A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada - In Search of the Ultimate Goal of Life

Sri Ramananda Samvada
In Search of the Ultimate Goal of Life

By His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Introduction by Swami B.G. Narasingha

In Search of the Ultimate Goal of Life was written by our Divine Guide and Master, Om Visnupada Paramahamsa Parivrajakacarya Astottara-sata Sri Srimad A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada just after his entering the renounced order of life in the autumn of 1959. At that time, Srila Prabhupada was living in Sri Vrndavana-dhama and would sometimes practice madhukari. Madhukari means to collect a little food door to door for ones maintenance just as the bee collects a little pollen flower to flower. Srila Prabhupada, however, often requested the householders whom he called upon to give pen and paper for his writing rather than the rice, dahl, and chapatis traditionally sought by holy men practicing madhukari.

On those papers that he received as alms, Srila Prabhupada wrote page after page, preparing his messages of Godhead for the world. Some of the manuscripts he published in his Back to Godhead magazine, and others, like Easy Journey to Other Planets, he printed as small booklets. Although unable to publish everything he wrote, Srila Prabhupada nevertheless continued to write and stockpile his manuscripts. Unfortunately, some of the early writings of His Divine Grace were lost after Srila Prabhupada left Sri Vrndavana-dhama to conduct his worldwide campaign of spreading Krsna consciousness.

In 1977, just on the eve of our Divine Masters departure for the eternal abode of Sri Sri Radha-Krsna, I found a handwritten manuscript at the bottom of an old metal trunk in the Radha-Damodara temple. The handwriting was easily recognizable as Srila Prabhupadas. After the disappearance of His Divine Grace, I carried the manuscript with me wherever I went, showing it to interested devotees. On several occasions, my godbrothers suggested that I publish the manuscript for wide-scale distribution.

The original manuscript of more than two hundred pages was entitled Lord Caitanya: His Sannyasa and Sankirtana Movement. Unfortunately, 40 pages were missing from the middle section. For several years, we searched for those missing pages but were unable to find them. The manuscript was therefore divided into two parts. The first part describes Lord Caitanyas traveling from Navadvipa-dhama to Jagannatha Puri immediately after His accepting the sannyasa order, the Lords visiting the temple of Ksiracora Gopinatha, the pastime of the Gopinatha Deity stealing the offering of condensed milk to satisfy His pure devotee Sripad Madhavendra Puri, and the pastime of the Saksi Gopala Deity appearing as a witness to defeat the atheists. The second part of the manuscript describes the talks between Lord Caitanya and Ramananda Raya when the two met on the banks of the river Godavari in South India.

In the second part of the manuscript, Srila Prabhupada preaches very enthusiastically - discussing the varnasrama system, chastising the materialists, condemning the impersonalist conception, exposing the imitationists, praising the virtues and characteristics of pure devotion, and entering into confidential descriptions of the nature of rasa-tattva, the transcendental mellowness of spontaneous love of Godhead.

Part 1

While on tour of South India, Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu arrived on the banks of the river Godavari, where He met Sri Ramananda Raya, a great devotee of Sri Krsna. Lord Caitanya expressed a deep desire to hear about Sri Krsna from the lips of Ramananda Raya and requested that Ramananda recite a verse from the revealed scriptures concerning the ultimate goal of life. Ramananda then replied:

"If a person performs the prescribed duties of his social position, he awakens his original Krsna consciousness."

Supporting his statement, Ramananda then cited a verse from the Visnu Purana (3.8.9):

visnur aradhyate pantha

nanyat tat-dosa-karanam

"The Personality of Godhead Lord Visnu is worshiped by the proper performance of prescribed duties in the system of varna and asrama. There is no other way to satisfy the Personality of Godhead. One must be situated in the institution of the four varnas and asramas."

Varna and Asrama Jeopardized

Hearing this statement from Ramananda Raya, Lord Caitanya replied that the system of varnasrama-dharma was external and thus it was not acceptable. Lord Caitanya also rejected the statement of Ramananda because the system of varnasrama-dharma is now jeopardized by the influence of the present age of Kali, the age of quarrel and fighting.

In the Bhagavad-gita, the Personality of Godhead declares that the varnasrama system is created by Him, although He is aloof from such a system. Because the varnasrama system is a creation of the Personality of Godhead, it is not possible to do away with it. However, the nefarious activities of the people of the age of Kali can jeopardize the varnasrama system. We have purposely used the word jeopardized because the whole system still exists but in a reflected form.

In the varnasrama system of social management, the aim of life is to attain the favor of Lord Visnu, the all-pervading Personality of Godhead. Unfortunately, at the present moment the aim of life is to displease the all-pervading Godhead and thereby suffer perpetually under the laws of material nature. The goal of the varnasrama system is to peacefully perform the prescribed duties of humanity and thereby achieve the highest success, namely the favor of Lord Visnu. But when the aim of life is the planned exploitation of material nature, all life is jeopardized on account of the human race fighting with the laws of nature.

The arrangement of nature is so strict that even a slight violation of the laws of nature can do great harm to a conditioned human being. Human beings must always consider themselves to be living under the stringent laws of nature. They must always remember that their plans for breaking natures laws will bring about tremendous hardship. Regrettably, human beings under the deluding influence of material nature want to lord it over the laws of nature, and, as such, they are more and more entangled in conditioned life. Foolish human beings do not see the defect of their so-called advancement of knowledge. The most difficult problems of life are birth, death, old age, and disease. These four problems are a permanent settlement for the conditioned soul. Human beings want to lord it over the laws of nature but their so-called advancement of scientific knowledge cannot solve these problems.

A continuous increase of world population to the proportion of three births in every second has puzzled the brains of the leaders of society. To solve the problem of birth, they put forward rascal plans of birth control under the name of family planning, yet the problem is unsolved. By the laws of nature, the population is ever-increasing in spite of all their scientific plans and schemes. On the whole, the problem of birth has remained unsolved.

Mother Natures Atom Bomb

The death problem is also not solved. None of the scientific knowledge of the human being has solved the death problem. The advancement of material knowledge can simply accelerate the problem of dying; nobody can save a person from the cruel hands of death. The discovery of the atom bomb and similar other great inventions of the fertile brain of the scientist has simply increased the death problem. The foolish scientists do not know that the atom bomb is actually the scheme of Mother Nature, who is sure to kill the demoniac population when it increases disproportionately.

Modern economists also believe in the laws of nature and confirm that unrestricted birth increases in the human population will certainly result in famine, pestilence, epidemics, and war. So, the so-called civilized states plan of killing human beings by atomic and hydrogen bombs is actually the plan of Mother Nature to punish the foolish miscreants.