There are four causes of suffering, four real problems of life. One is birth, where we get a particular type of body, and as soon as we get that body, we have a fate that comes with it. We have our genetic inheritance -- the body is going to be male or female, and then we have to act in a certain way accordingly. So many possibilities are cut off or established. We're born into a certain family. Maybe they're rich, or maybe they're poor. Maybe the body I have is black. Then I have so many problems and difficulties, or opportunities that I have to take up. Or maybe I'm born in a white body, and then I've got another whole situation to deal with. Somehow or other we get this body, and all of a sudden we've got a history. All of a sudden, we find out what people were doing to each other five hundred or one thousand years ago now suddenly has something to do with us. People love me or hate me just because I happen to have a certain kind of body. I'm born into a body that is labeled "Croatian," and thousands of Serbs are ready to kill me. Whatever it may be. As soon as I take this particular body and identify with it, then all this is mine. So many troubles. This is birth.
And we don't really know how we got here. All of a sudden we come to consciousness and find ourselves in the middle of this play, like we've been dropped into this ongoing drama. "This is my mother. This is my father. These are my brothers, my sisters. This is what is happening." And here you are. This is your role. Here is your part. You don't want to play it, but you have to -- male, female, black, white, this, that, the other thing. Maybe your body looks good, maybe it's attractive to other people. Maybe it's not. Whatever it is, you've got to deal with it. All this comes with birth. So all these sets of circumstances, this is called conditioning. You become conditioned. And you never think why I'm in this body instead of that body, or how I got here rather than there. You're sort of thrown into the middle of this life. All this happens with birth. You've got all these problems right off the bat. Birth is suffering.
Then in the course of time, there is disease. Nobody is getting around that one. There is always going to be disease. Bodies are going to not function right. Nobody has an automobile that doesn't have to be repaired fairly frequently. Sometimes it gets smashed up. The same thing happens with this machine, the body. It is a machine that is put together with parts, and it is subject to all kinds of disturbances all the time. You may try to take care of it and keep it going, but it will always get messed up eventually. In the course of time it gets old. No matter what you do, no matter how nice or together it is, it falls apart. It stops working. It becomes an unpleasant place to be. Unpleasant for you and quite often unpleasant for other people, too. And you become unpopular over the course of time, unless you happen to be rich. Then you can buy some friends for a while.
Then there is finally death. You become attached to the body, thinking it is you. You try to take care of it, having all your happiness depend upon it, and finally it is annihilated. So these are the problems -- birth, death, old age and disease. Everybody has these problems. And because of these problems, no one can really be happy in this material world. It's not possible.
But these things only happen to the body. The soul has nothing to do with the body, except for the fact that we've been associating with it and now we identify ourselves with the body. We acquire what is known as a false ego. When we look in the mirror, we think "this is me." That false ego is the source of all our problems. We falsely identify the self with the material body. We are eternal, but we think we are temporary. We think that we are going to be destroyed in the course of time. But the soul does not go through changes like that. He's steady. He's fixed. The soul isn't born, but because he takes on a material body, the body takes birth. The soul does not take birth, nor does the soul die. But the body that we have associated ourselves with, that is what undergoes the birth and the death. We have no birth, therefore we have no past, present or future. The soul is timeless. This is the nature of the soul. The influence of illusion is that we are deluded about who we are. We are caught in the grips of the machinery of material nature. Material nature is like a big machine. This body is a little machine. We are in the grips of the machinery. We are not machines. We are alive, but the body is a machine.
So wherever there is a living being there is also consciousness. People sometimes think animals aren't conscious, but they are. Dogs, cats -- even trees have a very dim consciousness. The consciousness is sometimes brighter or dimmer, but it's there. Somewhere even in a tree there is a living being undergoing experiences. But when you come to the human form, that consciousness is more uncovered. A dog doesn't ask himself "Why am I here, what am I doing, what is my position in the world as a dog?" They don't question themselves. But human beings worry. The first thing we worry about is "Why do I have to die?" We wonder about that. That is because we have a more uncovered consciousness. It is there for a reason, there for a purpose. It's not that we have this higher consciousness for no reason whatsoever. It's not just some accident.
But sometimes this higher consciousness gets in our way, because most people spend their lives trying to become unconscious. Because if you're really conscious of the true nature of the material world, then things get very uncomfortable. If you start to think of what this material world is like, it is very, very hard to be happy, because you can see that actually the material world is a gigantic slaughterhouse. There is a vast mortality going on around us all the time. Everyone around us in a few years is going to be dead. We are actually living in a city of corpses, briefly animated, flapping in the wind for a few days, and then it's all over. It's a pretty horrible picture. The death rate is in this place is 100%. None of us are going to get out alive. We used to see these old movies on television, like "Death Row," where all the inmates would be freaking out because one by one they'd all have to take the long walk to the execution chamber. So we try not to think about it too much. We try to make ourselves unconscious. Why do you think people are taking intoxicants all the time? Because it kills your awareness. You take some alcohol and you become stupid -- that is what you want. Why do you think people watch television all the time? It makes them dull and stupid. Or they gamble in a narrow, excited consciousness, going through little ups and downs that have nothing to do with anything. To forget about who you are, what you're doing and why you're here, people have to become unconscious. Because if you really look at the material world, and if you identify yourself with the material body, you'll freak out.
Soldiers in warfare, they never get over it, because what happens is that when they are in battle, they see it is just normal life sped up. Then they think whenever there is peacetime that it is just an illusion, and at any moment, reality can assert itself again. That is what they see, because in wartime, everyone around you is dying and you can die at any minute. People can't take it for very long. If they don't become physical casualties, they become psychological casualties. But normal life is the same thing, just a little slower, a little more hidden from view. And if you think about it for too long, you become a psychological casualty. So we basically don't think about it. We sit in a field of corpses and say "This is nice -- have some more tea." We pretend not to see what is going on around us. So you make yourself unconscious. Of course, then you don't really live either. You want to become unconscious of birth, death, old age and disease because you can't stand it, but then you're not really alive, because consciousness itself is a pleasure. It's good to be conscious, but people are afraid of it, because the contents of it is so very gruesome. We feel very uncomfortable with the fact of death because it is not a fact. We do not die. We are eternal. Yet because we have identified ourselves with the material body, we have accepted this illusion of death, and therefore we suffer. Real life begins when we rid ourselves of this illusion.
In the material world, we think we are in danger of death. We think we are in danger of disease. Everything that happens to the body, we are thinking "This is happening to me." That is why everyone gets so weird the older they get. They get all cockeyed and twisted and strange, because they have been through so much, and they have accepted that "This is happening to me." For the most part, they can't stand it. They don't like what has happened to their lives. Even if they are superficially successful, they see at the end there is death. Everything you've worked for or tried for is taken away. Actually, the more successful you are the worse it is, because in the end, the rug is pulled out from under you. You have to give it all up. The more you've made, the more you have to lose. Either way you're a loser. Everyone loses. You die and the cockroaches die, and what is the difference? You're both dead. One's a big mess and one's a little mess, that's all. Basically that's what happens. From the point of view of the whole universe, between our life and the life of a cockroach there's not much difference. We just had a little more fanfare about it. Still, death comes with his boot and "splat" -- you're just a splotch. After all the so-called accomplishments like "I was a big wheel, I was president of the United States, I got so many bowling trophies . . ." -- whatever it may be that you're into, in the end you're just a nasty stain that someone has to hold their nose and clean up. What was it all for? What was it all about? Zip. Nothing. You could have been a cockroach for all the difference it made. In fact, the way most people live, they will be cockroaches.
That is why we have to use our lives for some purpose. We have invested all our energy in temporary things, and put our false ego into it . . . "This is my body, and the things in relationship to this body are mine. This is my achievement. This is my money. This is my fame. This is my glory." If you put everything into these investments, it's all going to be erased. Wiped out. Destroyed. Annihilated. Flushed down the toilet of reality. All that suffering, and all the work you have to do in order to get anywhere in this material world, and then it's all for nothing. So of course people have to make up fairy tales . . . "It's not all for nothing. It's important. See? My name is in the newspaper. So many people love me." They can make up little fairy tales, but actually it doesn't really matter.
Our lives can matter if we do something with them. The fact is, our business as human beings is to solve the problems of human life -- birth, death, disease and old age. They can be solved by restoring ourselves, coming to our real consciousness, waking ourselves up from this total nightmare of material existence. That is the real achievement. Once we have arrived at the human form of life, we do not have to die anymore. If we haven't come to that position, or at least made significant progress towards that end, then we've wasted our time. We could have been a cockroach for all the difference it made.
So people don't know what to do with their lives. It's a crime. It's the biggest crime against humanity. People are born in this civilization, and all they are taught is how to become consumers. You're born in the human life and you could have achieved something. You could have achieved freedom from the cycle of birth and death. But instead, we live just like animals or even worse. That is the crime. We could have solved all the problems, but instead we just get deeper entangled in the illusion of material existence. When we were born, somebody should have said to us "Welcome to the human form of life. Now your business is self realization. If you live your life properly, you can actually restore yourself to spiritual consciousness, become free from all suffering and put an end to birth, death, old age, disease. You can fulfill your human potential." That is what our parents are supposed to do for us. In fact, no one should become a parent, a teacher or a political leader if that person cannot save his dependents from death. People have taken these positions, and they are all incompetent.
Generation after generation is born in ignorance, lives in ignorance and dies in ignorance. We've lost human culture. We are now in a civilization of somewhat polished animal life. Animals eat, sleep, mate and defend, and that exhausts the inventory of their activities. Eating, sleeping, mating and defending, and that's about it. We spend a lot of money on it, and it is really sophisticated. For our defending we have so many really nice, modern weapons. For our mating we have the latest in sex technology. For our sleeping we have our waterbeds and our air-conditioned apartments. And for our eating we have such nice restaurants, food processors and lean cuisines -- but it is animal life. Yet we are so proud of it, of what we can do and what we can achieve -- really great eating, really great sleeping, really great mating and really great defending. It's animal life, that's all. Yet we call it the advancement of civilization.
Human life is meant for self realization. It implies that we don't know who we are, and that is the basic problem. We've identified ourselves with our material bodies. We've seized them. We've taken possession of them. We groom them, stroke them, care for them, feed them, become very attached to them . . . but it's not us. By identifying the self with the material body, we have become conditioned and limited. It's just like being in prison. We are imprisoned by birth, death, old age and disease. We don't want that. We are eternal and we want to live eternally. We keep trying to shape up the material body so it can stay young, alive, vibrant and fresh forever, because that is the way we really are. But we are trying to make this happen in a place where it's not going to happen. We are trying to be alive in the land of death. It won't work. We are looking for eternal happiness in a place where everything is temporary. It's not going to happen. There is only frustration.
Every living entity has got the will to survive, and not a single one succeeds in self-preservation, because they think the self is the body. It never works. We want to preserve and protect the self because actually we are eternal. This business of birth and death is an anomaly. It doesn't belong to us. We feel it. We have this instinct that this is not supposed to be happening to us. Something is really wrong here. I have to grow old, I have to become diseased, I have to die. Something is really wrong. That is the protest of the soul. It is saying "Why is this outrage happening to me?" But it is an illusion we have imposed upon ourselves due to our desire to enjoy in this world.
It's a really bum deal. The bum deal is that everything we think is going to bring us happiness, whether it's enjoying a stick of Juicy Fruit gum, or enjoying sex with this or that attractive person, or having so much money, whatever it may be that we think is going to bring us happiness is actually the cause of our suffering. Therefore the harder we try for happiness by these means, the more we are going to be stretched on the rack of this world. Look at the people. Look at their eyes when they are past sixty or seventy. Do you see them dancing in the streets, happy and joyful? People do not become joyful, happy and carefree. That is only possible if you are not involved with this material body. Otherwise, it is nothing but worries, and they increase as time goes on. The only carefree position is the position by which I understand I am a spirit soul. Through Krishna Consciousness you can experience yourself as you really are. That is real freedom.
