250 THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION

caham hrdi sannivisto: ‘‘I am sitting in everyone’s heart.’ Mattah smrtir
jnanam apohanam ca: ‘‘From Me come remembrance, knowledge, and
forgetfulness.”’

In this way Krsna gives us a chance. If you want Krsna, then He will
give you a chance to have Him, and if you don’t want Krsna, then He will
give you a chance to forget Him. If you want to enjoy life forgetting
Krsna, forgetting God, then Krsna will give you all facility so that you can
forget, and if you want to enjoy life with Krsna consciousness, then
Krsna will give you the chance to make progress in Krsna consciousness.
That is up to you.

If you think that you can be happy without Krsna consciousness, Krsna _
does not object to that. Yathecchasi tatha kuru. After advising Arjuna, He
simply said, ‘‘Now I have explained everything to you. Whatever you
desire you can do.”’ Arjuna replied immediately, karisye vacanam tava:
‘‘Now I shall execute Your order.’ That is Krsna consciousness.

God does not interfere with your little independence. If you want to act
according to the order of God, then God will help you. Even if you fall
down sometimes, if you become sincere—‘‘From this time on I shall re-
main Krsna conscious and execute His orders’’—then Krsna will help
you. In all respects, even if you fall down, He will excuse you and give
you more intelligence. This intelligence will say, ‘‘Don’t do this. Now go
on with your duty.’’ But if you want to forget Krsna, if you want to be-
come happy without Krsna, He will give you so many chances that you
will forget Krsna life after life.

Pariksit Maharaja says here, ‘‘It is not that if I say there is no God then
there will be no God or I will not be responsible for what I do.’’ That is
the atheistic theory. Atheists do not want God because they are always
sinful—if they thought that there were God, then they would be forced to
shudder at the thought of punishment. Therefore they deny the exis-
tence of God. That is their process. They think that if they do not accept
God then there is no punishment and they can do whatever they like.

When rabbits are being attacked by bigger animals, they close their
eyes and think, ‘‘I am not going to be killed.’’ But they are killed any-
way. Similarly, we may deny the existence of God and the law of God,
but still God and His law are there. In the high court you may say, ‘“‘I
don’t care for the law of the government,”’ but you will be forced to ac-
cept the government law. If you deny the state law, then you will be put
into prison and be caused to suffer. Similarly, you may foolishly decry the
existence of God—‘‘There is no God”’ or ‘‘I am God’’ — but nevertheless
you are responsible for all your actions, both good and bad.
