76 Sri Isopanigad

and Lord Krsna by His plenary expansions is the dominating
Figure on each and every one of them.

No one can predominate over Krsna. And anyone trying to
predominate over material Nature is called a conditioned soul,
being subject to the laws of material Nature, suffering the pangs
of repeated birth and death. The Lord comes here to re-establish
the principles of religion, and the basic principle is to develop
the attitude of surrender toward Him. The Lord teaches this in
the last portion of the Bhagavad-gita, but foolish men have
tactfully misinterpreted this prime teaching, and have misled
the people in diverse ways. They have been urged to open
hospitals, but are not interested in educating themselves to
enter into the spiritual kingdom by devotional service. They have
been taught to take interest only in temporary relief work, which
can never bring about real happiness for the living entity. They
start varieties of public and semi-governmental institutions for
tackling the devastating power of Nature. But they don’t know
how to pacify insurmountable Nature.

Many men are advertised as greal scholars of the Bhagavad-gita,
but they overlook the factual method presented there to pacify
material Nature. Powerful Nature can only be pacified by the
awakening of God consciousness, as is clearly mentioned in the
Gita.

Sri Isopanisad, however, teaches in this mantra that one must
know both the sambhuti and the vindsa perfectly, side by side.
By knowing the vinasa alone—the temporary material manifesta-
tion—you cannot save anything: In the course of Nature, there is
devastation at every moment. No one can be saved from these
devastations by any efforts of hospilal-opening. They can be
saved only by complete knowledge of the eternal life of bliss
and awareness. The whole Vedic scheme is meant to educate
men in this art of achieving eternal life. People are often mis-
guided by other, temporarily attractive things based on sense
gratification, but that sort of service which thus misleads them
is most degraded.
