Mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes (SB 5.5.2): for getting liberation from this conditional life of material existence, one has to serve a great soul, mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes. Tamo-dvāraṁ yoṣitāṁ saṅgi-saṅgam (SB 5.5.2). And if you want to remain in this darkness of material existence, then you can associate yourself with yosit.
Yosit means, I mean, ah, anything enjoyable. Generally yosit means women. Yoṣitāṁ saṅgi-saṅgam. That means those who are very much fond after women, womanly association. If you associate with such persons then you will continue your material existence. And, mahat-sevā: and if you associate with yourself with great soul, then your path of liberation will be open.
Now by this line, by this statement, we can understand that a mahat, or a great soul, is completely free from association of women. He is mahat. Therefore generally a spiritual master is selected amongst the renounced order of life, sannyāsī. Sannyāsī means who has renounced his family life; who is no more in touch with women. Just like we have accepted the sannyāsī. I have got my wife still existing in India; I have got my son; I have got my grandson, daughter, granddaughter—everything—but I have no connection with them.
This is the order of Vedic life. First of all brahmacārī, a student life; then householder life. After student life finishing, twenty-five years, then if he thinks that he should become a householder, with the permission of his spiritual master he goes home, he marries a nice girl and become a pacified householder, gentleman, and lives for twenty-five years with wife. And when there is a grown-up child, he prepares himself for sannyāsa life. That is called vānaprastha. Brahmacārī, gṛhastha, vānaprastha. Vānaprastha means that one should leave home, but the wife can go with him, just an assistant, without any sex life.
Then when that man is completely prepared, he sends back the wife to home to be taken care of by the grown-up children, and he takes sannyāsa. So this sannyāsa life means that he has completely given up sex life. Of course, association means sex life. We are also here, as sannyāsī, we have got so many girls and ladies who are coming here—we are associating. But the renounced order life means, actually means, no more sex life.
So mahat-sevā: to become a great soul is to completely forget sex life. Because if one has still a sex life, connection with sex life, he cannot be mahat. In other words, that if you had to select . . . because it is said, mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes: "If you want to get liberation from this conditional life, then you have to serve one great soul. But if you want to continue your conditional life of material existence, then you can associate with persons who are addicted to sex life." This is clearly said.
One who is addicted to the sex life, he will continue his material existence—may be born in human society or born in animal society or born in demigod society in other planet. So long one will have the propensity of sex life, he will have different kinds of body in this material world. So because in this material world the ultimate happiness is sex life—either in dog’s life or hog’s life or man’s life, the ultimate pleasure is—so one has to train himself how to get out of this sex life.
So mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes. So therefore in order to get ourselves freed from sex life completely, we have to associate with a person who is actually freed from sex life. That is called mahat-sevā, great soul. Mahat-sevāṁ dvāram āhur vimuktes, tamo-dvāraṁ yoṣitāṁ saṅgi-saṅgam (SB 5.5.2). Because material existence means that attraction for sex life. Therefore this training—brahmacārī training, gṛhastha training, vānaprastha training—that is called tapasya.
In the student life, according to the Vedic life, in the student life there is no . . . very, very good restriction for mixing with women. But because your country is free—not only here, everywhere; now that freedom is expanded all over the world—so boys and girls mix together. That is not very, I mean, efficacious for advancement of spiritual life. That should be restricted.