[Posted
Oct 22, 2008]
Washington Post Oct 22, 2008
- KEVIN SULLIVAN
PRABHUPADA: [speaking to medical doctor:] Yes. You are now curing physical disease, but when you take up curing material, I mean to say, spiritual disease... Yes. Try to bring all people to the normal spiritual life. All their suffering is due to abnormal spiritual life, all suffering.
I was discussing with my disciples just now, nature's law is so subtle and so acute, that a little violation will be punished immediately. You know. You are medical man. Little violation will immediately subjected to the punishment. This is God's law. There is a word in the Srimad-Bhagavatam, uru-damni baddhah. Uru. Uru means very strong and damni means rope. Just like if you are tied up with a strong rope, hands and feet, as you are helpless, our position is like that. This very word is used, uru-damni baddhah. Na te viduh... And such baddha, conditioned souls, they are declaring freedom: "I don't care for anyone. I don't care for God." How much foolishness. Just like sometimes naughty children, they are also bound up. Yashodamayi also bound up Krishna [here referring to one of Krishna's childhood pastimes, in which His mother Yashoda bound Him with rope to keep Him from mischief]. That is an Indian system, or everywhere, that tied up. And that small child, when it is bound up, if that child declares freedom, how it is possible? Similarly, by the laws of mother nature we are bound up. How you can declare freedom? Every part of our body is being controlled by some controller. That is stated in the Bhagavatam. Even your, this eyelid moving, that is also under some controller.
So the people do not understand it, and they are declaring, "I am God. I don't care for God. God is dead." How God is dead? You are under so much control, and how God is dead? You can say that there is no government, provided there is nobody to check you. But if you are in every step checked, how you can say that there is no government? That is another foolishness. All men, they have been declared in the Bhagavata, abodha-jata, born fools and rascals.