Prabhupāda: Guḍākeśa. Guḍākeśa. Guḍākeśa means one who has conquered sleep. Sleeping means māyā, or darkness. Just like in sleeping you do not know where you are, similarly, a person who is in the darkness . . . everyone is, in this material conditional life, everyone is in darkness. He does not know wherefrom he has come, what for he has come, what he has to do and where he is going next. All these questions are darkness for him. So anyone who has conquered over this darkness, he is called guḍākeśa.
So Arjuna did it. He knew, by the grace of Kṛṣṇa; therefore his another name is Guḍākeśa. Everyone is in darkness. Ask him, "What you were in your past life? What you are going to become in your next life? Why you have come here?" "Why you have become American?" "Why you have become Indian?" "Why you are white?" "Why you are black?" "Why you are suffering?" "Why you are enjoying?" So many "whys." Ask them. They will not be able to answer. Therefore they are in darkness. So anyone who knows all these things, he is out of darkness.
So try to be like Arjuna, to become out of darkness. That is the Vedic injunction. Tamasi mā jyotir gamaḥ (Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3.28): "Don't remain in darkness. Just try to go to the light." This is light. Just like it is very commonsense affair that I, the soul, is eternal. I am changing my body from the very inception in the womb of my mother. And and because I am changing this body, therefore I am nowhere? I am gone forever? Ask the greatest scientist. He will say like that. It is a commonsense affair. Just like a child. Because he cannot see the sun at night, he may say: "Oh, sun is gone, dead and gone." But no scientist, no intelligent man will say. "My dear child, the sun is not gone, sun is there. I cannot see now." That is the fact.
Similarly, these foolish persons, because they cannot see the soul and because the body is left here and it is destroyed, he says that there is no soul. Just see how childish and how much darkness is there. It is commonsense affair. How this body . . .? I am taking this body so important, the body of such-and-such professor, such-and-such scientist, such-and-such philosopher. But as soon as I, the soul, go away, where is the importance? If the body is important, why it becomes nonsense immediately after the departure of the soul?
Therefore the soul is important. One who does not know the soul, his all activities are defeat. Parābhavas tāvad abodha-jato yāvan na jijṣāsata ātma-tattvam (SB 5.5.5). Anyone who has not inquired about the soul . . . because he is born ignorant, born in darkness, he does not know what is soul, what is this body, what is this world. Therefore born in darkness. So if in that darkness and ignorance he is acting so many things, what is the profit? It is simply defeat. So a person who does not inquire into the existence of soul, his real identity, all his so-called improvement is simply waste of time. Śrama eva hi kevalam (SB 1.2.8). Simply laboring, that's all.
The whole world is doing that, beating the bush, laboring for nothing. He does not know that how long he will remain. Suppose you are in America. You are now Mr. Ford. You have constructed a very skyscraper building. But how long you shall remain in this skyscraper building? How long you shall remain American or Mr. Ford? Next life, as soon as your body is changed, then you are Mr. Dog or Mr. Cat or Mr. this or Mr. Chinaman, Mr. Indian.
That means if, in my next life, I become Mr. Such-and-such instead of Mr. Ford, then all the activities that I have done as Mr. Ford is simply waste of time. That he does not know. This is ignorance. And one who has conquered this ignorance, he is Arjuna.