However, this is possible only when one is completely devoted to the service of love and devotion offered to God.
This is confirmed by Krishna, God, the Supreme Person: “One who is entirely absorbed in devotional service, without ever failing, thereby transcends the three attributes and modes of influence of material nature and attains the spiritual level.”
Unless one is fully absorbed in the service of the Lord, one remains exposed to the defilement of the three attributes of material nature, so that one has to suffer the sufferings connected with unhappiness or a mixture of happiness and unhappiness.
A life of happiness, unhappiness or mixed feelings determines the proportion of virtuous and ungodly acts of past and future lives. It is not very difficult to know one's past and future, because time reflects the contamination of the three attributes of material nature.
Currently, most incarnated spiritual entities identify with their present body, the fruit of their virtuous or impious past acts, and remain incapable of knowing their previous or future lives. Man gives himself up to sin because he is unaware of the acts of his past life which have earned him his present condition, in a material body exposed to the three forms of suffering. He is seized with a desperate need for material pleasures, does not hesitate to sin and commits reprehensible acts for the sole purpose of satisfying his senses. All this is harmful, because because of his sins, he will have to receive another body in which he will suffer just as he suffers now from the consequences of his past faults.
The three forms of suffering are:
Those from the body and the mind, those caused by other living entities, and those originating from material nature; hurricanes, strong winds, heavy rains, extreme cold, drought, etc., under the impulse of the beings of the higher planets, who govern the various functions of material nature.
It must be understood that a person deprived of spiritual knowledge is constantly acting in ignorance of what he has done in the past or his previous life, what he is doing now and how he will suffer in the future, he is plunged into darkness. That is why we must above all not remain in darkness, and strive to reach the transcendental light. This light is the spiritual knowledge diffused by Krishna, God, that one can know once one has reached the level of virtue, or when one transcends virtue by adopting the practice of devotional service offered to the spiritual master, authentic intimate servant of God and the Supreme Lord Krishna. The meaning and scope of spiritual knowledge is revealed in all its fullness, and suddenly, only to great souls endowed with unreserved faith in God. Depending on our relationship with the attributes of material nature (virtue, passion and ignorance), we get a particular type of body.