Can one escape alone, without the Lord's help?

Why does God allow the soul to wander in the material universe?

All those who reject God, challenge His authority, envy Him, and have a corporeal conception of existence must endure the cycle of successive reincarnations and thus experience the tribulations of rebirth, illness, old age, and repeated death.

The Lord allows the soul that wants to wander to slide to the lowest point of existence, for the sole purpose of giving it the opportunity to judge for itself whether it can do without God and whether or not it can be happy by thus misusing its independence. Most incarnate souls conditioned by matter who languish in the material universe misuse their independence, so much so that they all sink into illusion and suffer life after life. Because all human beings have a bodily conception of existence based on sense pleasure and lust as the major poison, they will suffer endlessly life after life. Under these conditions, there can be neither peace nor prosperity on earth, only aggression, violence, and war.

The incarnate spiritual being is a tiny fragment, an infinitesimal particle, an integral part of the divine person of Krishna, and his eternal duty is to serve God with love and devotion. Each of us is, in truth, an eternal spirit soul.

Why can't we see God?

God truly exists; only holy beings can see Him.

Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, in His personal, primordial, original, infinite, absolute form, all knowledge, bliss, and eternity, no one can see Him unless they have attained purity of being, the state of holiness.

In the material universe, He resides in the bodies of all living beings, all celestial beings inhabiting the higher, heavenly, heavenly planets, all human beings without exception, white, black, yellow, red, and mixed-race, all terrestrial and aquatic animals, and all plants, from the blade of grass to the great tree, in His form as the Supreme Soul. This is why all material bodies are said to be “temples of God.”