Why & from where we fell down – Goloka, Vaikunta or Brhamajyoti?
Question: How do we fall down from the spiritual world, because Sri Krishna says in BG (8-15) that once we reach His abode we never come down to this material world?
HH Jayapataka Swami replies:
Well, once we go back, we do not come down again; we make a mistake like that only once.
(If a Sinner thinks Krishna while dying, will he go back to Godhead? READ HERE!)
In the spiritual world somebody said, “Don’t go to the material world. it is a heavy place, you’ll suffer there…” But having no experience of suffering in the spiritual world, we do not know what suffering is.
“What is suffering..what is suffering?” We are curious to know what suffering is. Swooooosh(Maharaj gesticulates our coming down from the spiritual world…) then, “Wow! How to we get out of this place?” Then, once we go back, we tell everyone, “Don’t go there!!! It’s a horrible place”
Everybody has their own particular history how they got here. it is not exactly the same. Somebody insisted that they really want to come back.
Prabhupada said, “You really want to come back?”
But nobody wants to come back. It is a one-time thing. Once we go back we do not want to come here again; we have learnt our lesson.
(Is Grahastha life Impure & Inferior? Can a Grahastha go back to Krishna? READ HERE!)
Bhaktivinod Thakur said that we should not be worrying about how we got here; we should be worrying about how to get out of here.
If we get dropped off a boat or a big cruise, and someone comes to pick us up from the shark infested waters and calls out, “ Get on, I am here to save you”, would you say, “First I want to find out why I fell! Unless I find that out I am not leaving this water!”
We will first get back on the ship. Once we are there we find out if somebody knocked us off or we tripped or whatever.
Right now, we do not have a clue as to what it is like in the spiritual world. When we get back we will remember everything – we will know what exactly happened and how we got here. Right now that is not very relevant.
In the spiritual world, life is eternal. We could fall in the material world for billions of births, but it is just a few seconds in the spiritual world.
(How many Qualities required to go back to Goloka for humans and gods? READ HERE!)
By the time we get back from where we had fallen, it seems like just a few seconds or minutes. But when we are down here (in the material world) time is a whole different story. It is something like we are having dinner at a restaurant in a group and someone excuses himself to go to the rest room. He returns in ten- fifteen minutes and continues the meal with everybody else.
Exactly what happened, what we did to get here, where exactly we were – Vaikunta or Goloka?
Usually it is not from Goloka, probably Vaikunta or Brhamajyoti. There are many books written on this subject. But in a few words, we do not want to get too hung up about it, as we are never going to get a hundred percent right answer.
We know we are here, we know there is a spiritual world and we do have a free will which we have misused (that is why we are here).
The real priority now is how to get back; we really do not know how we got here. We really cannot figure it out even if we were told, because we do not have a spiritual vision right now.
(THINKING KRISHNA AT THE TIME OF DEATH TO GO BACK TO HIM! READ HERE!)