..but we have to have some aesthetic beauty. And the Bhāgavatam describes (SB 1.5.11):

tad-vāg-visargo janatāgha-viplavo

yasmin prati-ślokam abaddhavaty api

nāmāny anantasya yaśo ’ṅkitāni yat

śṛṇvanti gāyanti gṛṇanti sādhavaḥ

It's a presentation that comes from the spiritual world and talks about the unlimited varieties of names, qualities, and forms of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Ultimately, that's the only kind of variety that satisfies us. What we're looking at in the Bhāgavatam now is the Lord's external creation. If you look at it just as the external creation and you try to enjoy it—for instance, when I was a kid, one of my dreams was to go to every beach in the world and surf. Not that I was a surfer, but I just admired the idea. And in fact, there was a movie that I saw that inspired me. It was called The Endless Summer, and it was this group of surfers, and they just went around the Earth. They'd go wherever it was summertime, and they'd be there with their surfboards, surfing. And I thought, now that's a good idea—to go to every beach.

But ultimately, it's just an interaction with the elements. When the surfers are doing that, there's a way in which, we just read this morning, Kṛṣṇa said, "ye hi saṁsparśa-jā bhogā

duḥkha-yonaya eva te

ādy-antavantaḥ kaunteya

na teṣu ramate budhaḥ"

This sparśa, I jump in the water, I feel good, and then I surf, and I feel some exhilaration going down the wave. And people look at me and say, "Wow, you're a surfer." And then I feel some sense of false ego. In this way, I'm sort of touching the material energy but with my own idea, my own agenda on My Endless Summer.

Ultimately, like everything else, it has a beginning and an end, and therefore it's not pleasurable. But, if we take the same principle in devotional service, as Śukadeva Gosvāmī was going into here and saying, you look at the world in a different way—you see it as the body of the Lord. Everything on it is an aspect of His magnificence, His design sense, and artistry, and you see how it all fits together and how it's all part of Him. Then there's a permanent sense of happiness, then it becomes devotional service. The universal form is an imaginary form, yes, it's the external energy of the Lord, but we connect it by seeing it as the body of the Lord, as Śukadeva Gosvāmī is pointing out. It's like an external feature, but even that is amazing. And that can be seen in relation to The Supreme Personality of Godhead, then it becomes unlimitedly satisfying to the heart when we connect it.

(excerpt from the talk)

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