In2-MeC

The material struggle is compared to carrying a heavy load on your head. Seeking relief, you shift the load over to your right shoulder. After a while you carry it in your arms. Then you lift it back up onto your head. And from there you switch it over to your left shoulder. Moving it around like this permits you to maintain a tolerance of having to carry the load. But it doesn't make the load any lighter. There's really no relief to be had in shifting it around, although that's what we think.

Materialistic human life is just 50 or 75 years of shifting the load around between education, economic development, family life, sexual release, politics, health care, and so on. That we have different "loading zones" in life helps us drag on, but until we set the load down there is no relief. Setting the load down means ridding ourselves of the false conceptions of "I am the doer," "controller," "owner," "enjoyer. "

It amazes me sometimes, the questions devotees ask in classes. For example: "Practically speaking, we have to control things, even in our lives as devotees. In that case how do we stay free of the conception of being the controller?" All such a question means to me is that the material conception of life runs very, very deep. News flash: WE ARE A SERVANTS, NOT CONTROLLERS. By Krsna's grace we are loaned the facility of this body and so on, so that we can render service to Him even though we are not associating with Him in the spiritual world. But how does having access to borrowed facilities for service make you a controller?

Someone explained it this way: "Well, when I'm driving the temple car in devotional service, then I am controlling the car. " I remember a car crash I witnessed when I was 15 years old. I was walking out of my high school to take my lunch break when I saw a car driving down the street suddenly veer off the road and smash into a tree. It turned out the driver "lost control" because he had a heart attack right there in the driver's seat. So what kind of control is that? At any second anyone may have a heart attack, a brain embolism, a loss of eyesight or muscular coordination. It can happen--and it does happen to people every day--because from moment to moment we human beings are under control. And that means we are servants, not masters.

Thus the secret of relief from the burden of material life is to accept our actual position without desperately clutching somewhere in the back of our minds to the illusion of "I'm in control here. "

That controlling attitude is not something one throws off in a second by a mere decision of mind. It takes purification, and that takes practice. You see, as neophyte devotees our reflex position is "I'm in charge here. " What do I mean by reflex position? Suppose a bug settles down on your arm and starts boring into your flesh. Your reflex is to strike back instantly and kill it. All right, it can be argued that this bug should be killed because it is an aggressor. But that's something to consider with a calm mind. A question like that is better to discuss with an authority. So the point here is that our reflexes are way ahead of the cognitive mind. Reflexes are visceral, not intellectual. They activate directly from the false ego. Someone criticizes us; our reflex is to instantly hit back with criticisms of our own, not to pause and reflect on his words to see if there is any truth in what he said about us.

Thus it is not a matter of deciding one fine day, "I'm giving up the conception of being the controller. From now on I'm a servant of Krsna. " It is nice to think that way; yes, we should think that way. . . but still, what is our reflex position? When we are provoked by the modes of nature, what is our attitude? If it is to cling to this body, to slap down any threat to our sense of being in charge of this body, then we are still neophytes.

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