This Is Maya
Srila Gurudeva: Narada Gosvami is a liberated person. Maya cannot touch him, but he played a role of a conditioned soul to give some instructions to us. Once, he was doing austerities for Krsna. He was doing meditation and some beautiful, heavenly apsara damsels came there. They wanted to make Narada Rsi fall down, but Narada was so much absorbed in krsna-bhakti that the angels could not do anything. Seeing them, Narada only smiled and said, “I will not curse you, but you should go from here.” So he did not curse them or anything. He became proud, thinking, “I can conquer this lust.” But this false ego made him fall down. How? At once, Visnu knew this and wanted to operate on him. Narada with this false ego was thinking, “I can control my lust and everything.” He went to his father Brahma and told him, “I have conquered lust.”
Brahma said, “Okay, but don’t tell anyone. Not even your Guru, Sankara, or your aradhya-deva Visnu. This would not be good.” But he could not suppress his false ego. He went to his Gurudeva, Sankara, and while smiling told him, “By your causeless mercy, I have conquered this Cupid and all these bad things.”
Sankara told him, “Oh, you are marvelous, but don’t tell this to Visnu. Return to your own bhajana kutira, your hermitage.” But he was so eager in his false ego that he could not check himself and he at once went to Vaikuntha to Narayana. Narada went to Visnu and he was glorifying Visnu, “You know everything and by Your mercy, I have conquered lust.” Narada was so absorbed in this that he had completely forgotten Krsna. He was not remembering Krsna. At that time, he was very far away from Krsna. He was absorbed in lust. He was not remembering Krsna and this is the stage of any conditioned soul in this world. We are in this stage, full of all these things. Always criticizing Vaisnavas, committing so many offenses at their lotus feet. We are full of anger, lust, and all other things but yet we think that we are bona-fide Vaisnavas. This is maya. We should be very careful about this. We should not be like this. The Upanisads have told that this world is full of so much misery, so much suffering, so much lust and false ego. If you are not careful, at any time you can be derailed forever and your whole life’s future will be gone forever. So, we should be careful.