460
Śrīmad Bhāgavatam
[Canto 2, Ch. 9]
from boyhood to youth, from youth to old age and from old age to another body created by his own action. The living entity creates his own body by his personal desires, and the external energy of the Lord supplies him the exact form by which he can enjoy his desires to the fullest extent. The tiger wanted to enjoy the blood of another animal, and therefore, by the grace of the Lord, the material energy supplies him the body of the tiger with facilities for enjoying blood from another animal. Similarly, a living entity desiring to get the body of a demigod in the higher planet can also get it by the grace of the Lord. And if he is intelligent enough, he can desire to get a spiritual body to enjoy the company of the Lord, and he will get it. So the minute freedom of the living entity can be fully utilized, and the Lord is so kind that he will award him the same type of body that he desires. It is like dreaming of a golden mountain. A person knows what a mountain is, and he knows also what gold is. Out of his desire only he dreams of a golden mountain, and when the dream is over he sees something else in his presence. He finds in his awakened state that there is neither gold nor a mountain, and what to speak of a golden mountain.
The different positions of the living entities in the material world under multifarious manifestations of bodies are due to the misconception of “mine” and “I.” The  karmī  thinks of this world as “mine,” and the  jñānī  thinks “I am” everything. The whole material conception of politics, sociology, philanthropy, altruism, etc., conceived by the conditioned souls is on the basis of this misconceived “I” and “mine,” and this I and mine are products of a strong desire to enjoy material life. Identification of the body and the place where the body is obtained under different conceptions of socialism, nationalism, family affection, and so on and so forth is all due to forgetfulness of the real nature of the living entity, and the whole misconception of the bewildered living entity can be removed by the association of Śukadeva Gosvāmī and Mahārāja Parīkṣit, as all this is explained in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam .
TEXT 3
यहिं वाव महिम्नि स्वे परसिन् कालमाययोः । रमेत गतसम्भोहस्त्यक्त्वोदास्ते तदोभयम् ॥ ३ ॥
yarhi vāva mahimni sve parasmin kāla-māyayoḥ