The Supreme Lord adds: “Every man indulges in various acts, whether or not they are in accordance with the revealed scriptures. But know that if one uses the fruit of such acts to worship Me in Krishna consciousness, he will be immediately blessed with a happiness that will continue in this life and the next, in this world as well as in the next. There is no doubt about it.”

The Eternal Supreme concludes by saying: “Death is certain for him who is born, and birth is certain for him who dies.”

What we have done will be done to us.

God fulfils our desires and sanctions our actions.

Our thoughts, words and actions have positive or negative effects, which cause good or bad consequences. It is the actions of a person's past or previous life that determine the conditions of their next birth or reincarnation. The sufferings linked to guilty acts have a double origin: the acts themselves, but also those committed during previous lives.

The origin of culpable acts is most often ignorance of the facts about God, existential truth and absolute spiritual knowledge. However, the fact that one is unaware that an act is sinful does not mean that one can avoid its undesirable consequences, which give rise to other sinful acts.

On the other hand, a distinction is made between two kinds of faults: those that are 'mature', so to speak, and those that are not yet mature. By “mature” faults we mean those whose consequences we are now suffering, while the others are those which are numerous, accumulated in us and have not yet produced their fruits of suffering. The man who commits a crime may not be caught immediately and condemned, but sooner or later he will be.

In the same way, we will have to suffer for some of our faults in the future, just as for others which have “come to maturity” we suffer today.

Here, then, is a succession of faults and sufferings, plunging the incarnated soul, conditioned by material energy and the energy of illusion, into pain, life after life. It suffers in its present life the consequences of acts committed in its previous life, and prepares itself, by its present acts, for new suffering in the future.

“Mature” or “completed” faults may result in chronic illness, trouble with the law, low birth, inadequate education or poor physical appearance.

Our past actions burden us today, and our present actions prepare us for future suffering. But this chain can be broken at a stroke for one who adopts God-consciousness, and serves Him with love and devotion. This means that devotional service to God is capable of reducing all defilements to nothing.

God says to this effect: “Devotional service offered to My Person acts like a burning inferno, infinitely capable of reducing to ashes everything that is thrown into it.”

Whatever good we do, we will reap in benefits, and whatever bad we do, we will also reap in exactly the same way in our next life in the form of suffering similar to what we have done to one or more victims.