BENGALURU: One gets caught up in the illusion of - I and mine. My wife, my family, my country and one works for the satisfaction of his aham mameti. The center becomes I, aham - my satisfaction - that is the most degraded form of selfishness. Some cross those boundaries and think in terms of the world at large. People like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa are known for universal brotherhood.
If you see our lives, the center point is - my happiness. Even when we come to spiritual life it is about my pleasure. Some services give me pleasure and some services don’t. Whereas when we get spiritually advanced the center becomes Krishna. The secret is to act for the satisfaction of the Lord. Arjuna did not want to fight against his kinsmen, but when he understood that Krishna wanted the fight, he fought for the satisfaction of the Lord. We cannot be happy when the center is I, when you shift the center to Krishna, in misery or happiness, one can be happy.
That action of ours which leads us to bhakti, satisfaction of the Lord, is the highest. And all other activities are called - srama eva hi kevalam. People are engaged in various activities - accumulating wealth, properties, etc., but none of these will come with us. What goes with the soul is our spiritual credits - the actions which have invoked the satisfaction of the Lord. Therefore all the shastras say that in the human form of life we have the ability to accumulate these credits.
Sometimes a thought can cross in our mind that the Lord knows the future, it is fixed. It is not fixed because based on how we are exercising our free will today, our future is generated. The Lord is there as paramatma in our heart and he knows how we are exercising our free will to feel, think and act. So when the Lord saw that the tapasvi is so eager in anticipation of His darshan, the Lord was moved. So likewise, each one of us have an opportunity to demonstrate to the Lord that we are eager to please him. In many places Prabhupada says - whether one is doing pujari service or cleaning the floor in the temple - from the perspective of the Lord, they both are same because ultimately both of them are trying to satisfy the Lord. In material estimation we do a very big service, but Lord is not satisfied, if it is backed by - I did it, ahankara, ego.