The Liberation of the Conditioned Soul

The Liberation of the Conditioned Soul

By Hari Pada Vidyaratna

People cherish many erroneous ideas and indulge in idle speculations about the attainment of the service of God-head. They also have many wrong notions about His devotees. What are we and what relationship do we bear towards Him? We have to try to understand that, before we can attempt to discover how to attain Him. A man has a soul, a mind, senses and a body. While he is conditioned, his mind reigns over all the rest with the result that he falls in the hands of delusion or Maya and is thus enmeshed in many troubles and whirled round in manifold births and deaths in various forms both animate and inanimate. But where the soul reigns supreme, the mind, the body and the senses are all engaged in the service of the Supreme Lord Krishna, and the result is abiding harmony and eternal bliss.

Our senses and the body which are always making us acquainted with material goods and the desire for tasting their qualities, are like a receiving apparatus. The body is the place where the receiving takes place and mind is the criminal recipient--the false enjoyer. The soul of a conditioned man, the real owner, is asleep or as is more often the case, held a prisoner while the mind orders the senses to provide things for the enjoyment of itself and its colleague, the body. As the open and simple-hearted king who entrusted his all to his false minister to be managed and maintained for him, was in return imprisoned by the treacherous servant who enjoyed all his wealth and power, even so does the wily mind with the unwary soul.

The mind by its very nature cannot know Him and is thus unwilling to serve Godhead. Having, however, attained a demoniac power not only over the senses, the things of the material world and the body, but also having deluded the soul it has kept it, from birth to birth, in a series of illusory surroundings like a prisoner in a jail. It is also trying all the time, with the help of the senses by its own positive and negative self-intrigues to completely usurp those functions of the soul, wherein there is no place for the service of the King of kings--Lord Sree Krishna. The soul thus being deprived of its liberty cannot attain its only real object, the service of the Transcendental and his true devotees through the service of Sree Gurudeva, the spiritual intercessor of the soul before the Supreme Lord. When the soul wakes up, it tries to break the bondage of the mind with great agony and travail. But it cannot free itself expecting through the infinite and unimaginable grace of Sree Gurudeva who is pleased, with his prayer and service may open a bright path of light for him to proceed towards his eternal goal--the service of the lotus feet of the supreme Lord Sree Krishna. Thus when the soul blossoms forth in his true vigour, the mind with its associates-- the senses, the body and material phenomena--all in a body fall repentant at the feet of the soul and, being forgiven, they are also pressed into the service of the Lotus feet of Sree Gurudeva who in his turn directs all of them to the service of Godhead. The soul can attain the service of Godhead only through the mercy of Sree Gurudeva without whom it is impossible for him to be freed from the strong fetters of the mind and the senses.