Identification

Hare Krishna dear Prabhujis and Matajis,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev.

Today as I was browsing through my old notes, one wonderful purport by Srila Prabhupada that I had noted down from SB 1.9.21 caught my attention. This verse was spoken by Sri Bhishmadev in his death-bed to Yudhishtir Maharaj. Here is the verse, translation and purport.

sarvātmanaḥ sama-dṛśo hy advayasyānahaṅkṛteḥ
tat-kṛtaṁ mati-vaiṣamyaṁ niravadyasya na kvacit

Being the Absolute Personality of Godhead, He is present in everyone's heart. He is equally kind to everyone, and He is free from the false ego of differentiation. Therefore whatever He does is free from material inebriety. He is equibalanced.

Purport: Because He is absolute, there is nothing different from Him. He is kaivalya; there is nothing except Himself. Everything and everyone is the manifestation of His energy, and thus He is present everywhere by His energy, being nondifferent from it. The sun is identified with every inch of the sun rays and every molecular particle of the rays. Similarly, the Lord is distributed by His different energies. He is Paramatma, or the Supersoul, present in everyone as the supreme guidance, and therefore He is already the chariot driver and counsel of all living beings. When He, therefore, exhibits Himself as chariot driver of Arjuna, there is no change in His exalted position. It is the power of devotional service only that demonstrates Him as the chariot driver or the messenger. Since He has nothing to do with the material conception of life because He is absolute spiritual identity, there is for Him no superior or inferior action. Being the Absolute Personality of Godhead, He has no false ego, and so He does not identify Himself with anything different from Him. The material conception of ego is equibalanced in Him. He does not feel, therefore, inferior by becoming the chariot driver of His pure devotee. It is the glory of the pure devotee that only he can bring about service from the affectionate Lord. (end purport).

The main point that struck me in purport is that the Lord does not identify with anything different from Him. And hence He no problem playing the role of master or that of servant. This is actually the real problem that we have - that we identify with things that are different from us. As long as we do not have anything to compare with, we are alright. But as soon as someone either becomes better than us in terms of name, fame, wealth, beauty etc, then immediately our mind starts the 'compare and contrast' business. This is where the identification problem starts. First of all, we are convinced that we are this body, which is the beginning of the problem. And then to add to that, we are comparing our temporary assets with another temporary set of names and attributes owned temporarily by another temporary body. Since everything in that comparison is temporary, the comparison itself is bound to be temporary and (imperfect too). Hence we hate being subservient to somebody (although we are always forced to serve somebody in someway in this material world).

But actually we are permanent. If at all we want to compare two entities, then the two entities should have a common basis of existence. But we are identifying the temporary deha (body) and geha (house, family and other possessions) with the permanent soul (atma) which is actually illogical. And this is the cause of imbalance in our ego which results in insult, false pride, envy etc.

Whereas the Lord, although possessing everything, does not falsely identify Himself with any of those temporary material things and is full in His renunciation also. Hence He was able to play the most menial roles such as a messenger, charioteer, servant and so on.

If we also become transcendental to these asat identifications, then we can also become self-possessed and self-satisfied in which case, we would not have any problem living and dealing with different kinds of people in this world, no matter what happens. I could only theorize the concept here, but so hard to put into practice. It will be good to give it a try.

Thank you very much.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev,
Kalacakra Krsna das.