Text 10] Maharaja Rahigana Meets Jada Bharata 347

TRANSLATION

Fatness, thinness, bodily and mental distress, thirst, hunger,
fear, disagreement, desires for material happiness, old age, sleep,
attachment for material possessions, anger, lamentation, illusion
and identification of the body with the self are all transformations
of the material covering of the spirit soul. A person absorbed in
the material bodily conception is affected by these things, but I am
free from all bodily conceptions. Consequently I am neither fat
nor skinny nor anything else you have mentioned.

PURPORT

Srila Narottama dasa Thakura has sung: deha-smrti nahi yara, sam-
sdra-bandhana kahan tara. One who is spiritually advanced has no con-
nection with the body or with the bodily actions and reactions. When one
comes to understand that he is not the body and therefore is neither fat
nor skinny, one attains the topmost form of spiritual realization. When
one is not spiritually realized, the bodily conception entangles one in the
material world. At the present moment all human society is laboring
under the bodily conception; therefore in the sdstras people in this age
are referred to as dvipada-pasu, two-legged animals. No one can be
happy in a civilization conducted by such animals. Our Krsna conscious-
ness movement is trying to raise fallen human society to the status of
spiritual understanding. It is not possible for everyone to become im-
mediately self-realized like Jada Bharata. However, as stated in Srimad-
Bhagavatam (1.2.18): nasta-préyesv abhadresu nityarh bhadgavata-
sevayd. By spreading the Bhagavata principles, we can raise human
society to the platform of perfection. When one is not affected by the
bodily conceptions, one can advance to the Lord’s devotional service.

nasta-prayesv abhadresu
nityam bhagavata-sevaya

bhagavaty uttamasloke
bhaktir bhavati naistiki

The more we advance our freedom from the bodily conception. the more
we are fixed in devotional service, and the more we are happy and
