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Real devotion begins when one understands that - God is so great, I am rendering my service to this world uselessly. Why not render service to God?

Expressions researched:
"real devotion begins when one understands that" |"God is so great, I am rendering my service to this world uselessly. Why not render service to God"

Conversations and Morning Walks

1975 Conversations and Morning Walks

It is called simply realizing how God is great. That is neutrality. But real devotion begins when one understands that, "God is so great, I am rendering my service to this world uselessly. Why not render service to God?" That is called dāsyam, beginning of active devotion. We are active in the material world.

Jesuit: Hmm. But to get that real stillness and quiet in which . . .

Prabhupāda: No. Bhakti is not stillness. That is neutrality. Stillness means you stop your material activity. That is stillness. But . . . your material activities, when you stop it, that is stillness.

Jesuit: What is neutrality then?

Prabhupāda: That is neutrality, that neither spiritual nor material—on the marginal stage. It is called simply realizing how God is great. That is neutrality. But real devotion begins when one understands that, "God is so great, I am rendering my service to this world uselessly. Why not render service to God?" That is called dāsyam, beginning of active devotion. We are active in the material world. It is useless, simply wasting time and making one entangled in repetition of birth and death. Material activities. This is called pravṛtti-mārga. Pravṛtti-mārga means sense enjoyment. And for sense enjoyment we have to accept so many different types of bodies, 8,400,000. Everyone is busy in sense enjoyment. The tiger is busy, the hog is busy, the dog is busy. The man also, if he becomes busy like tigers and hogs and dog, then he's going to become again the same species of life.

Jesuit: When he reaches a higher state of activity, when he really loves all mankind, and he loves God . . .

Prabhupāda: That is a kind of concoction.

Jesuit: A kind of?

Prabhupāda: Concoction, mental speculation. Why should you love mankind? Why not tiger?

Jesuit: Because they are my brothers and sisters.

Prabhupāda: So, brother and sister everyone loves. In the family, everyone loves his brother and sister. Does it mean that he's a very big man?

Page Title:Real devotion begins when one understands that - God is so great, I am rendering my service to this world uselessly. Why not render service to God?
Compiler:Anurag
Created:2022-10-03, 13:20:06
Totals by Section:BG=0, SB=0, CC=0, OB=0, Lec=0, Con=1, Let=0
No. of Quotes:1