Enter Into The Unlimited Opportunities of Bhakti & Be Completely Satisfied | 04 May 2024 Devotional service means that we have a whole lifetime, a fulfilling lifetime, of all these activities. There are so many that it's hard to choose from, which one wants to do next. Material life, on the other hand, by contrast, seems ludicrous. I was just comparing notes with Devavrata last night. He said something that I have noticed many times and even mentioned that at the Los Angeles Ratha-yātrā: everyone lives on one block, all the devotees. So, if you stay there and do service and go to Maṅgal Ārti, you really don't have to leave the atmosphere of the temple at all because you just walk across the street and go back. And usually, we stay there for a few days to prepare for the Ratha-yātrā, and then you get in a car, you go to the Ratha-yātrā, and you get dropped off right at the cart, so you're still in that atmosphere. You get to the festival, you're there, and then when you have to go home, you have to walk across The Venice Beach boardwalk, and there you notice a completely different environment. There is always a very noticeable contrast between the spiritual energy and the material energy. And one of my thoughts oftentimes is, "I'm surprised that people are still doing that," because I start thinking like the whole world's like what we do: sevā and having kīrtan and prasādam. And then when I see somebody else doing it, "Oh, yeah, right, it's still going on." That's a sign of how devotees can become absorbed in devotional service and no longer feel fearful, and also not in anxiety, because they are being fully satisfied.

Then, of course, there's the philosophy. As Prabhupāda writes in the Śrī Īśopaniṣad, "All forms of incompleteness are experienced due to incomplete knowledge of the complete whole." By hearing in association with devotees, like in a Bhāgavatam class, there is also an intellectual satisfaction, where we feel that what we are doing it's all reasonable, it's well-reasoned . It's not just some whimsical activity. Like the philosophical statements of the Bhagavad-gītā and the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam are so profound that they satisfy the mind. In fact, I often have the feeling, "How do they know everything?" When we read the Bhāgavatam and they describe what material life is like, it's like, "How do they know that?" They know all the psychology of why someone would be in the material world, and what it feels like to be trounced by the material energy. The sages describe it so accurately that one feels to be properly situated in devotional service. So Caitanya Mahāprabhu gave these basic concepts that anybody can investigate for themselves.
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