The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is intended to make a solution to our everyday problems. It's not a kind of place where people just come because there's some religious rites being performed. But everyone in this age is thinking that, "I am free," and actually I am not free; I am very bound up, very strictly bound up by the stringent laws of nature. In every status of life I have to serve somebody or something or my own body.
In every status of life I have to serve my wife or I have to serve my children, I have to serve my pet, I have to serve my work, my boss, my associates. If I'm very wealthy, very elevated, or very beautiful physically, if I am born in an aristocratic family, I always have to serve somebody. If nothing else, one has to serve one's own stomach. I have to eat. I have to get food. I have to serve my stomach. So I am not free at all. I have to do these things. There's no way I can stop. If I don't eat, I will die.
So our natural position as a living entity is that we have to serve something. Every living entity has to serve. That's our natural position. If something is wrong with my hand and I want to be cured, I don't grab onto some foodstuffs or some medicine, some herbs, and squeeze it with the hand and think that this hand is going to be cured. I take the medicine or the food through my mouth, and then it circulates through the digestive system and through the veins, and finally comes to the hand and can work its cure.
So the hand, unless it's serving its source, then it's useless. The servant must serve its master, or the part must serve the whole. And our relationship with God is the same. Just like the hand is made out of bile, blood and air, flesh and bone, as all the body is, so similarly we're made out of spirit—qualitatively the same as Kṛṣṇa, but quantitatively many millions of times less. Qualitatively the same; quantitatively different. Fragmental portion.
So if we fragmental portions, separated parts and parcels, can serve the source, or the whole, then we can be cured of this material disease which is rampant nowadays. And this is possible only by mercy. By mercy alone we can transcend this material existence and know that I am part and parcel of the Supreme, Kṛṣṇa, or God, and I can erase all of my karma and situate myself in pure consciousness. But this consciousness cannot be purified unless there is mercy. And in this age, 'Kali-yuga, as we know, mercy is diminished to being almost nonexistent. And 'Kali-yuga is just beginning.
So if we can get some information about what I am, what is my position, and what is God and how am I related to God, what is this world, then we're very fortunate. So by the mercy of the spiritual master we can free ourselves from these stringent laws of nature and these unbreakable bonds. And only in this way. We can't free ourselves superficially or by our own mental invention. We can't sit, just go out and sit and think and free ourselves from this material existence.
We must be subject to our own body, bodily discomforts, and our own mind, and we must be subject to the actions upon us of other living entities, and we must be subject to the laws of nature, to Providence, to pestilence, famine, catastrophe. But if we can accept and hear submissively this teaching of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and Bhagavad-gītā from the bona fide spiritual master, then we are free immediately; we are in Vaikuṇṭha.
So we're very shocked and astonished that so many people are coming to the West, to the United States, and posing as holy men and simply making business, charging money, and giving somebody some magical formula whereby they can become God in half of a year. And so many people who are sincere seekers are being deluded, and this is very unfortunate.