Everyone is feeling nationally or internationally, but the center is missing. Therefore your feeling, your international feeling, my international feeling, your national feeling, my national feeling, they are overlapping. So we have to find out the center. Then you expand your circle, it will not, I mean to say, overlap or counteract. It will go on. That center is Kṛṣṇa. Our society, International Society for Krishna Consciousness, is teaching to the people of all country that the center is Kṛṣṇa. You try to think from the central point of Kṛṣṇa. That Kṛṣṇa philosophy is the Bhagavad-gītā.
I take it for granted that many of you have studied Bhagavad-gītā. And in the Seventh Chapter there is a nice verse that:
- bahūnāṁ janmanām ante
- jñānavān māṁ prapadyate
- vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti
- sa mahātmā su-durlabhaḥ
- (BG 7.19)
You have heard the word mahātmā. That is a Sanskrit word, or Indian word, which is applied to a person whose mind is expanded, whose feelings, the circle of his feelings, is very expanding. He is called mahātmā. Mahā means big or great, and ātmā, ātmā means soul. Who has expanded his soul very wide, he is called mahātmā. So this Bhagavad-gītā gives the definition of the person who has expanded his feeling very wide.
Who is that? It is said there, bahūnāṁ janmanām ante (BG 7.19). We are trying to expand our feeling socially, communally or nationally or internationally or universally or some other way. This is going on. We try to do it. That is our natural function, especially in the human form of life—expanded consciousness, broader consciousness. We try.
We try to do some service to the whole humanity, to society, to the country. That is expanded consciousness. But Bhagavad-gītā says that bahūnāṁ janmanām ante. Bahu means many, and janma means birth. Bahūnāṁ janmanām ante: at the end of. At the end of many, many births.
Perhaps you know that we believe the theory—not theory; the fact—of transmigration of soul. We are changing bodies one after another. There are 8,400,000's of different species of life, and we are evolving. And at last we come to this form, human form of life. This is also called bahūnāṁ janmanām ante: after many, many births.
Labdhvā su-durlabham idaṁ bahu-sambhavānte (SB 11.9.29). In the Bhāgavata there is a verse. It is said there, labdhvā su-durlabham idam. Idam. Idam means "this." This body, labdhvā, you have got it. Labdhvā su-durlabham idam. Su-durlabham means it is very rare. This is not very cheap. The body of cats and dogs or animals, they are cheap, but this is not very cheap. Su-durlabhaḥ. Bahūnāṁ janman . . . labdhvā su-durlabham idaṁ bahu-sambha-vānte.