Depending on the type of the developed faith, a living being goes to the respective region of the material Universe. Ones who worshiped demigods (worship in the guna of goodness) would go to heavenly planets. Those who worshiped demons (worship in the guna of passion) would go to middle planets, those who worshiped ghosts (worship in the guna of ignorance) would go to hell. And those who served the Lord (but did not try to “use” Him) would raise to the Lord’s abode.
The Vedas only provide connection between the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His immediate surroundings. The guna of goodness, therefore, serves as a serious platform for restoration of the communication culture present in the spiritual world. The key mood is the sense of duty, the ability to be responsive to wishes of other living beings and patient while suffering.
The material world includes three types of anxiety (suffering):
1)Anxiety (suffering) that comes from body and mind. Various congenital diseases, infirmities, unfulfilled desires.
2)Anxiety (suffering) that comes from other living beings. During our material existence we meet different living beings. They can be envious living beings under the influence of ignorance, violently inclined for the sake of fulfillment of their desires, or just wild animals and so on.
3)Anxiety (suffering) that comes from natural disasters. Floods, earthquakes, tsunami, volcano, twisters and other phenomena.
We are doomed to contact with these types of sufferings during all our material existence. Virtuous people know that sufferings that come from nature take place due to violation of nature laws. For instance, during the Vedic period people knew that weather depended on satisfaction of demigods. Priests made different sacrifices for their satisfaction, that is why even the weather was known beforehand for the whole year. If some deviations happened from the expected plan, people understood that priests and the king had not been able to satisfy demigods. Sacrifices play a great role in the guna of goodness. Through them the Aryans contacted with demigods and the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The guna of goodness is mainly the guna of demigods, but when the Aryan civilization was present, goodness also prevailed on our planet and people developed qualities and strength worth of demigods. There are plenty descriptions of splendid victories of the Aryans over demigods in consequence of which the latter endued the Aryan warriors with their divine weapon and blessings.
Piety, therefore, is the main guna of the Aryans. Attachment to duty fulfillment was raised from childhood. And the wish fulfillment technique was sacrifice made by priests (brahmanas).
Virtue supposes strictly regulated behavior. That is why at first it requires efforts and then rewards with happiness. Truly virtuous persons distinguish well religiosity from irreligiousness. They know well that religious are not the ones who show compassion to improvement of the material welfare of living beings, but those who are free from the impact of material concepts, who have felt the taste of liberation and eternity and are capable to guide all those who are willing to go this way by showing compassion only to the need of soul. That is, they address a person to such activities which do not refer to mundane values, whether be it a beloved one, a child, family, nation or others. All kind of material situations were considered by the Aryans temporary and problematic. The Bhagavad-Gita teachings start from this very point. The Pandava brothers were involved in a large-scale war. On the surface, it seemed they had to fight for the sake of the power. King Pandu had to die, he left the kingdom to his blind brother and went to the forest for self-improvement. He had five sons. The condition was that Pandu’s brother was to reign till the adulthood of his sons. When it came time, Pandu’s brother refused to hand over the power to its real owners. He started intrigues in order to kill his nephews and hand over the power to his sons. Krishna interfered in the situation and His opinion was deciding. When all diplomatic methods of settlement of the conflict were exhausted, Krishna arranged the war in the consequence of which according to His intention its participants had to die. Everybody except for the Pandavas. And now there is the battle field. Pandu’s middle son, Arjuna, in his chariot is preparing for the battle. Krishna does not take part in the fight. He has sworn not to take weapons in His arms. Even from the material point of view, He was so powerful that the party which He would fight for would have won. To avoid causing the unbalance, He decided not to fight but He took the place of the charioteer of His friend Arjuna. When before the battle Arjuna saw his teachers (whom he adored and who wanted him to win despite their necessity to fight against him as his enemies), brothers, relatives and other folks, his firmness was shaken. He wanted to refuse fighting and lay down his arms. He did not see the sense in the battle. He was ready to concede the kingdom to his cousin brothers and become an anchoret. His arguments were very interesting. The principal point was that he doubted: if there was any sense in taking the sin of killing so many people upon himself for the purpose of gaining the power? And his answer to himself was “no”. For Arjuna it was important that his actions should be right. He did not state that he had got such a number of valuable ideas by which the prosperity of the country could be achieved (though it was the absolute truth) and for the sake of which it was worth to sacrifice human lives, but he placed great importance on that price which should be paid for it. In that case, Arjuna found this price unacceptable and he refused to fight surrendering to Krishna with the hope to get His advice how to correctly come out of the existing situation. And Krishna answered. This answer became the most abstruse instruction for our epoch providing liberation to all who want it.
Everything which seems important to us has no value from the point of view of the eternal soul. Krishna explained to Arjuna that one who understood the nature of soul would be never indulged in the influence of desires (attachments) and hatred (envy). The key mood in this world should be patience. There is a more sublime condition than serving material values. This condition restores the spiritual consciousness of a living being and affirms one’s spiritual bliss which lies in serving the interests of the Lord. What are His interests? Restore the harmony with the Lord through revival of the spiritual consciousness of all living beings who are materially captive. Those who try to use religion to fulfill their material desires are only virtues people and those who use religion to restore their spiritual relationships with and satisfaction of the Lord, are transcendentalists and have already nothing in common with this material world full of miseries. On the surface, it seemed that Arjuna had good feelings. But when Krishna expressed His opinion, it became clear that Arjuna’s arguments referred only to the material compassion and respectively they were limited by material values but the intended purpose of religion is to end the material existence of a living being.
We have presented these all in order to show the difference between piety and transcendence (the true religiosity). The common religiosity, in the initial stage, aims to affirm a person in piety by following the system of religious prohibitions and incentives. And the second stage of religiosity pursues the aim to remove a person from material existence and restore his/her spiritual memory. This level of transcendence played a significant role in life of the Aryans.
We highly appreciate our various attachments to other living beings. Parents, beloved ones, pets, friends, business partners, children, nation, motherland – this is the incomplete list of those values for the sake of which we do good or evil deeds often sacrificing ourselves or devoting them all our lives. Influenced by illusion, indulged in temporary values and serving them, we forget the certainty of death. Once the greatest Aryan king Yudhishthira met the incarnation of the religion Dharma and answered his questions. One question was very interesting. He asked, “What is the most wonderful thing in this world?” King Yudhishthira answered, “The most wonderful thing is that all people see that all die but everybody lives in such a way as if they were to live forever”. Soul perceives it is eternal because it is indeed so. The material mind influenced by soul acts in such a way as if a material body was eternal. Dreams, plans, regrets and sorrows under the influence of mind are our typical conditions. The Bhagavad-Gita considers all these processes of mind as our most dangerous enemies. In fact, egocentric desires of mind are the flow of time. By desires of mind, a living being activates the latent material energy and creates different situations. If one manages to stop this activity of mind, this person is not influenced by the time anymore and becomes a liberated person. The more we try to use this world to oppress other living beings, the more suffering we get. The world seeks the equilibrium (that is to restore the spiritual atmosphere). One who breaks this equilibrium provides the basis for appearance of the counteractive force and it is only the matter of time for this force to appear. That is why virtuous people make efforts to balance fulfillment of own desires and desires of other living beings. Such efforts create an atmosphere of total peace when a person can ensure the right course of life.
