Choosing a Spiritual Master
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better judgment, chosen to completely identify ourselves with this present material existence, our sufferings have multiplied according to the mexorable law of birth and death, with its consequent diseases and anxieties. These sufferings cannot be really mitigated by any provision of material happiness, because matter and spirit are completely different elements. It is just as if you took an aquatic animal out of water and put it on the land, supplying all manner of happiness possible on land. The deadly sufferings of the animal are not capable of being relieved at all until it is taken out of its foreign environment. Spirit and matter are completely contradictory things. All of us are spiritual entities. We cannot have perfect happiness, which is our birthright, however much we may meddle with the affairs of mundane things. Perfect happiness can be ours only when we are restored to our natural state of spiritual existence. This is the distinctive message of our ancient Indian civilization, this is the message of the  Gūtā , this is the message of the  Vedas  and the  Purāṇas , and this is the message of all the real  ācāryas , including our present  Ācāryadeva , in the line of Lord Caitanya.
Gentlemen, although it is imperfectly that we have been enabled by his grace to understand the sublime messages of our  Ācāryadeva ,  Oṁ Viṣṇupāda Paramahaṁsa Parivrājakācārya Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktisiddhānta Srasvatī Goswami Mahārāja , we must admit that we have realized definitely that the divine message from his holy lips is the congenial thing for suffering humanity. All of us should hear him patiently. If we listen to the transcendental sound without unnecessary opposition, he will surely have mercy upon us. The  Ācārya 's message is to take us back to our original home, back to God. Let me repeat, therefore, that we should hear him patiently, follow him in the measure of our conviction, and bow down at his lotus feet for releasing us from our present causeless unwillingness for serving the Absolute and all souls.
From the  Gūtā  we learn that even after the destruction of the body, the  āmā , or the soul, is not destroyed; he is always the same, always new and fresh. Fire cannot burn him, water cannot dissolve him, the air cannot dry him up, and the sword cannot kill him. He is everlasting and eternal, and this is also confirmed in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  [10.84.13]:
yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke sva-dhiḥ kalatrādiṣu bhauma ijya-dhiḥ yat-tīrtha-buddhiḥ salile na karhicij janeṣv abhijñeṣu sa eva go-kharaḥ