Material life is dream-like illusion caused by perverted desires; Krishna consciousness purifies the will toward eternal spiritual reality.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Hayagrīva: This is Schopenhauer. For Schopenhauer, "Happiness is inactive satisfaction, inactivity, nirva. The will to live is the irrational urge..."
Prabhupāda: What does he give..., what does he explain about the nirva? What?
Hayagrīva: "The will to live is the irrational urge that brings about all suffering." And his is a philosophy of extinction. Now in his first book, The World Is Idea, he ascribes to the philosophy of my, like a Myvd. He writes, "The Vedas and Puras have no better simile than a dream for the whole knowledge of the actual world, which they call the web of my and they use none more frequently." From this Schopenhauer concludes that life is a long dream. "What is this world of perception besides being my idea? Is that of which I am conscious only as idea exactly like my own body, of which I am doubly conscious. In one aspect as idea, in another aspect as will?" So from this he concludes that, "Life is projection of the will."
Hayagrīva: "Material life is a projection of the will."
Prabhupāda: Yes..., yes that is. It is taken from Indian... It is called vsan. Vsan means--desire. So that desire, material desire, but the living entity cannot be desireless. Desireless..., nirva means--material desires finished. But because living entity is eternal spiritual being, he's, he has got spiritual desire. Now it is covered. The desire is there, desire is constant companion but because it is materially covered, we are thinking this temporary world as reality. And it is not reality; therefore it is changing. We are having different types of desires according to body we get and the soul is transmigrating in this material world from one body to another, and he is creating a certain type of
desires; will. And to fulfill that will he is getting a different body by the Supreme Will. He is willing and the Supreme Will, God--Ka, understanding his will, giving him facility to accept a certain pattern of circumstances, body to fulfill his particular desire. That is going on. Therefore this vsan, or will, is the cause of his material existence, constantly changing and on account of changing will, he is changing body. This is the complication of material existence. Our Ka consciousness movement is to teach the living entity that as living being you must have desires. If your desires are stopped, then you become like stone. So you have to cleanse this desire, the diseased form of desires. That is bhakti: sarvopdhi-vinirmuktam. Now the desires are according to the updhi--according to the body. A man gets the body of an American, he thinks, "America is my home. American nation, they are my brother. American upliftment is my business," so on, so on. And as soon as he's changed, "You are Chinese man", again he thinks like Chinese. Tath dehntara-prpti [Bg 2.13]. He has to change. So he also to the body of a dog, he is barking, "I am dog. This is my business; to bark." So this is all desires. So these desires are temporary. By one desire I get one body, then I desire another body, another body, it is going on. So therefore in one sense it is dream, that factually he cannot fulfill the desires, like dream. Yes. There is so many different circumstances. They are all temporary. So this, at night you dream, it is say for one hour or two hour. We..., nobody sees one kind of dream for two hours. Say even two hours, then finished, then another dream. So this change of body is also like a big dream. At night we dream, we forget everything about daily activities, and. And again when the dream is finished, again we come to this body and we do some things. So in that sense all material activities, subtle or gross, they are manifestation of different desires. Therefore the Myvd philosophers, they say: brahma satya jagan mithy. The dreamer is fact, but the dream is false. That is in one sense, it is right. So our Vaiava philosophy is the same, that the dreamer is the living entity and the dream is temporary. Therefore the
dreamer has to be brought to the real spiritual platform so that these material dreams, either in day or night, they can be extinguished. That is nirva. sarvopdhi-vinirmukta tat-paratvena nirmalam hkea hkeasevana bhaktir ucyate [Cc Madhya 19.170] When we give up these dreaming facts and come to the real fact, that is Ka consciousness, that is bhakti. So activities in Ka consciousness, called bhakti--that is reality.