The very essence of human life is to learn how to remember about God. If we try to do it while we are in right consciousness, then it will be a success.
When there is no dangerous situation, we do not remember about God, in reality we have to learn how to remember God always. If our heart is not preliminary cleaned, we can not remember about God. We have a lot of samskaras, and sometimes we think that something else is more important that the Lord, therefore we always remember something else. That is why the purification of the heart is so important, it takes place when we surrender to guru.
Smaranam has five stages: before that we can not remember about God; 1) we remember about God every now and then; 2) dharana – the ability to put aside everything else, takes place; 3) dhyana, or meditation, we remember about God in details; 4) dhruva anusmriti – the remembering becomes like a stream of nectar; 5) samadhi – you see the Lord.
We can only remember about God, if we understand who He is. When we hear about the Lord, that He came as a human, and we understand that He is God, then our mind will change, and we will be inclined towards the Lord. "Srimad-Bhagavatam" is the way to remember about the Lord, and to get love of God.
First you remember His external beauty, then you remember the beauty of His heart – His kindness, His mercy. When we hear how Uddhava describes Krishna’s beauty, and if our heart is little pure, His beauty can be reflected in our heart, and we will think about Him again and again. In this way we will be able to remember about God at the time of death, and go to Him.