indriyair indriyarthesu

 gunair api gunesu ca

grhyamanesv aham kuryan

 na vidvan yas tv avikriyah

 

Translation: 

 

An enlightened person who is free from the contamination of material desire does not consider himself to be the performer of bodily activities; rather, he knows that in all such activities it is only the senses, born of the modes of nature, that are contacting sense objects born of the same modes of nature.

 

Purport: 

 

Lord Krsna makes a similar statement in Bhagavad-gita (3.28):

 

tattva-vit tu maha-baho

 guna-karma-vibhagayoh

guna gunesu vartanta

 iti matva na sajjate

 

“One who is in knowledge of the Absolute Truth, O mighty-armed, does not engage himself in the senses and sense gratification, knowing well the difference between work in devotion and work for fruitive results.”

 

The material body always interacts with the sense objects, for in order to survive the body must eat, drink, speak, sleep, and so on, but an enlightened person who knows the science of Krsna consciousness never thinks, “I am accepting these sense objects as my property. They are meant for my pleasure.” Similarly, if the body performs a wonderful activity, a Krsna conscious person does not become proud, nor is he depressed by the failure of the body to function in a particular way. In other words, Krsna consciousness means giving up identification with the gross and subtle material bodies. One should see them as the external energy of the Lord, working under the direction of the Lord’s empowered representative maya. One absorbed in fruitive activities works under the jurisdiction of maha-maya, or the external illusory potency, and experiences the miseries of material existence. On the other hand, a devotee works under the internal potency, called yoga-maya, and remains satisfied by offering his loving service to the Lord. In either case, the Lord Himself, by His multifarious potencies, is the ultimate performer of action.

 

According to Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura, one who claims to be transcendental to the bodily concept of life, but at the same time remains under the influence of material desire and mental transformation, is understood to be a cheater and the lowest type of conditioned soul.