Liberation means existing in your true spiritual form as Krishna's eternal servant, not dissolving into formlessness.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Lecture — July 12, 1971, Los Angeles 710712LE-LOS ANGELES [15:56 Minutes] Lecture_710712LE-LOS ANGELES Prabhupāda: Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura said that kṛṣṇera saṁsāra kara chāḍi' anācāra. He advised that everyone can be engaged in family life or worldly life. Simply one has to give up bad habits. That's all.
It is not negation. It is positive understanding. Simply negativating the material existence, like void philosophy or impersonal philosophy, is no good. We must have a positive platform.
Without positive platform, simply giving up something bad is no good. If I have no destination, positive destination, simply by giving up the present condition has no value. The Māyāvāda philosophy… Māyāvāda philosophy, there are two kinds of Māyāvāda philosophy. One kinds of…, one kind of Māyāvāda philosophy is called voidism: "Void is the origin of everything," and another Māyāvāda philosophy is impersonalist. The Buddhist philosophy, they advocate voidism, that this material existence is combination of matter, and if we dismantle the matter then again it becomes void. Just like a house, construction of house, it is combination of matter.
You bring some iron, bring some wood, bring some stone, bring some cement and bricks, some earth, so many things you bring together, and it is a big house. But when you separate these bricks, this iron, the wood and the cement and everything, so it becomes void. This philosophy is advocated by the voidists. Their theory is that the material miseries are due to combination of this matter. Our body is certainly combination of matter: earth, water, fire, air, ether and, still subtler, mind, intelligence, ego.
These are all material things. So they have, somehow or other, they have combined. The voidist says that separate them, so there will be no more feeling of happiness or distress. The other philosopher, impersonalist, they say that brahma satyaṁ jagan mithyā: this material combination is false. Behind this material combination there is spirit.
That is also a fact, because matter grows on the platform of spirit. Just like this child is growing. Why? Because the spirit soul is there.
If a dead child is born it will not grow; it will stop growing. If you keep a dead child in a very nice place by chemical preservative, it will not grow, because the spirit is not there. Therefore it is a proof that matter grows on the basis of spirit. But the impersonalists say that spirit is impersonal—there is no form; it is formless. But we say no.