Those who are learned, they see that "Here is a learned brāhmaṇa, and here is a dog, and here is a hog, and here is a dog-eater. There is an elephant. There is a cow. So they are in different dresses only, and the real occupier of the dress, or the body. . ." That is explained, idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya. . . What is called? Idaṁ śarīraṁ kaunteya kṣetram ity abhidhīyate (BG 13.2). This is only, we have got. . . According to different desires, we have got these different types of body, kṣetra. Just like field. The cultivator, the farmer, works on the field and gets some result. Similarly, we have got different types of body, and we are working on this body in the bodily concepts of life. That is not advanced life. If we are in the bodily concept of life, that is animal life. When we understand that "I know that I am not this body; I am working with this body," that is knowledge. Abhidhīyate.
And not only I. One should understand. It is clearly stated here; there is no difficulty. Kṛṣṇa says that "The living entity and Myself, we are both within this body." Kṣetra-jñaṁ cāpi māṁ viddhi sarva-kṣetreṣu (BG 13.3). The difference—we are individual soul. We are living, every one of us, living within this body, and there is another living entity. God is also living entity like you and me. The difference is that He is great and we are subordinate. Otherwise. . . Just like you have got your president. He is a big man of your nation, and we are small men, or you are a small man. But he is also a human being; I am also a human being or you are also. Similarly, God is exactly like us, with two hands and two legs. You see Kṛṣṇa, He hasn't got a hundred legs or a hundred. . . He has got the same, two legs and two hands, exactly like our body. In the Bible also it says, I think, that "Man is made after the feature of God"? So it is not that we have imagined God with two legs and two hands like us. No. Our this body is made imitating God's body. And the animals, they are also imitating God's body. God has got many forms. Advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam ādyaṁ purāṇa-puruṣaṁ nava-yauvanaṁ ca (Bs. 5.33). He has got many other forms, innumerable.
So anyway, this is knowledge, that "I am occupying this body. I have got this body according to my desire, and this desire has been fulfilled by God. God is with me, with you. He is within your heart. He understands what you desire. You have come, we have come in this material world to satisfy our different desires. Therefore, there are so many different forms of body." Now you can calculate also. What is that? There are three qualities within this material world. You know, everyone. Some are in goodness, and some are in passion, and some are in ignorance. In the animal or in the vegetable kingdom, in the human society, you will find these three types of men. Take our human society. Some of them are very good men, very truthful, very honest, very learned, and knows what is God. You find such men also. And you will find also very much passionate. And you will find also men like cats and dogs—no knowledge, blind. So there are three types of men. Why? Because there are three qualities or modes of material nature: goodness, passion and ignorance. Now, you mix up these three qualities with another three varieties of qualities. Just like the painter, they mix up different colors. The original color is blue, yellow and red. Now, you mix up these colors. You can. . . Hundreds and thousands of colors you can make. It requires expert handling. Similarly, originally these three qualities: goodness, passion and ignorance. Now, three into three equal to nine, and nine into nine equal to eighty-one. So we get immediately account for eighty-one varieties, and each variety is thousand and millions. Therefore 8,400,000 is calculated. And we have got so many varieties of life. Jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi sthāvarā lakṣa-viṁśati kṛmayo rudra-saṅkhyakāḥ, means the aquatics, there are 900,000; and the trees and plants, 2,000,000; and 1,100,000, these flies and insects. Kṛmayo rudra-saṅkhyakāḥ. And then birds, 1,000,000 types of birds. Then 3,000,000 types of beasts. Then 400,000 of human being—civilized, uncivilized, white, red, black, so many varieties. In this way, the whole calculation is 8,400,000 different types of body.
Now Kṛṣṇa will explain that tat kṣetraṁ yac ca yādṛk, why there are so many varieties. The living entity is the same, a spiritual spark, part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa, or God, but why they have assumed these different types of body calculated to be 8,400,000 forms? But each form is part and parcel of God. Not each form, or you can say form also; each living entity. That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā:
- sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya
- mūrtayaḥ sambhavanti yāḥ
- tāsāṁ brahma mahad yonir
- ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā
- (BG 14.4)
Kṛṣṇa says—I think in the Fourteenth Chapter it is there—that "I am the seed-giving father of all these forms of life. All these forms of life. They are not, I mean to say, automatic, come from anywhere. I am the original father." Therefore those who are fully Kṛṣṇa conscious or fully advanced in spiritual consciousness, they do not make any difference between an insect and a elephant, because he knows very well that the same spirit soul is there within the elephant and within insect, within the microbe. Because the dimension of the spirit soul is very small. You cannot imagine. It is one ten-thousandth part of the tip of the hair. Keśāgra-śata-bhāgasya śatadhā kalpita. Everything is there. So such minute particle is so powerful that it is managing the body of the elephant and it is managing the body of the ant.