mayic body. Etad īśanam īśasya. That is the, I mean to say, power, omnipotency of Kṛṣṇa.

The Māyāvādīs take it for granted that the devotees' activities are all mayic activities. They do not know the background of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and therefore their labor of love for discriminating what is māyā and what is not māyā is simply troublesome.
Lecture on CC Madhya-lila 25.19-31 -- San Francisco, January 20, 1967: 
mayic

General Lectures

The simple method to become liberated, to become free from the contamination of this mayic illusion, is to sincerely and without reservation surrender unto Kṛṣṇa.
Lecture -- Gorakhpur, February 18, 1971: 
mayic

Conversations and Morning Walks

1974 Conversations and Morning Walks

The Māyāvādīs think that the Absolute Truth is avyaktam and that when the Absolute Truth comes, incarnation, He accepts this mayic body.
Morning Walk -- March 31, 1974, Bombay:

Prabhupāda: The Māyāvādīs, they think that Kṛṣṇa has got His māyā body. His body's māyā. Because the origin, Absolute, is impersonal, so when the Absolute comes in form, He accepts the material elements just like we do. We do. So they are abuddhayaḥ. Their intelligence is abu...

Mr. Sar: Avyaktaṁ vyaktim āpannaṁ manyante mām abuddhayaḥ (BG 7.24).

Prabhupāda: Vyaktim āpannaṁ.

Dr. Patel: They consider body of Kṛṣṇa as Kṛṣṇa.

Prabhupāda: Avyaktam, avyaktam, the Absolute Truth is avyaktam. And when Absolute Truth comes, incarnation, He accepts this mayic body.

Dr. Patel: Only body, and the real is inside.

Prabhupāda: And that has been commented by Dr. Rādhākrishnan. When Kṛṣṇa says that man-manā bhava mad-bhakto mad-yājī māṁ namaskuru (BG 18.65), he says that "It is not to the Kṛṣṇa person, but what is within Him. Within Him." That means he is under the theory that Kṛṣṇa's body is māyā. So you haven't got to surrender to the body of Kṛṣṇa. But this fool does not know that there is no such distinction in Kṛṣṇa.

Mr. Sar: Avyaktaṁ vyaktim āpannam manyante mām...

Prabhupāda: Ah! No, Kṛṣṇa has no such distinction as body and soul. Prakṛtiṁ svām adhiṣṭhāya. He comes in His own, original body. Sambhavāmi yuge... Prakṛtiṁ svām. Not this prakṛti. Svām, the spiritual body. That they do not take.

Yes, we are fighting with this Māyic civilization.
Morning Walk -- June 2, 1974, Geneva:

Bhagavān: The boy didn't realize the potency of your answer last night. He was asking how to fight fascism, and you were saying by chanting and dancing. So factually, by setting the example is the greatest way to fight all these maladies.

Prabhupāda: Māyā. Māyā. Yes, we are fighting with this Māyic civilization.

Bhagavān: Because they can fight with guns, but afterwards neither one of them knows how to set an exemplary life. So they just keep fighting with guns.

Prabhupāda: With gun or without, gun, you will die. The fascist will die and the other party also will die. Gun or without gun, he cannot exist. But our fight is to stop death. Tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma naiti mām eti (BG 4.9). Our fight is for this purpose, no more death. This is real fight. Your, what is your fight? You may save yourself for two years or three years or ten years, but you have to die. You have no such program not to die. But here is a program, no more death.

Correspondence

1967 Correspondence

Anyone who has once come to me has become my beloved son; temporarily one may display some Mayic affliction, but that can not prolong.
Letter to Rayarama -- Navadvipa 2 November, 1967: 
Mayic

1969 Correspondence

There is no need to be attached to any particular land on account of some mayic relationship. All places belong to Krishna, and wherever we get the chance for serving Him, that land is our God-gifted land.
Letter to Jayapataka -- Los Angeles 30 January, 1969: 
mayic
Letter to Brahmananda -- Tittenhurst 27 October, 1969: 
Mayic