Narottama dasa Thakura has sung, sat-sanga chadi' kainu asate vilasa te karana lagila mora karma-bandha-phansa. Karma-bandha-phansa means entangled. Sometimes we have got experience, that threads, they become entangled. It is very difficult to find out where the beginning is. Sometimes spoiled. So, on account of our attachment to this material body, we are becoming entangled. Sat-sanga chadi' kainu asate vilasa. This meeting, as we are holding, this is called sat-sanga. Sat-sanga because here there is no other business, talking all nonsense, some material things. Here only we talk about the spirit soul, about Krsna, about relationship with Krsna, how to act to satisfy Krsna. This is the business here. That is the reference. (?) Formerly, this place, Manor, was known as Piggot's Manor. Now we have named Bhaktivedanta Manor. What is the difference? Formerly, it was for sense gratification. Now it is meant for elevating one to the spiritual standard of life. So anything can be changed like that for sat-sanga. Sat-sangat mukta duhsanga. If you continue sat, as it is said, sat-sanga, then you advance in spiritual life. And if you associate with asat, then you become degraded. This is the policy. Sat-sanga chadi kainu asate vilasa te karane lagila mora karma-bandha-phansa. Don't be entangled. Try to become liberated from the entanglement. That is the mission of life.
So these things cannot be understood so long we are in the darkness. Darkness means sinful life. The more we are engaged in sinful life, we cannot understand what is sat-sanga and what is asat-sanga. So we should be purified. The whole human life is meant for purification. Yasmat suddhyet sattvam. Sattvam. Sattvam means existence. Suddhyet. Suddhyet means becomes purified. Just like a diseased man, contaminated by some disease. The medical treatment means he has to be purified from the contamination. Similarly, we are impure in this material existence, by contamination of the three modes of material nature: sattva-guna, rajo-guna, tamo-guna -- goodness, passion and ignorance. So even if we are contaminated by the quality of goodness of this material world, that is also contaminated. That is also cause of our entanglement. Goodness... A brahmana, if he thinks that "Now I have brahminical qualifications, I am now educated, I am very cleansed, I am very controlled" -- these things are brahmana qualification -- "I know what is what," jnanam vijnanam, but he does not try for becoming immortal, then that kind of thinking is also bondage, that "I am this, I am that." Even though he is very learned, sattva samo damas titiksa suci, all these good qualities are there. But if he does not try to be, go further ahead, how to become immortal, so this type of fine entanglement is also entanglement. And those who are passionate, they are thinking, "I am so rich, I am so powerful, I have got so many nice business, bank balance, I have got my big family, nice wife." These are passion conception of life. So they are certainly bound up. And those who are ignorant, means one does not know what is the value of life, lying down anywhere, lazy, sleeping, unclean, do not know the value of life, they are in ignorance. They are very firmly bound up.
So liberation means the more you are enlightened the value of life, the more, then you become liberated. The more you become liberated, the more you are advanced in your spiritual knowledge, sat, sat, sat-sanga. Therefore, these meetings which we hold every day, they are meant for advancing in spiritual life. Here, there is no program how to become very rich, how to possess more motorcars, how to have more bank balance, how to have nice dress. These are material things. Or ignorance: how to sleep thirty-four hours a day, although we have got twenty-four hours only. So here we see big, big men, they sleep up to two o'clock. Early rising means two o'clock. That is also early, but not at day two o'clock. At night, two o'clock, if you rise, that is nice. But they are accustomed to get up, two o'clock. Because they think "The more we sleep, we enjoy life." Therefore, they are sunyavadi. They want to become zero, sleeping always. Sunyavadi. "Make everything zero." That is called sunyavadi. No, that is not life. Sunyavadi is not life. Activity is life. Kirtaniyah sada harih (CC Adi 17.31). Caitanya Mahaprabhu says: "Don't become zero, but be engaged always in chanting Hare Krsna maha-mantra." That is Caitanya Mahaprabhu's cult. We are not going to be zero. We want to be very active, but active not for sense gratification but for Krsna's service.
Now what is Krsna's service? That we are teaching, how to worship Krsna.
- sravanam kirtanam visnoh
- smaranam pada-sevanam
- arcanam vandanam dasyam
- sakhyam atma-nivedanam
- (SB 7.5.23)
These are nine kinds of services. They are sat. The more we are engaged in these nine kinds of different occupation of devotional service, the more we are elevated, and the more we are engaged in activities of material sense gratification, we are degraded. Srama eva hi kevalam (SB 1.2.8). You have got nice office, material point of view, nice business. So if you perform that business, office work, your duty, very nicely, but you have no Krsna consciousness, sastra says that srama eva hi kevalam. It is simply wasting time and laboring hard. That's all. Therefore Krsna says that this is the distinction between sat and asat. And we should not be very much interested with the asat. Then our life is spoiled. We should be interested with sat. That will make our life successful.