The great sages, the liberated sages, they are not fools, rascals, that they will accept anyone God. No. They will test. This is the test. If you find somebody that he is neither lower than anyone, neither equal to anyone, then he is God. There are other, many definitions of God. Aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya yaśasaḥ śriyaḥ (Viṣṇu Purāṇa 6.5.47). Analytical study. Try to understand God. This is the only business of human form of life, not that simply eating, sleeping and mating and, I mean to say, defending. These are animal business. The animal knows how to eat, how to sleep, how to mate, and how to defend in its own way. So that is common formula for human being or animal.
But there is one speciality in human society or human being—he can understand God, what is God. If I explain to a human being, however illiterate, uneducated he may be, if he has simply these two ears, he will understand what is God.
Therefore the Vedic information is called śruti. Just try to hear. You haven't got to be educated or literate. God has given you these two ears, and you can learn. Simply you have to learn from the authorized sources. Then you will understand God. And when you understand God, then you develop love of God.
And when you develop love of God without any motive and without any impediment, then you find, "Oh," svāmin kṛtārtho 'smi varaṁ na yāce (CC Madhya 22.42) "I have no more any demand. I am completely satisfied." Try to come to this platform, transcendental stage. You cannot be happy simply by material advancement. That is not possible.
That is explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam: parābhavas tāvad abodha-jātaḥ (SB 5.5.5). Every one of us are rascals, born ignorant. But we have got the capacity to take the message of God from authorized information. That we have got.
So Bhāgavata says, parābhavas tāvad abodha-jātaḥ: "All living entities who are born ignorant, whatever they are doing for advancement of society, culture, education, civilization, all such activities are defeat only if he does not inquire what he is."
Parābhavas tāvad abodha-jāto yāvan na jijñāsata ātma-tattvam. Ātma-tattvam. So long one does not inquire, "What I am? What is God? What is this material nature? What are these activities? What are our relationships?"—if these inquiries are not there, then all our activities are simply defeat. Parābhavas tāvad abodha-jāto yāvan na jijñāsata ātma-tattvam. Yāvan na prītir mayī vāsudeve (SB 5.5.6) "So long one does not develop his dormant love of God," na mucyate deha-yogena tāvat, "so long he will not be able to get out of this repeated birth and death and transmigration of the soul."
This transmigration of soul, repeated birth and death, is a diseased condition of the spirit soul. That we do not know. Neither in our education system there is any department of knowledge teaching what is the soul, what is after death, what was before birth. There is no science. It is very lamentable. Education in the name of simply eating, sleeping and mating, this is not education. If my bodily conception continues . . . the Bhāgavata says, yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke (SB 10.84.13) "Anyone who is thinking that this body of flesh and bone is self, he is an ass." (laughter) Sa eva go-kharaḥ. Go-kharaḥ. Khara means ass. (laughter)
Yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke sva-dhīḥ kalatrādiṣu bhauma ijya-dhīḥ. And by his conceiving this body as self . . . they have no even common reason that, "This bag of flesh, bone, urine, stool and secretion—can it be soul? Can it be self?" But they are finding out by exercising this body to find out the soul.
The soul is there, but you cannot see by material instrument. It is very fine. It is one ten-thousandth part of the tip of your hair. These are explained in the Vedic literature. So how you can find with your material eyes? You cannot see it. And because you cannot see it, you are concluding there is no soul. That is the ignorance.
There is. There is soul, and this body has developed on the platform of that soul, and that soul is migrating from one body to another. That is called evolution. And that evolutional process is going on, 8,400,000's of species of life—aquatics, birds, beasts, plants and so many species of life. And we have got now this developed consciousness, human form of life.