So this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is trying to educate men that "After all, you are servant. You have to serve somebody. You are now serving your senses. Now just divert your service to Kṛṣṇa, or God, and you will be happy." That's all. The service, constitutional position, will not change. That is my position. In Bengali there is a proverb, ḍheṅki svarge gelo dhana bhange.(?) The ḍheṅki that's a wooden machine for husking grain. So I do not know whether it is used in your country. It is a big. . . It is peddled by the legs, and the grains are taken away the skin. So if this ḍheṅki this machine, is sent to heavenly planet, what he will do? The same business: "dag-dag-dag," that's all. So either you go to the heavenly planet or you remain here or you remain in animal kingdom, your. . . Even the trees, they are standing—they are giving service. They are giving you fruits, they are giving you flowers, and if you want his service, by the wood, by the body, you cut; it will not protest. "All right, you take my body." So that is the way to understand that we must render service to somebody higher. So why not go to the Supreme, the great—"God is great"—and render service? This is Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Then we'll be happy. You can go on giving service in this material world under so many designation, but you will never be happy, and the person to whom you are giving service, he will be not happy. This is material world. Try to understand.
Therefore one devotee, he says, kāmādīnāṁ katidhā kathidāḥ na pālitā durnideśās teṣāṁ mayi na karuṇā jātā na trapā nopaśāntiḥ, sāmprataṁ labdha-buddhis tvām āyātaḥ niyuṅkṣvātma-dāsye (CC Madhya 22.16). This is called good sense. The purport of this verse is, "My dear Lord, I have served my senses in the form of lusty desires and anger and so many things, kāma, krodha, lobha, greediness, and. . ." My senses are, means, these things. "So I have served life-long, but neither they are satisfied, neither I am satisfied." Teṣām. "And they are not merciful. I have served them up to the age of eighty years, but still they want service from me. If I want to retire, they will not agree." If somebody says to his wife that "I have served so much in the family. Now let me go to the Kṛṣṇa conscious temple. I serve there," the wife will disagree, "No. What service you have done? You have got do the duty—this duty, that duty, that duty." So it will never end, even if you give lifelong service. Just like I have given the example: Gandhi gave lifelong service according to his own. Hitler gave lifelong service. Napoleon gave lifelong service. But their ultimate end was very, very regrettable. Nobody realized his service. He was punished.
This is material world. We have to understand very clearly, and we have to take lesson from this verse that we may go on serving our lusty desire, greediness, anger, and so on, so on, but we will never come to the end and become happy. When one comes to the point that "I have rendered service in so many ways. So neither I am happy nor the person to whom I have served, they are happy. Then what is the remedy?" That is discussed in the Vedānta-sūtra philosophy. Athāto brahma jijñāsā: "Now inquire about your real master, Brahman, or the Supreme, the great, the Absolute Truth." That is required. So we should be prepared like that, that we have served our propensities, different propensities, lusty desire, greediness, anger—kāma, krodha, lobha, mohaḥ. Mohaḥ means illusion. I am doing something wrong, and I am thinking it is all right. This is called illusion, mohaḥ. Mātsarya. Mātsarya means envious, to become envious. Every one of us, either individually or socially or community-wise or nationally, we are all envious. The Russians, they are envious of the Americans, and the Americans, they are envious of the Russians. Similarly, everyone. That is the nature. So we are serving all these propensities. Now this is called pravṛtti-mārga, progress towards sense gratification in different ways. And if we stop that and make progress to our real self-realization, real happiness, that is called nivṛtti-mārga.