(11/12) Stray Souls

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Kadigachha, Festival anniversary,
4 March 2019, evening, part 11
Translated from Bengali

Please remember what I have told you today. Now, to conclude, I would like to tell you something about the guru.

What kind of doctors are there in this world? You come and say, 'Oh, doctor, I am not feeling so well.' The doctor sends you for a blood test, and then it turns out that you have high blood sugar. You are diabetic. The doctor tells you, 'I am prescribing you this medication, take it. And do not eat any sweets; also, eat less potato.' You say, 'Oh, doctor, I am so used to eating sweets. I eat ten sweets a day. How can I live without it? I have money – why don't you prescribe me more medication? I cannot give up sweets...' If the doctor loves you, he will say, 'I do not want to treat a patient like you. If you come to me, you are only wasting your money. If you cannot give up sweets, your diabetes will never be controlled.' This is one type of a doctor. Another doctor may love your money more, and he will say, 'All right, eat sweets slowly, slowly. I am giving you the medicine, you can eat everything.' In the meantime, such a doctor thinks to himself, 'If I let this patient go, he will go to another doctor, and another doctor will allow him to eat sweets. I will only end up losing my fee...' That is why this doctor will say that you can eat sweets.

Similarly, there are also such gurus in this world who will say, 'Eat whatever you want. Do whatever you want. Drink, smoke, do anything you want.'

[A lady offers her obeisance] Mother, please come here. I will tell you all how to offer your obeisances. You must learn this. You offered your obeisance and while offering it, you showed your feet to the Deities. Do not do this. We do not offer our obeisances showing our feet to the Lord. You may wonder, 'Why do you not offer obeisances with your head facing the Deity, why do you offer it sideways (facing to the right, with the Lord on your left)?' Because we keep our feet away and do not show them to the Lord. Men should offer prostrate obeisances (astanga, touching their eight limbs to the ground), lying down from the left to the right, and ladies offer half-obeisances (panchanga, touching their five limbs to the ground); the Lord should be on your left. This is how you offer obeisances at temples. If you offer your obeisances facing the Lord straight, the Lord will see your feet; we do not do that. This is the custom.

So, I was telling you about gurus. Sivji Maharaj told Parvati, 'O Devi! There are many vitta-harankari gurus in this world (those who steal your wealth, money, etc.), but there are very few santap-harankari gurus (spiritual teachers who will "rob" you of your material miseries).' Vitta-harankari gurus are the gurus who like your money, 'Oh, this man has a lot of money. If I make him my disciple, I will have a lot of money and rice!' There are many such gurus (grihi-gurus, laukik-gurus, gosai-gurus, and so on). And santap-harankari gurus are the genuine gurus. If a guru cannot save you from the jaws of death, he cannot be a guru.

In this world, we are all children of the same father. Remember this. Who is our father and mother? Krishna is our father, and Krishna is our mother. We come from Him, and our home is there with Him.

This here is not our home. You think, 'Oh, my father has built this house. I have inherited it from him, so it is mine now (I am the owner).' And when you die after a few days, your child will become the owner and say, 'This house belongs to me!'; after him, your grandchild will inherit the house and say, 'I am the master of the house!' So, are we really owners of our houses? None of us are masters; nothing belongs to anybody. We are only security guards. Remember this. 'My', 'my', 'my', 'my' – 'my wealth', 'my money', 'my house'. No. Nothing belongs to anybody. The only master of everything is the Lord; everything belongs only to Him.

আসক্তিরহিত, সম্বন্ধসহিত,
বিষয়সমূহ সকলি মাধব ॥

asakti-rahita, sambandha-sahita,
visaya-samuha sakali madhava

'When you are free from material attachment and establish relationship with the Lord, then you will see that everything around you is Lord Madhav Himself.'

('Vaishnav ke?', Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur)

We must have no attachment to anything in this world. You have a room, a flat or a house, so you must take care of it and keep it clean – you must have some relationship with the property, but you must not be attached to it because when you go away from this world, you will leave everything behind. This feeling of detachment and relation must come to everybody. 'My house', 'my room', 'my son' – no! We are all stray souls – we all have lost our address; and having lost our home, we are now floundering in this great ocean. Somebody comes from Bardhaman, somebody from Hooghly, somebody from Bankura, somebody from Kolkata, somebody from America, London, Brazil or Russia, but all this is not our identity. Our identity is that we are eternal servants of Lord Krishna.

— : • : —

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Length: 56 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Pure Hearts' Kirtan
2) Worship of Lord Siva
3) Proper Worship Comes from Proper Identification
4) Know Thyself
5) Pivoted Life
6) Short-Lived and Short-Sighted
7) Do Not Cheat Yourself
8) Devotional Service
9) Temple Is Not Made of Bricks
10) Spiritual Foundation
11) Stray Souls
12) Embrace Sheltered Life