Just like you go, when you are diseased, you go to the doctor for atonement, for paying doctor's bill; similarly, they go to a bhaṭṭācārya. The bhaṭṭācārya is supposed to give him prescription that, "I've committed such sins, sir. What is my atonement?" He gives you a prescription that "You do like this."
So Śukadeva Gosvāmī says that, "According to the gravity of sinful life, one has to execute the prescribed atonement." Exactly . . . he gives the example:
- doṣasya dṛṣṭvā guru-lāghavaṁ yathā
- bhiṣak cikitseta rujāṁ nidānavit
- (SB 6.1.8)
Exactly like when you go to consult a physician, he prescribes a nice medicine or costly medicine, according to the gravity of the disease. If you have simply some headache, he may prescribe you something like aspirin. But if you have got something else, very severe, he immediately prescribes that, "It has to be surgically operated, and the expenditure will be one thousand dollar."
So similarly, this is also diseased condition to . . . atonement, the sinful life, this is also diseased condition. Just like we have accepted this chain of birth and death. This is diseased condition of the soul. The soul has no birth and death, no disease—because it is spirit soul. Na jāyate na mriyate vā kadācit.
Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, na jāyate: "Soul has no birth." Na mriyate: "It has no death." Nityaḥ śāśvato 'yaṁ na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20): "Soul is eternal," śāśvataḥ, "existing everlasting. Don't think that it is lost along with the dissolution of this body. No." Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre. Na hanyate means it is not killed or it is destroyed, even after the destruction of this body.
This is the missing point of modern civilization. They do not know . . . there is no educational system in the university what happens after death. There is no such educational system. The most defective education, because without this knowledge, what happens after death, without this knowledge, one who is dying without this knowledge, he's animal. The animal does not know that what he's going to have, another body, how it is . . . he has no such knowledge.
But human life is not meant for becoming an animal, simply interested in eating, sleeping, sex life and defence. You may have very nice arrangement for eating or you may have very nice buildings for sleeping, or you may have very good arrangement for sex life, or you may have very good defence force to protect yourself. But that does not mean that you are in human civilization.