(5/14) Forget Me Not

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Hooghly district,
26 February 2019, noon, part 5
Translated from Bengali

It is God who has given us our souls, not our parents. Therefore, it is God who we must always think about and remember. Never forget Him.

What happens when one forgets God?

কৃষ্ণ ভুলি' সেই জীব অনাদি-বহির্ম্মুখ ।
অতএব মায়া তারে দেয় সংসারাদি-দুঃখ ॥

krsna bhuli' sei jiva anadi-bahirmukha
ataeva maya tare deya samsaradi-duhkha

'Forgetting Krishna, the soul turned towards the external illusory world in primaeval times. As the result, illusion (Maya) gives such a soul various material miseries.'

(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, 2.20.117)

Because we forget about God, we are now suffering the agony of threefold miseries. You think, 'I am very poor, but those who have a lot of money must have nothing to worry about in their lives...' It is not so. Those who have a lot of money worry much more than you do. Take the state chief minister as an example – do you think she has nothing to worry about? Do you think she sleeps well at night? She goes to bed late at night (at two–three o'clock) and wakes up at eight in the morning – she is busy the whole day from morning to evening. They keep their phones on the whole day and cannot even get proper sleep. Worrying so much, they actually know no peace. So, there is no peace in this world – nobody lives worry-free here.

There are three kinds of suffering, or miseries: adhibhautik (আধিভৌতিক) (miseries caused by your own body or mind), adhidaivik (আধিদৈবিক, miseries caused by the nature or gods) and adhyatmik (আধ্যাত্মিক, miseries caused by other souls).

What is adhibhautik? For example, one of our centres is located in California. Just recently one devotee took initiation in the USA through the internet and a few days ago he came here to meet me. Do you know how people in his country, in the California state in particular, live? They wash their streets with street sweeper machines and then a supervisor comes to see if there is any dust left on the street. If the supervisor finds any dust, he scolds the workers and sends them to do the job again. There, if your fridge or air conditioner breaks, they call special people and get the things thrown away because if they throw their appliance just like that on the street, they get fined for $1,000. Not only that, if somebody has a child there, all their relatives come to celebrate the child's birth and give the baby cars – not toy cars but big-big real cars (limousines, BMWs, etc.) or even planes. This is the kind of place it is. So, people there really have a lot of money, but why are they not happy? Their government made a survey and it turned out that the rate of suicide is the highest in that place. In our country, too, people commit suicide for incredible reasons – some farmer workers do not get aloo-dum for lunch, so they start fighting and end up committing suicide! When I hear such things from people, it makes me laugh. People suffer mentally in so many ways. So, why do more people commit suicide in such a place as California? Because they are so deeply submerged in their poisonous material lives that they only worry about everything. There is no respite from anxiety. There is no peace in the material world. One woman can have ten, fifteen or even twenty husbands, changing them one after another; or one man can go through ten–twenty wives. How can anybody live happily like that? But still, even coming from that kind of background, they leave everything and come to practise Krishna consciousness. So, adhibhautik misery is mental suffering, it is a disease of the mind.

The adhibhautik misery is the misery inflicted upon you by other living entities created by the Lord. We also inflict miseries on many living entities. For example, if somebody has a heart problem, they are told to use the bark of the arjun tree. Trees also have a soul inside them. If somebody comes and takes your skin off, you will feel pain; so, when you come to an arjun tree and tear off its bark, the tree is also crying for pain, but because the consciousness of the tree is covered, we cannot hear its cries. When dogs bark, they are also calling out to their fathers or mothers, but we cannot hear it – we only hear barking. When a dog gets into trouble, it starts barking, calling out to its father and mother so that they could come and save it. These are all examples of sufferings inflicted upon souls by other living entities.

The third kind of suffering, the adhidaivik misery, is the misery that comes from gods: for example, hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires. I read in the newspapper only yesterday that hundreds of people died in a fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh. More people must have died, but they always lower the numbers in the newspappers to decrease the expenses of the government (if they write the actual number of casualties, they have to pay much more compensation). Every day, each train transports hundreds of people to work – everybody gets on the same train and goes to their different workplaces in different areas and buildings; but if the train is derailed, then everybody's work is finished. Somebody gets hospitalised; somebody dies on the spot; and somebody is able to return home unharmed.

So, these are the threefold miseries we all suffer from. Why do we suffer like this? Because we forget Krishna.

— : • : —

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Length: 76 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Bound and Benumbed
2) Within and Without
3) Think about Your Actual Self
4) Pivotal Difference
5) Forget Me Not
6) Antidote to Material Life
7) Mixing in Adulteration
8) Wholesome Life
9) Devoured by Darkness
10) Spiritual Power
11) Depths of Devotion
12) Guard Your Spiritual Purity
13) Focus on Lord's Happiness
14) Pure Devotees' Pure Hankering