22
Elevation to Krṣṇa Consciousness
said, “The city is made by man, but the country is made by God.” The countryside is also full of natural variegatedness in a crude form, whereas in the city this variegatedness is displayed in a modernized scientific manner. Poets like Cowper are attracted to the variegatedness of the country, and prosaic people who live in the city are attracted by the colorful varieties manufactured by man. In any case, it is variegatedness which attracts people both to the country and the city. This is the proper explanation of the verse of the  Vedānta-sūtra .
Many so-called  svāmīs  who are so frequently attracted by the cities often seek a kind of pleasure in society and feminine friendship. Generally they are not attracted by the natural beauty of the woods, although they may assume the dress of a man who is meant to live in the woods. Such  svāmīs  are seeking varieties of enjoyment in matter because they have no information of the variegatedness of spiritual life. On the one hand they enjoy variegatedness in matter, and on the other they deny spiritual variegatedness to the Absolute. Because they are pledged to the theory of monism and impersonalism, they deny that whatever pertains to matter can pertain also to spirit. According to them, spirit is the denial of matter. The fact is, however, that spirit is not a negation of matter, but matter is a perverted reflection of spirit.
The real pleasure of variety exists in spirit without deluding relativity. On the other hand, inert matter, in association with dynamic spirit, manifests a false representation or a perverted reflection of that very