The International Society for Krishna Consciousness is a movement aiming at the spiritual reorientation of mankind through the simple process of chanting the holy names of God.
Human life is meant for ending the miseries of material existence. Our present-day society is trying to end these miseries by material progress. However, it is visible to all that despite extensive material progress, human society is not peaceful. The reason is that we are essentially spirit souls. It is the spirit soul that is behind the development of the material body. The materialistic scientists may deny the spiritual existence in the background, but there is no better ideology besides accepting this living force as the spirit soul within the body.
The body is changing – from one form to another, but the spirit soul is existing eternally, without changes. This fact we can experience even in our own life. Since the beginning of our material body in the womb, our body has been changing from one shape to another every second. This process is generally known as “trans-migration”. It is a change of body.
On earth, we see change of day and night and change of season. The more primitive mentalities attribute this phenomenon to changes occurring in the sun. For example, in the winter, some might think the sun is getting weaker, and at night they presume, sometimes, that the sun is dead. With more advanced knowledge, however, we see that the sun is not changing at all.
Seasonal changes are attributed to the change of the relative positions of the earth and the sun. Similarly, we experience bodily changes: from embryo to child to youth to maturity to old age to death. The less intelligent mentality presumes that after death, the spirit soul ceases to exist, just as primitive tribes believed that the sun dies at sunset. Actually, however, the sun is rising in another part of the world. Similarly, when the body gets old like an old garment and is no longer usable, the soul accepts another body, just as we accept a new set of clothes.
Modern civilisation is practically unaware of this truth. People do not care about the constitutional position of the soul. There are different departments of knowledge in different universities and many technological institutions, all to study and understand the subtle laws of material nature, and there are medical research laboratories to study the physiological condition of the material body. But there is no institution to study the constitutional position of the soul. This is the greatest drawback of materialistic civilisation.
People are enamoured with the glittering manifestation of the material body, but they do not try to understand the basic principle behind it. The body looks very beautiful, working with full energy and exhibiting great traits of talent and wonderful brainwork. But as soon as the soul leaves the body, this bodily lustre is lost. Even the great scientists who have offered many wonderful scientific contributions have been unable to unravel this phenomenon.
The story of liquid beauty
Once upon a time, a prince met a very beautiful young girl. He visited her house to see her, but he discovered that she was very chaste.
The prince wanted to marry her, but she didn’t want to marry him. So she said to him, “You want to marry me, you are attracted by my beauty, so I will distill my beauty for you in the next 10 days.” So the prince agreed. The beautiful girl continued, “If you still want to take me as your wife, then you can take me.” The prince replied, “All right, that’s fine; I’ll come back in 10 days and certainly I’ll take you as my wife, my beautiful young maiden.”
As soon he left, the girl started to take very strong purgatives. She kept all the body fluids this produced in a big pot. She didn’t eat anything. So within 10 days, her beautiful body had shrivelled. She was gray, skinny and weak. One would not recognise her as the same person.
After 10 days, the prince visited. She opened the door for him. When the prince saw her, he said, “I have come to see one very beautiful lady who I am about to marry.” So the girl said, “I am that beautiful young lady.” He replied, “No it isn’t true. How could it be possible?” She said, “Yes I am that beautiful young lady. I have distilled my beauty; come and see it.” She took the prince to the place where she was keeping the big pot containing all the body fluids the purgatives produced and she said, “Here is my beauty.”
This is the story of liquid beauty. In reality, the material body is simply a bag of pus, stool, urine, blood, mucus, so many horrible things. And we are simply attracted to the beautiful skin, and as soon as the skin is no longer beautiful, we are not attracted any more.
Everything is based on the skin, and the skin is temporary. We can never be satisfied or happy with a relationship based on the skin because our skin is a very temporary thing. But we are not the body; we are the spirit, the soul. The soul is eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss (sat cit ananda).
The Krishna consciousness movement, therefore, is trying to teach this science of the soul, not in a dogmatic way, but through a complete scientific and philosophical understanding. At the background of this body, you can find the soul, whose presence is perceivable by dint of consciousness. When we come to know that soul, the door to real eternal happiness will open.