Blessed are those who submit to holy vows, for God will bless them. Let them now worship the Lord with great faith, restraining their senses, observing religious practices, practicing austerity, penance, repentance, and giving their wealth in charity. He who desires to progress spiritually or to obtain the mercy of the Lord must restrain himself by restricting his sensory pleasures and adhering to the rules and principles of religion. Unless one practices austerity, penance and sacrifices one's wealth, one cannot obtain the mercy of the Supreme Lord.
Surrender to the Lord is the surest way to free ourselves from the alienations of deluded energy. The intelligent and sane human being is the one who renews the bond with God, who loves Him, obeys Him, does His divine will, surrenders to Him and serves Him with love and devotion. God will then take him under His divine protection and all his sufferings will disappear.
The process of reincarnation.
The Lord says: Thus, the separate being borrows within material nature various ways of existence, and enjoys the three gunas [the three attributes and modes of influence of material nature; virtue, passion and ignorance] there, because he touches that nature. He then experiences suffering and pleasure in various forms of life.
This word of the Lord is very important in understanding the process by which the soul conditioned by matter reincarnates from one material body to another. It is because of its desires and its desire to dominate matter that the soul will have to transmigrate from one body to another as one changes clothes. These changes of body or clothing are due to the attachment to material existence. As long as the incarnated soul is captivated by this illusory manifestation, it must continue to reincarnate from one body to another. Only its desire to dominate material nature puts it in its undesirable conditions, giving it sometimes the body of a celestial being, sometimes that of a human being, an animal, or that of a vegetable, always according to its material desires and its acts. And each time, the incarnated being believes himself to be the master of his destiny, which is in fact imposed by material nature.
The process of assigning the various bodies to the being who is to be reincarnated results from contact with the various gunas. That is why one must rise above these material influences and reach the spiritual level. This is God consciousness, or Krishna consciousness. Unless we are Krishna conscious, we are forced by material consciousness to move from one body to another, because we have been piling up material desires for infinite time.
We must therefore change our way of seeing, our state of mind, that is to say, stop seeing things from the materialist angle, and this change can only happen if one pays attention to the words of God. He who receives the knowledge of God from the lips of Krishna himself, will lose his desire to dominate material nature, and gradually, in proportion to the lessening of his unwholesome desire, he will come to enjoy spiritual happiness. In proportion to the knowledge gained from contact with the Supreme
Lord, he tastes the existence of eternal bliss which is his own [as it corresponds to his true spiritual nature].