Returning to the Eternal Religion
251
There are two kinds of activities—good and bad. If you act nicely and perform pious activities, then you get good fortune, and if you act sinfully, then you have to suffer. Therefore Śukadeva Goswami says:
tasmāt puraivāśv iha pāpa-niṣkṛtau yateta mṛtyor avipadyatātmanā doṣasya dṛṣṭvā guru-lāghavaṁ yathā bhiṣak cikitseta rujāṁ nidānavit  [ Bhāg. 6.1.8 ]
There are different kinds of atonement. If you commit some sin and counteract it by something else, that is atonement. There are examples of this in the Christian Bible. Śukadeva Goswami says, “You should know that you are responsible, and according to the gravity of sinful life, you should accept some type of atonement as described in the  śāstras , the scriptures.”
Actually, just as when one is diseased he must go to a doctor and pay doctor bills as a form of atonement, according to the Vedic way of life there is a class of  brāhmaṇas  to whom one should go for the prescribed atonement according to the sins one commits.
Śukadeva Goswami says that one has to execute the prescribed atonement according to the gravity of one’s sinful life. He continues the example:  doṣasya dṛṣṭvā guru-lāghavaṁ yathā bhiṣak cikitseta rujāṁ nidānavit . When you consult a physician, he prescribes an inexpensive medicine or a costly medicine according to the gravity of the disease. If you simply have a headache, he may prescribe an aspirin, but if you have something very severe, he immediately prescribes a surgical operation which will cost a thousand dollars. Similarly, sinful life is a diseased condition, so one must follow the prescribed cure to become healthy.
Acceptance of the chain of birth and death is a diseased condition of the soul. The soul has no birth and death and no disease because it is spirit. Kṛṣṇa says in the  Bhagavad-gītā  [2.20]:  na jāyate , the soul has no birth, and  mrīyate , it has no death.  Nityaḥ śāśvato ‘yaṁ purāṇol na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre . The soul is eternal and everlasting. It is not lost with the dissolution of this body.  Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre .  Na hanyate  means that it is not killed or destroyed, even after the destruction of this body.
The missing point of modern civilization is that there is no educational system to instruct people on what happens after death. Thus we have the most defective education because without this knowledge of what