48
The Perfection of Yoga
between me and my enemies, and in this verse he is called  madhyastha . One may also see someone as pious and another as sinful according to his own calculations. But when he is situated in transcendence, all of these—friends, enemies or whatever—cease to exist. When one becomes actually learned, he does not see any enemy or any friend because in actuality “no one is my enemy, no one is my friend, no one is my father, no one is my mother, etc.” We are all simply living entities playing on a stage in the dress of father, mother, children, friend, enemy, sinner and saint, etc. It is like a great drama with so many characters playing their parts. However, on the stage a person may be an enemy or whatever, but off the stage all the actors are friends. Similarly, with these bodies we are playing on the stage of material nature, and we attach so many designations to one another. I may be thinking, “This is my son,” but in actuality I cannot beget any son. It is not possible. At the utmost I can only beget a body. It is not within any man’s power to beget a living entity. Merely by sexual intercourse a living entity cannot be begotten. The living entity must be  placed  in the emulsification of secretions. This is the verdict of  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam . Thus all the multifarious relationships between bodies are just so much stage play. One who is actually realized and has actually attained  yoga  no longer sees these bodily distinctions.