[ *Part 2, continued from previous article: WHO IS CRAZY? ]
"... Just as we give the land designations, we also give our bodies designations, but no one can say what his designations were before birth. Who can say that he was American, Chinese, European or whatever? We are thinking that after leaving this body we will continue as American or Indian or Russian. But although we may live in America during this life, we may be in China in the next, for we are constantly changing our bodies. Who can say that he is not changing bodies? When we are born from the womb of our mother, our body is very small. Now, where is that body? Where is the body we had as a boy? We may have photographs that remind us what the body was like in past years, but we cannot say where that body has gone. The body may change, yet we have the feeling that we do not change. “I am the same man,” we think, “and in my childhood I looked like this or like that.” Where have those years gone? They have vanished along with the body and everything that came in contact with it. But although everything is changing at every moment, we are still sticking to our bodily identification so that when we are asked what we are, we give an answer that is somehow or other related to this body. Is this not crazy? If a person identifies with something he is not, he is considered crazy. The conclusion is that one who identifies with the body cannot really be considered sane. This, then, is a challenge to the world: Whoever claims God’s property or earth as belonging to his body, which is constantly changing, can only be considered a crazy man. Who can actually establish that this is his property or that this is his body? By the chances of nature a person is placed in a body and is dictated to by the laws of material nature. Yet in illusion we think we are controlling that nature. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā:
prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
kartāham iti manyate
“The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself the doer of activities that are in actuality carried out by nature.” (Bg. 3.27)
Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni: Material nature is pulling everyone by the ear, just as a stern teacher pulls a student. Every individual is under the dictations of material nature and is being put sometimes in this body and sometimes in that. We are now fortunate to have acquired a human body, but we can easily see that there are many other types of bodies (8,400,000 according to Padma Purāṇa) and by the laws of nature we can be put into any type of body according to our work. Thus we are completely in the grip of material nature. Although this lifetime we may be fortunate in acquiring a human body, there is no guarantee that the next time we will not have the body of a dog or some other animal. All this depends on our work. No one can say, “After my death, I will take my birth again in America.” Material nature will force us into this body or that. Since we are not authorities, Bhagavad-gītā informs us that everything is being conducted by the supreme laws of nature, and it is the foolish man who thinks, “I am something. I am independent.” Ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā: this is false reason. Although the living entity is different from the body, he thinks, “I am this body.” Therefore Śaṅkarācārya basically preached the same message over and over: ahaṁ brahmāsmi, “I am not this body; I am Brahman, spirit soul.”
Nonetheless, even when we have resolved to take to the path of self-realization, māyā or illusion persists. By self-realization a person may come to realize that he is not the body but a spiritual soul. What then is his position? Void? Impersonal? People think that after the demise of this body there is nothing but nirvāṇa or void. The impersonalists similarly say that as soon as the body is finished, one’s personal identity is finished also. In actuality, however, the body can never be identified with the living entity any more than a car can be identified with its driver. A person may direct a car wherever he wishes, but when he gets out of the car he does not think that his personality is gone. In Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa speaks of the living entity in this way:
īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ
hṛd-deśe ’rjuna tiṣṭhati
bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni
yantrārūḍhāni māyayā,
“The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.” (Bg. 18.61)
These various bodies are like cars, and they are all moving. One person may have an expensive kind of car, and another person may have an inexpensive one; one person may have a new car, and another person may have an old one. Should we then think that when we are out of the car of the body the personality no longer exists? This is another kind of craziness. The void philosophy, which maintains that after death we become nothing, is also a craziness that has been contradicted. We are not void but spirit. When one attains spiritual realization, knowing himself as spirit outside the body, he can advance further by inquiring about his duty as spirit. “What is my spiritual work?” he should ask. Realizing one’s spiritual identity and asking about one’s spiritual duty is actual sanity. So much individuality and discrimination are displayed by the living entity even in the body. Should we think that at death one’s intelligence, discrimination and individuality no longer exist? Although we may make such great plans and work so hard within the body, are we to assume that when we leave the body we become void? There is no basis for this nonsense, and it is directly refuted by Kṛṣṇa at the very beginning of Bhagavad-gītā:
na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ
na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ
na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ
sarve vayam ataḥ param
dehino ’smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati
“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” (Bg. 2.12–13) ..."
"... Just as we give the land designations, we also give our bodies designations, but no one can say what his designations were before birth. Who can say that he was American, Chinese, European or whatever? We are thinking that after leaving this body we will continue as American or Indian or Russian. But although we may live in America during this life, we may be in China in the next, for we are constantly changing our bodies. Who can say that he is not changing bodies? When we are born from the womb of our mother, our body is very small. Now, where is that body? Where is the body we had as a boy? We may have photographs that remind us what the body was like in past years, but we cannot say where that body has gone. The body may change, yet we have the feeling that we do not change. “I am the same man,” we think, “and in my childhood I looked like this or like that.” Where have those years gone? They have vanished along with the body and everything that came in contact with it. But although everything is changing at every moment, we are still sticking to our bodily identification so that when we are asked what we are, we give an answer that is somehow or other related to this body. Is this not crazy? If a person identifies with something he is not, he is considered crazy. The conclusion is that one who identifies with the body cannot really be considered sane. This, then, is a challenge to the world: Whoever claims God’s property or earth as belonging to his body, which is constantly changing, can only be considered a crazy man. Who can actually establish that this is his property or that this is his body? By the chances of nature a person is placed in a body and is dictated to by the laws of material nature. Yet in illusion we think we are controlling that nature. Therefore Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gītā:
prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
kartāham iti manyate
“The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself the doer of activities that are in actuality carried out by nature.” (Bg. 3.27)
Prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni: Material nature is pulling everyone by the ear, just as a stern teacher pulls a student. Every individual is under the dictations of material nature and is being put sometimes in this body and sometimes in that. We are now fortunate to have acquired a human body, but we can easily see that there are many other types of bodies (8,400,000 according to Padma Purāṇa) and by the laws of nature we can be put into any type of body according to our work. Thus we are completely in the grip of material nature. Although this lifetime we may be fortunate in acquiring a human body, there is no guarantee that the next time we will not have the body of a dog or some other animal. All this depends on our work. No one can say, “After my death, I will take my birth again in America.” Material nature will force us into this body or that. Since we are not authorities, Bhagavad-gītā informs us that everything is being conducted by the supreme laws of nature, and it is the foolish man who thinks, “I am something. I am independent.” Ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā: this is false reason. Although the living entity is different from the body, he thinks, “I am this body.” Therefore Śaṅkarācārya basically preached the same message over and over: ahaṁ brahmāsmi, “I am not this body; I am Brahman, spirit soul.”
Nonetheless, even when we have resolved to take to the path of self-realization, māyā or illusion persists. By self-realization a person may come to realize that he is not the body but a spiritual soul. What then is his position? Void? Impersonal? People think that after the demise of this body there is nothing but nirvāṇa or void. The impersonalists similarly say that as soon as the body is finished, one’s personal identity is finished also. In actuality, however, the body can never be identified with the living entity any more than a car can be identified with its driver. A person may direct a car wherever he wishes, but when he gets out of the car he does not think that his personality is gone. In Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa speaks of the living entity in this way:
īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ
hṛd-deśe ’rjuna tiṣṭhati
bhrāmayan sarva-bhūtāni
yantrārūḍhāni māyayā,
“The Supreme Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, O Arjuna, and is directing the wanderings of all living entities, who are seated as on a machine, made of the material energy.” (Bg. 18.61)
These various bodies are like cars, and they are all moving. One person may have an expensive kind of car, and another person may have an inexpensive one; one person may have a new car, and another person may have an old one. Should we then think that when we are out of the car of the body the personality no longer exists? This is another kind of craziness. The void philosophy, which maintains that after death we become nothing, is also a craziness that has been contradicted. We are not void but spirit. When one attains spiritual realization, knowing himself as spirit outside the body, he can advance further by inquiring about his duty as spirit. “What is my spiritual work?” he should ask. Realizing one’s spiritual identity and asking about one’s spiritual duty is actual sanity. So much individuality and discrimination are displayed by the living entity even in the body. Should we think that at death one’s intelligence, discrimination and individuality no longer exist? Although we may make such great plans and work so hard within the body, are we to assume that when we leave the body we become void? There is no basis for this nonsense, and it is directly refuted by Kṛṣṇa at the very beginning of Bhagavad-gītā:
na tv evāhaṁ jātu nāsaṁ
na tvaṁ neme janādhipāḥ
na caiva na bhaviṣyāmaḥ
sarve vayam ataḥ param
dehino ’smin yathā dehe
kaumāraṁ yauvanaṁ jarā
tathā dehāntara-prāptir
dhīras tatra na muhyati
“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be. As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change.” (Bg. 2.12–13) ..."
