(5/10) Do Not Cheat Yourself

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Sri Ganga Sagar, morning class,
Deity Manifestation Anniversary day
12 January 2019, part 5
Translated from Bengali

There are many kinds of doctors in this world. Some doctors can operate on you and then immediately ask you for money. Lord Siva, who is seated here near us, said, 'In this world, there are many gurus who come to steal your wealth, but there are very few gurus in this world who come to remove your three-fold misery.' The three kinds of miseries are adhidaivik (আধিদৈবিক, miseries caused by the nature or gods), adhibhautik (আধিভৌতিক) (miseries caused by your own body or mind) and adhyatmik (আধ্যাত্মিক, miseries caused by other souls). Adhidaivik-jvala are the miseries caused by demigods – for example, when an earthquake happens, many people die, and no scientist can prevent it. They say that they can transplant heads (take a head from one body and put it to another body), but can they give life? They say, 'Yes, we will be able to do it later.' They only keep saying it – it will never happen. They will never be able to give life to anything. Now they are creating robots, but they cannot give life to anything. That is why we must think about the benefit of our own souls.

When you come to a doctor, he will tell you what is good and what is bad for your health. I will give you an example. Suppose you have diabetes. You come to a doctor, the doctor sends you for a blood test, and when the blood test comes, you are diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor will tell you, 'You have diabetes. I am prescribing you some medication. You must not eat any sugar, sweets or potato, and you must eat less rice.' You may say, 'Oh, doctor, I have much money. Give me the medicine, but I cannot give up sweets.' If the doctor loves you, he will say, 'What? I do not want a patient like you! You will only keep coming to me wasting money – your disease will never improve.' But if the doctor loves your money, he will say, 'All right, then come to me again in a month, we will take another blood test – if your blood sugar increases, I will give you more medicine. You do not have to follow any diet.'

In the same way, there are also such gurus in this world. If I told everyone to not bother ('Eat fish and meat and do whatever you want'), a thousand people will come to take initiation from me today. We prohibit four things: gambling, intoxicants, free mixing and killing. Many say that they cannot take initiation because we prohibit these things, but if we were to say, 'Eat whatever you like, do whatever you like,' thousands of people would come for initiation. What use is it to me? When I went to the market to buy some eggplant, I saw somebody selling eggplants for ten rupees a kilo, and another person was charging ten rupees for four kilos. I took forty kilos from the second man, but when I came to the temple and opened the sack, I saw that all eggplants were rotten. If I had bought eggplant from the first man, all eggplants would be fresh – it would not even have been necessary to buy forty kilos then. So, what is the use making a thousand disciples? Those disciples will all fall down (go to a deep hell), and I will go down along with them. This is a direct road to hell.

There are many gurus roaming this world. There are karmi-gurus, jnani-gurus, yogi-gurus, kaulik-gurus, laukik-gurus, but there are very few spiritual gurus. If a guru cannot save you from the jaws of death, this guru should never be accepted. This is said in Srimad Bhagavatam. Who is called a guru? A guru is he who is always engaged in service to Lord Krishna – who has given himself completely to service, who does not speak about anything except Krishna, who never speaks any gramya-katha, any nonsense talks, who can save me from the three-fold miseries of this world. We must always remember this. You will see gurus who have thousands of disciples, gurus that millions of people come to, but we do not do all this. It is said that among millions of selfish people, you will find one wise person; among millions of wise people, you will find one liberated person; among millions of such liberated people, you will find only one devotee of Krishna. Although there are very few such devotees of Krishna, one such person can liberate the entire universe.

If we can take shelter of a bona fide guru and practise Krishna consciousness under his guidance, we will get supreme benefit. We must think about the welfare of our souls.

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Length: 50 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Power of Mindful Service
2) Service Is All About Mood
3) Help Yourself and Others
4) Beyond Body and Bondage
5) Do Not Cheat Yourself
6) Your Life, Your Escape
7) Keep Internal Purity
8) Embrace Devotion to Lord Krishna
9) Know Where You Belong
10) Result of Sadhu-Sanga