Hare Krsna,
SB 3.25.33-34: Bhakti, devotional service, dissolves the subtle body of the living entity without separate effort, just as fire in the stomach digests all that we eat. A pure devotee, who is attached to the activities of devotional service and who always engages in the service of My lotus feet, never desires to become one with Me. Such a devotee, who is unflinchingly engaged, always glorifies My pastimes and activities.
Link to Srila Prabhupada’s lecture on these verses: https://prabhupadavani.org/transcriptions/741203sbbom/
My personal realization:
In the previous verse (SB 3.25.32), we learned the superiority of bhakti over liberation. animittā bhāgavatī bhaktiḥ siddher garīyasī. In the following two verses (SB 3.25.33-34), it is explained what kind of liberation is desirable and how to attain it.
We know that there are five kinds of liberation – salokya (residing on the same planet as the Supreme Lord), sarsti (achieving the same opulence as the Lord), sarupya (achieving the same bodily features as the Lord), samipya (to be a personal associate of the Lord), and sayujya or ekatvam (to achieve oneness with the Lord). Out of these five kinds of liberation, achieving oneness with the Lord is most detestable and not the goal of the pure Vaisnavas. Ideally pure devotees do not desire any of these five kinds of liberation.
A pure devotee does not accept any kind of liberation — sālokya, sārṣṭi, sāmīpya, sārūpya or ekatva — even though they are offered by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. (SB 3.29.13)
In his lecture, Srila Prabhupada strongly takes on the Mayavadi’s concept of liberation i.e., to achieve oneness with the Lord or merge into Brahman and thereby lose one’s individuality. “A pure devotee does not desire ekatva, oneness with the Supreme Lord, as desired by the impersonalists, the mental speculators and the meditators. To become one with the Supreme Lord is beyond the dream of a pure devotee. Sometimes he may accept promotion to the Vaikuṇṭha planets to serve the Lord there, but he will never accept merging into the Brahman effulgence, which he considers worse than hellish. Such ekatva, or merging into the effulgence of the Supreme Lord, is called kaivalya, but the happiness derived from kaivalya is considered by the pure devotee to be hellish. The devotee is so fond of rendering service to the Supreme Lord that the five kinds of liberation are not important to him. If one is engaged in pure transcendental loving service to the Lord, it is understood that he has already achieved the five kinds of liberation.” (SB 3.29.13 Purport)
Srila Prabhupada, through various examples, explains how it is impossible (both theoretically and practically) to lose one’s individuality and merge into the Supreme Brahman. He gives the examples of gold particle and gold mine, drop of sea water and vast sea, sun particles and sunshine, sky within and outside the pot, and so on. Such liberation is practically impossible because of the constitution of the individual soul. An individual soul is part and parcel of the Supreme Lord – it is qualitatively same but quantitatively infinitesimal. Hence Srila Prabhupada takes his time at the beginning of the lecture to explain the difference between body and soul.
“So our actual constitutional position is that we are small particle of Nārāyaṇa. And our business is, because we are part and parcel of Nārāyaṇa… Why Nārāyaṇa has created? Ekaṁ bahu syāma: “The Nārāyaṇa has become many.” Why He has become many? To enjoy. So this is ānanda, but because in this material world, the ānanda is being converted into distress. But you can get the ānanda when you are with the supreme father, Kṛṣṇa. We are all children of the supreme father.” (Srila Prabhupada lecture on SB 3.25.33-34)
Pure devotees do not desire the happiness of Brahman because there is no service to the Lord’s lotus feet, there is no realization of the Lord’s form, beauty, fragrance, etc., and there is no relishing of His sweet pastimes. I had visited Sridham Mayapur many times. There are thousands of devotees and general public visiting the dhama every day. Everyone retains his /her individuality; each individual has a personal relationship with the Lord; everyone is serving the Lord at his/her capacity and qualification, and everyone is experiencing some kind of bliss in exchange with the Lord. Therefore, who would want to lose one’s individuality and merge into the Supreme Brahman?
Therefore, my follow-up questions are how to achieve the kind of liberation that is recommended by our acaryas and what does that liberation actually mean. How does that liberation dissolve one’s material bodies (gross and subtle)? When is that liberation attained? While living in this material world or after one reaches the spiritual abode of the Lord?
Just through one beautiful verse, Srila Prabhupada answered all my questions.
īhā yasya harer dāsye
karmaṇā manasā girā
nikhilāsv apy avasthāsu
jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate
“A person acting in the service of Kṛṣṇa with his body, mind and words is a liberated person even in the material world, although he may be engaged in many so-called material activities.” (Bhakti Rasamrta Sindhu 1.2.187)
“Therefore a devotee, automatically he dissolves his material and…, I mean to say, material bodies, subtle and gross, dissolves in this life. That is called jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate. That is called jīvan-mukti. Īhā yasya harer dāsye [Brs. 1.2.187]. Anyone, īhā, mad-īhāḥ. Here it is said, mad-īhāḥ. What is that mad-īhāḥ? Always thinking of how to serve Kṛṣṇa. That is called mad-īhāḥ, thinking of Kṛṣṇa, always thinking of Kṛṣṇa. That Rūpa Gosvāmī has explained this mad-īhāḥ. What is that? Īhā yasya harer dāsye. Anyone who is always thinking of how to serve Kṛṣṇa, karmaṇā manasā vācā… You can serve by your body activities, by your mind, by your words. Just like we are talking about Kṛṣṇa; we are serving Kṛṣṇa by words. You are hearing = that karmaṇā, the activities of the senses, you are hearing. Karmaṇā manasā, we are thinking; I am thinking. So any way, if we are simply engaged in Kṛṣṇa’s service or at least trying to do that, karmaṇā manasā vācā, īhā yasya harer dāsye… But it is not to become one but to serve. If this attitude you keep, so nikhilāsv apy avasthāsu jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate: in any condition of life he is liberated. Any condition life. He may be engaged in some business or in some occupation or this way. If he is always thinking of Kṛṣṇa, how to serve Him, then he is liberated. This is the idea of actual liberation, not by thinking that “I shall become one with the Supreme.” (Srila Prabhupada lecture on SB 3.25.33-34)
Srila Visvanatha Chakravarty Thakura explains that with a person’s endeavor, the fire of digestion digests the food. The person does not know how the food gets digested. Similarly, bhakti liberates the devotee who daily performs hearing and chanting and experiences as sweet taste, without striving for liberation at all. The devotee does not even ask how or when he will get liberation. Just as a person walking on the path steps over a hoof print of a cow without seeking it out, so he attains liberation. The devotees lack knowledge of the three stages of Brahman, but by the mercy of the Lord by bhakti, by knowledge in the form of experiencing the Lords’ form, qualities, pastimes, powers and sweetness, he attains liberation.
“O lotus-eyed Lord, by concentrating one’s meditation on Your lotus feet, which are the reservoir of all existence, and by accepting those lotus feet as the boat by which to cross the ocean of nescience, one follows in the footsteps of mahājanas [great saints, sages and devotees]. By this simple process, one can cross the ocean of nescience as easily as one steps over the hoofprint of a calf.” (SB 10.2.30)
Personally, it is hard for me to yet understand and accept how one could be liberated even while being in this material body. I guess it’s a matter of realization that will come after practicing bhakti sincerely over prolonged period of time. What is therefore important to practice is pure devotional service unto the Lord without any motivation (animittā bhāgavatī bhaktiḥ). Thus Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s Siksastaka prayer makes so much sense – “O Lord, I do not wish to gain from You any wealth, nor do I wish to have a beautiful wife, nor do I wish to have many followers. All I want from You is that in life after life I may remain a pure devotee at Your lotus feet.”
Lord Caitanya prays, “in life after life,” indicating that a devotee does not even desire the cessation of birth and death. The yogīs and empiric philosophers desire cessation of the process of birth and death, but a devotee is satisfied even to remain in this material world and execute devotional service. This, I find, is the essence of Srila Prabhupada’s purport and lecture.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
Krsna Katha 