Guest (6) (Indian man): Asato mā sama grad? You said, Prabhupāda?
Prabhupāda: Sad gamaya.
Guest (6): So the translation of it?
Prabhupāda: Sad means "Try to come to the transcendental platform, sat, and don't remain in this asat." Asat means which is temporary.
Guest (6): And tamasi mā jyotir gamaya.
Prabhupāda: Ah! Tamasa... "Don't remain in the darkness; come to the light." So this is the Vedic injunction. But we don't take advantage of the instruction. We think that "If I can make one table from a ordinary wooden plank, that is advancement." This is technology. This nice polished table is a transformation of the crude wooden plank. So if a crude wooden plank is transferred into nice table, we see: "Oh, this is advancement." What is actual benefit? I can do without this table. But we have taken: "This is advancement. Transforming the form of an element into another, that is advancement." So asate vilāsa. This is asat, this wood, either in crude form or in transferred form. So I am taking credit because a crude wood has been turned into a table. So that is my vilāsa. So sat saṅga chāḍi kāinu asate vilāsa. So I am now bound up. I can become a very nice carpenter. Does it mean that I am self-realized? If you have learned the art of turning crude wood into a table, nice table, you may get the credit of becoming a nice carpenter; that does not mean you are self-realized. They are taking credit of this turning crude wood into nice table, and they're thinking that "Our life is successful." This is going on. And the real technology, that "I am not this body; I have been put into this condition, and I am transmigrating from one body to another"—there is no such knowledge. For the temporary.... (break) ...temporary thing, flickering thing, like children. Children is very busy on the beach, making sand palaces, and he's very happy. So our position is like that. But we should be intelligent enough that "There is our real life, permanent life, not this temporary life," that "This life is temporary. There is another life." Na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (BG 2.20).