Madness and Sanity

Lecture

26/12/66 New York,

Bhagavad-gita 9.34

By His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

ORIGINAL

When I was born, from the mother's womb, my body was so little. 

1. Now, how I have changed ...? 
2. Where is that body? 
3. Where is that body when I was a child? 
4. Where is that body when I was a boy? 
5. Where is that body when I was a young man? 
6. I have got my photograph, .... Oh, Swamiji, you were like this? 
7. Where is that body? 
8. Where it has gone? 

So we are changing, but I am the same man. I am thinking, "Oh, in my childhood, I was doing like this. Oh, in my youthhood, I was thinking like this. In my boyhood, I did so many things." 

1. Now where those days gone? ... 
2. everything has gone away? 
3. It is simply remembrance... if you identify with something which you are not, then are you not crazy? ...

So everyone who identifies with this body, he's a crazy man. .... It is a challenge to the world. Anyone who claims God's property, God's land, God's earth, as own property, he's a crazy man. This is a challenge. ... by the fix of nature, you are put into some place. You are put under some body. You are put under some consciousness, and you are dictated by the laws of nature. And you are mad after that....Everything is being conducted by the supreme laws of nature, but the foolish man thinks that 'I am something'. I am independent. This is foolishness. Ahankara-vimudhatma. Ahankara, this false egoism -- ahankara means false egoism. What is that false egoism? That I am not this body, and I think I am this body....There is spirit. Now, if that spirit, when one comes to that spiritual self-realization, out of this body, then, if he's still further advanced in spiritual knowledge, then he'll seek 'what is my spiritual duty? What is my spiritual work?' That is sanity.