The conditional and the constitutional

The conditional and the constitutional

Everything is generally associated with two types of activities, the conditional and the constitutional. Conditional means an activity that is subjected to one or more conditions or requirements being met. Constitutional means an activity relating to someone's nature.
For example, water is liquid by nature. Hence, liquidity is its constitutional activity. However due to excess cold it becomes ice and freezes others. If heated, it changes to vapour and makes others warm or burns. Both of these are conditional activities.
Srila Bhakti Vedanta Swami writes that when a living entity is conditioned, he has two kinds of activities: one is conditional and other is constitutional. As for protecting the body or abiding by the rules of society or state, and many other activities in connection to conditioned life, these are called conditional. Besides these, the living entity who is fully conscious of his spiritual nature and is engaged in devotional services unto Krishna, has activities which are transcendental, performed in his constitutional position.
In general, we understand body as the person and also use terms as `my body', `my mind', `my intelligence'. Nobody says, `I am body', `I am mind'... This means that the speaker `I' is somebody different from the body . Across the globe, if the body has conscious principle, it is considered as a person. When the same body loses consciousness (or is dead), nobody addresses that dead body as a person.
Without realising the fact, we accept the constitutional position of all living beings, though we tend to accept conditional position of living being. This means we all accept that a living being is called `living' when he possesses that conscious principle, known as ` Atman'. Accepting a Atman' is accepting the living being as ` constitutional position of that living being. In other words, until the atomic soul, energy of the eternally existing, blissful, knowledgeable Supreme Lord, remains in the body , it is identified as a person. By the existence of that principle, `I' remains and by the absence of that principle, `I' do not remain; that is my nature (means, I am a soul). Soul is eternal, body is not eternal.That is my constitutional position.
Whenever we embrace our conditional state, we move away from our constitutional state, that is, reality. Being soul, we comprise of sat+chid+anand. We have inbuilt desire to become happy. Although striving hard for many years to become happy, we see happiness slipping from our hands now and then. It is not eternal. Though the desire to be happy, to be in bliss is always there.
What should we then do, to retain this hard-earned happiness forever? According to the Bhagwad Gita, living entities are not part of the Supreme, but a part of His energy . We, the souls, are the servants of Krishna, eternally . In the seventh chapter of the Gita, Krishna explains that soul is part of his potency. This means soul is servitor of Super-soul.
By staying in this material world and forgetting the Super-soul, we suffer from threefold misery . When this soul serves the Lord in his constitutional position, or practises devotion, he remains in transcendental ecstasy, unaffected by any threefold miseries. One who attains this exalted state of devotion is instantly liberated from the cycle of birth and death.