30 Krsna Consciousness: the Topmost Yoga System

trying to go to the moon, but they simply go 240,000 miles
up from the Earth, touch the moon, and return. They are very
proud. There is so much talk of aeronautics: crowds and
meetings and conferences. But what have they done? What ar

240,000 miles in that vast sky? If you go 240 million miles,
still you are limited. So this will not do. If you want to go high,
you must have permanent shelter. If you can take rest there,
then you cannot fall down. But if you have no rest, then you
will have to fall down. The airplane goes high, seven miles,
eight miles up from the Earth, but it comes down immediately.

So, simply understanding ahankara means no more than
understanding the false identification. Simply understanding
that I am not matter, I am soul, is not perfection. The imper-
sonalist, the void philosopher, simply thinks of the negative,
that I am not this matter, I am not this body. This will not
stay. You have to not only realize that you are not matter, but
you have to engage yourself in the spiritual world. And that
spiritual world means to be working in Krsna consciousness.
That spiritual world, that functioning of our real life, is Krsna
consciousness.

False ego I have already explained. It is neither matter nor
spirit, but the junction—where the spirit soul comes into con-
tact with matter and forgets himself. It is just as, in delirium, a
man is diseased and his brain becomes puzzled, and gradually
he forgets himself and becomes a madman. He is gradually
forgetting. So there is the beginning of loss, and there is one
point where he forgets. That beginning point is called ahankara,
or false ego.

Chanting the mahamantra—Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna
Krsna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare
Hare—is the process not merely of putting an end to this false
conception of the self, but it goes beyond that, to the point
where the pure spirit soul engages in his eternal, blissful, all-
knowing activities in the loving service of God. This is the
