Live the Bhāgavatam · SB 11.28.3
Mukti· LiberationFalse Ego Dreams of Mastering Nature
“Just as the embodied spirit soul loses external consciousness when his senses are overcome by the illusion of dreaming or the deathlike state of deep sleep, so a person experiencing material duality must encounter illusion and death.”
What the purport teaches
- Dreaming and deep sleep illustrate the loss of external consciousness. Similarly, seeing in terms of material duality leads to illusion and death.
- Impelled by false ego, one imagines a material world without the Personality of Godhead. One then makes plans to dominate nature and exploit her resources.
- Conditioned souls imagine themselves wonderful enjoyers of material nature. Yet nature’s laws overturn their plans, and death ends their imagined mastery.
Try this today
Examine one plan today and identify any assumption that you can control or enjoy nature independently of the Personality of Godhead.
Ask yourself
Where am I assuming that nature will remain under my control?
Carry the question through the day, then answer it in your own words before sleep.
From Canto 10, chapter 14 onward, the translation and purports were completed by Śrīla Prabhupāda's disciples after his departure, and published by the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.