(5/10) Food for Thought

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Hooghly District, evening programme,
22 February 2019, part 5
Translated from Bengali

Disciples always place their guru's order on their heads and follow it to a T. Never consider gurudev an ordinary mortal human. It is an offence to the Holy Name.

Many people say that Kali and all other gods are the same as Krishna or they say that they are completely different from one another. Both ideas are wrong. You arrange some social functions at home (you worship Durga, Kali, Manasa; you distribute charity, feed the poor, and so on) and you think it is the same as chanting the Holy Name. People think that feeding the poor is service to Narayan (they call it 'serving poor Narayan'). These are all misconceptions! Narayan can never be poor, and a poor man can never be Narayan. A poor man is a jiva soul, a jivatma. You must always remember what the soul is.

The problem is that you always think about your bodies – you do not think about your actual selves. You must try to think about yourselves. In this world, everybody only thinks about their bodies: 'What will I eat?', 'What will I wear?', 'How will I sleep?', 'How will I live?', 'What will my family eat?', 'How will my son find a job?'

Think about it. If you examine your blood, you can see that it matches the blood of your parents. So, parents give us our bodies, but they did not produce that which we are. Some men and women mixed, and as the result of their association, we have got our bodies. But it is our souls that make our bodies move – because there is a soul inside my body, my body can move its hands, legs, it can speak; but once I (the soul) leave the body, the body will not be able to speak. Where does this soul come from? It comes from the Lord.

Never think that you can 'eat whatever your soul desires.' Many gurus come and say this, but the soul does not want to eat food – it is what your tongue, mind and eyes want to eat. You know when children eat, they can be full, but they still carry on eating – they see food and they cannot stop. This is 'eye' hunger. There is also 'mind' hunger. The mind can tell you to eat certain things, and you go and eat it. The mind always tells us what to do, but the mind is not the same as the soul. The soul does not want all these things. The soul is part of Paramatma, and the soul knows what Paramatma wants. Remember this. The soul is part of Paramatma, and the soul knows where Paramatma is, what Paramatma wants, and so on. What is the food for the soul? Hari-katha – discourses about the Lord. The Lord's Name, the Lord's glorification, and so on – everything that is related to the Lord is food for the soul. The soul's duty and natural function is to serve Paramatma.

Then, the question may come, 'If it is the soul's natural function to serve Paramatma, why cannot all souls do that? Everybody has a soul within them, but why do some souls not serve the Lord then? All the outside people who eat fish and meat, who kill and do all kinds of bad things have a soul within them, and I also have a soul within me – why is my soul like this and why are their souls not like that?' The answer is that some souls are situated in material bondage (in the bondage of Maya's net). If somebody puts me into a net, I will not be able to get out of it myself. It is necessary to cut the net, then I can easily get out of it. So, only when Maya removes her net can we come out of our bondage.

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Length: 56 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Service Greatness Is Not External
2) Srivas Pandit's Ideal
3) Sadhus' Dacoity
4) Short-Sighted Minds
5) Food for Thought
6) Quitting Maya's Play
7) Servants' Service
8) Lord's Arrangement
9) Bali Maharaj's Sacrifice
10) Sacrifice, Surrender and Succeed