Monday Morning Greetings 2025 #49 – Until We Got Nothing but God

I attended some very good lectures at the Govardhan Retreat Center this week. Many good points were made but one stood out.

“Old age takes away everything until we are left with nothing but Him.”[1]

How true! The nature of this world, especially old age, seems to rob us of everything superficial and temporary until our only recourse is to take shelter of Him, who is our only solace. A faithful theist sees all this as mercy.

As I further contemplated this point, I realized how much this sober description of how the world works to liberate us from our false identity. This is a foundational point of Vaiṣṇava theology. In fact, it is the very definition of mukti given in the Bhāgavatam:

“Liberation is the permanent situation of the form of the living entity after he gives up the changeable gross and subtle material bodies.” Bhāgavatam 2.10.6

A true devotee thus determinedly tries to shed or purify material designations and consciously embrace eternal identity:

“I am not a brāhmaṇa, I am not a kṣatriya, I am not a vaiśya or a śūdra. Nor am I a brahmacārī, a householder, a vānaprastha or a sannyāsī. I identify myself only as the servant of the servant of the servant of the lotus feet of Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the maintainer of the gopīs.” Padyāvalī 74

The method of shedding this false conception of life is to engage the senses in the service of God. In fact, it is the very definition of bhakti:

“Bhakti, or devotional service, means engaging all our senses in the service of the Lord, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the master of all the senses. When the spirit soul renders service unto the Supreme, there are two side effects. One is freed from all material designations, and one’s senses are purified simply by being employed in the service of the Lord.” Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu 1.1.12.

And only when one does this can one sincerely and with feeling approach God:

“My Lord, Your Lordship can easily be approached, but only by those who are materially exhausted. One who is on the path of [material] progress, trying to improve himself with respectable parentage, great opulence, high education and bodily beauty, cannot approach You with sincere feeling.” Bhāgavatam 1.8.26

Let me finish today with my own “until we got nothing but God” experience:

My world was moving rapidly away from how I wanted it to be. It seemed all I had left was God. Perhaps this was over twenty years ago. I took shelter of that quaint isolated cabin in Gītā-nagarī on the river where the saintly Satsvarūpa Mahārāja wrote Śrīla Prabhupāda’s biography. For days I chanted all day. A strong realization came:

“What I was doing, serving God by chanting His names, and the identity of the person doing it (I am the eternal soul who is the servant of God), does not end with this body. All the other things I was doing for pleasure based on the false ego (I am this body) ends with death and is filled with duality and fear. I was suddenly imbued with fearlessness. My petty problems began to seem superficial. I felt great relief.”

Until we got nothing but God. What mercy!

[1] From a lecture by Śrīmān Bhūrijana dāsa.