Purify your desires from lordship to servitude, and your senses transform from instruments of bondage into vessels of ecstatic devotion.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 7th Canto — September 15, 1971, Mombasa 710915SB-MOMBASA [22:20 Minutes] SB-7th Canto_710915SB-MOMBASA Prabhupāda: [indistinct] ...how to make progress in bhakti-yoga, or bīja-nirharaṇam. I have explained several times bīja-nirharaṇam [SB 7.7.28]. There is bīja, the propensity for lording it over the material nature, resources, that is the bīja of materialistic life—how to become a very great personality within this material world. The bhakti-yoga is just the opposite.
Here everyone is trying to become greater than the other. But bhakti-yoga is so nice, as Caitanya Mahāprabhu teaches us, gopī-bhartuḥ pada-kamalayor dāsa-dāsānudāsaḥ [Cc. Madhya 13.80]. Dāsa-dāsānudāsaḥ, servant of the servant of the servant of the servant. The more you become servant of the servant, the more you advance.
And here, in this material, the more you become greater than your friend, then you are [indistinct]. That means more you become implicated. More... Just like the same example: the more you increase your temperature, you are facing death. Certain temperature is required, 98 degree.
But if you simply increase your temperature, "Oh, it is very nice," then at 107 degree you finish. So this material improvement means meeting death. Let us come to the point. The nationalism is competition which nation is greater.
Now they have manufactured atomic bomb. That means finishing point they have come to. So bīja-nirharaṇam. This propensity we should always remember, that "I shall be greater than him. I shall overlord him." Just like my Godbrothers: the propensity is that "Oh, he has become greater than us," therefore they are very envious.
Their propensity is to become, but they could not; therefore envious. This is materialism. There is no spiritual sense here. In the material..., spiritual world, if somebody is greater in service, other, they appreciate, "How great he is, how he has advanced in Kṛṣṇa's service. We could not do it," the Rādhārāṇī's spirit.
Why Rādhārāṇī is worshiped by the devotees? His [Her] spirit is like that. If anyone, She finds a nice devotee of Kṛṣṇa, She immediately recommends to Kṛṣṇa, "How nice this devotee. He can render better service than Me.