(Excerpt from lecture series on Caitanya Caritamrta, Kartika 2006, Part 2, Lecture 1 – ‘Mahaprabhu liberates Vasudev the Leper Brahmana)’

The sign of enlightenment is behavior. Behavior is one of the biggest indications of consciousness. Because we act according to the way we think and we think according to the way we realize - what we realize about reality of life.

Enlightened means – “I realize and I know or I believe that I am not the body.”

Realizing means – “I act in that way.”

So it is one thing to say ‘I am not the body’. Aham brahma’smi, I’m brahmanda,  jivera svarupa haya krsnera nitya dasa. I am Krsna's eternal servant.

But it’s another thing to act as a servant, ‘Yes I am Krsna’s eternal servant but mostly I am enjoying. I understand that I am Krsna’s eternal servant but mostly I am eternally enjoying. I am enjoying my body. I am enjoying my friends, I am enjoying this world, and the pleasures and the varieties of this world.’

But when we start acting as a servant for the enjoyment of Krsna and offering ourselves, and everything about ourselves for His pleasure and His enjoyment, then we can truly say that we realize this point of being ‘not the body’. Then we are enlightened; because one who is standing in the light will see himself and he will see God also.

If you are standing in the dark room, you can’t even see yourself and maybe other people standing in the room also. If it’s a very pitch black room – ‘Oh I can’t see anything. Who turned off lights? I can’t even see my own arm, can’t see my own hand, it’s so dark.’

So this is ignorance, Tamasi ma jyotir gama. So when lights come on you say – ‘Oh, Hey, I am here.’ You see yourself and then look around – ‘Oh! Look you are here too.’ So when we become enlightened we see ourselves and God also.

Then we realize that myself, my atma, my soul is completely different, categorically and wholly different from this body. My feelings are there, my identity is there, my reality is there, so therefore I withdraw my ego from identifying with this body and I don’t feel this body. I don’t relate to this body.

I am the mover of this body. But my feelings become transcendental. If you place your ego into your body then ego will bring with it, identification and attachment. When you identify with something, you become attached to it, then so many feelings are generated due to that identity and that attachment.

But when your ego is directed towards the soul, so many other types of feelings come, they are called alaukika bhava, transcendental feelings. So we direct our identity and our ego to the soul and to Krsna then we become attached to that identity and to that ego and to that person - Krsna and our soul. And we have other feelings, spiritual feelings called bhava. That’s why they say that when someone is self-realized or enlightened he doesn’t feel the pleasure and pains of his body. He doesn’t identify with it.

Just like as we mentioned before when they give anesthesia or they give some shot, you lose your connection between the body and the mind because that drug cuts the connection of the nerve connection. So that’s a physical connection, between the physical body and physical mind which is short-circuited or cut by the introduction of a drug which deadens the nerve, so you can’t feel. So a drug has such an effect to change our consciousness or our perception. So what to speak of self-realization or yoga!

When one chants transcendental mantras it’s all a matter of ego, where we place our ego, our sense of our identity. So if drugs can change our identity - I don’t even feel the body, they are cutting it, if they cut my leg off I don’t even feel it. A man is lying on the table and they are cutting his leg off, he is just like… he is sleeping peacefully. He wakes up – Oh! No leg!

So how is it that he doesn’t feel? Because he has some drugs in there. He hasn’t been killed, he is alive, if you are alive you can feel but the ability to feel depends on physical and mechanical arrangement of the nerves, muscles and all these things.

So the same thing, a self-realized person withdraws his connection to the physical body which is his consciousness and he places his full consciousness on the spiritual body and on the body of Krsna. So he doesn’t feel the pleasure and pains of his own body. That is how it works.

People say “Oh, how can he tolerate all that pain?” He is not even feeling it because he is not identifying. His identity is connected somewhere else.