(H H Kadamba Kanana Swami, 20th June 2012, Govinda’s, Prague, Czech Republic) Lecture: Free talk
Devotee:I feel when I touch somebody, or when they touch me. So what is this feeling if I am not this body?
Maharaja: We are not the body but we are in the body, and our consciousness is in the body. The symptom of the soul is the consciousness. So our consciousness is not connected with the body. So we feel the touch; we feel the hunger in our stomach; we feel the heat and we identify with it:
‘I am hot. My body is hot. I’m not hot at all!’
So we identify with the body. Therefore it is said that a liberated soul:
‘jīvan-mukti īhā yasya
harer dāsye karmaṇā manasā
girā nikhilāsv apy avasthāsu
jīvan-muktaḥ sa ucyate,’(Rupa Gosvami, Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu).
He is so absorbed with his relationship with Krishna that he no longer identifies with what happens to the body. He perceives it but it doesn’t agitate his consciousness. So his consciousness doesn’t get absorbed in these things.
Like if I miss one meal, then my stomach stays hungry, my mind gets the signal, and then my mind goes:
‘Oh my God I’m hungry. I’m hungry. What am I going to eat? Oh no I got to get something to eat. And whatever we have it’s got to be tasty. I’m not that hungry yet where I’m going to eat anything and everything! I’m hungry to the point where I want to eat something good. You know.’
So you see the mind is getting active. Of course I wanted to eat something good but I don’t have any money. Maybe I should go and visit somebody. In the scriptures it says that a renunciates would go begging, and there are rules for begging. They would go door to door and beg. So they could only beg from a limited number of houses, and they were not allowed to beg in the middle of the day when the smoke would be coming out of the chimney of those houses. If you are in India and smoke is coming out of the chimney then you know that someone is cooking, because they don’t have heating and they don’t need heating anymore…
All with the idea to conquer the mind. The renunciates would have to conquer the mind. Now renunciates have to conquer the mind in preaching. It is stuff that with somehow or other we carry on and preach and never stop, then one can rise above the bodily platform, and gradually become so absorbed in the service to Krishna and the service of distributing Krishna’s mercy everywhere, then who cares about the body? And then when we touch someone we don’t care! Whereas when we are on the bodily platform and when we touch someone:
‘I want to touch a little more!’
So when we are becoming detached from the body then we can give up sex life! Then we are free from that which is a great relief, and that makes life very simple!
