tobacco. To be intoxicated in this way is to be influenced by ignorance, and risks leading us to an inferior birth in our next life.
Other techniques that allow one to free oneself from the cycle of reincarnations include the fact to offer the fruit of our labor to God. All men must work in order to provide for their bodies; but if one acts only for one's own satisfaction, then one must accept the consequences of karma, whether good or bad, in future lives. We must act for the satisfaction of the Lord. This action takes the name of devotional service, and it is free from all karma. To act in the conscience of God is to make sacrifices. Man must sacrifice his time and money for the satisfaction of the Supreme Being. The action should be offered as a sacrifice to God, lest it bind its author to the material world. The action performed as devotional service does not only preserve the person concerned from the reactions of karma; it gradually raises it to the service of spiritual love offered to the Lord, which is the key to accessing the kingdom of God.
Logos 217
It is written: “As long as the ethereal body, composed of the mind, intelligence and false ego, envelops the spiritual soul, it remains chained to the consequences of its actions interested. As a result, the spiritual soul is connected to material energy and must thus undergo the sufferings and setbacks inherent in the material condition, this, life after life”.
The spiritual entity, the spiritual soul is imprisoned in the ethereal body, composed of mind, intelligence and false ego. That is why at the hour of death, the disposition of the mind is the cause of its next body. At the moment of death, the mental condition of the living being determines the next body to which it will be transported. If it resists the promptings of the mind by absorbing it into the loving service of the Lord, that same mind cannot degrade it. The individual soul is subject to the laws of self-interested action.
Therefore, the duty of every human being is to constantly fix his mind on the Lord. When the mind is thus directed towards God, the intelligence is purified; she then receives her inspiration from the Holy Spirit. This is how the living being progresses by freeing himself little by little from the connection to matter.