Prabhupada, New York, March 28, 1966: […] So we are discussing for the last few days on the constitutional position of ourself, myself, yourself—the soul, pure soul. Now, we have discussed that this pure soul is distinct from this material body.
And we can understand this constitution of the soul by the presence of consciousness. The Lord says, Krishna says, that avinasi tu tad viddhi yena sarvam idam tatam. You can understand what you are. You are present all over your body. You are present all over your body.
Wherever you can try by pinching your body, you will feel some pain, this, this part of this body or this part of this body. And this pain feeling will be stopped as soon as the consciousness is taken away from this body.
Dead body, where there is no consciousness, the dead body does not feel even he is chopped up by some chopper, because the consciousness is gone. Therefore, it is not very difficult to understand that “I am the consciousness. I am not this material body.” We have discussed all this point.
Now, so far scriptures are concerned, there are different scriptures all over the world in the civilized society, but Bhagavad-gita, the Lord says that, “The essence of all scripture is to understand my constitutional position.” That’s all. All the rituals…
We should not be stuck up to the rituals or to the formulas of the scriptures. Of course, in the preliminary stages we require to stick to the formulas of religious scriptures. But we must know that the whole idea is targeted to understand my real position. That is the whole idea of all scriptures. In the Bhagavad-gita it has been very nicely described, yavan artha udapane tavan samplutodake.
yavan artha udapane sarvatah samplutodake tavan sarvesu vedesu brahmanasya vijanatah
Brahmanasya vijanatah. One who knows the constitution of the soul, he is called brahmana. Because the soul is Brahman. Soul is not matter. So one who knows the constitution of the soul, he is called brahmana. More
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