So everyone is in ignorance. That is our concern. Our propaganda is not for the East and the West, but our fight is with the ignorance of the people, because at the present moment people are kept in ignorance, in foolishness, that he is this body, bodily identification. But still, there is difference between East and West. In the West, I have talked with big, big professors, learned scholars. They have no idea of next life. I talked with Professor Kotovsky in Moscow. He said, "Swāmījī, after annihilation of this body, everything is finished." They have no idea that there is soul. And in India even the poorest man, he knows that "There is next life. I existed in the past, and I will exist in the future." This Vedic conclusion is known even to the poorest man, illiterate man. That is, of course, the difference between East and West.
So anyway, our position is that we should not identify this body as self. Kṛṣṇa says here that:
- adhyātma-jñāna-nityatvaṁ
- tattva-jñānārtha-darśanam
- etaj jñānam iti proktam
- ajñānaṁ yad ataḥ anyathā
- (BG 13.12)
Adhyātmā-jñānam, to understand oneself as the spirit soul, that jñānam. Adhyātmā-jñānam, tattva-jnanārtha-darśanam. Philosophy should be utilized. Logic and philosophy should be utilized for self-realization, not for simply mental speculation. We find nowadays, big, big philosophers write volumes of book, simply theorizing, without any understanding of the spirit soul. Big, big philosopher. And Kṛṣṇa says that if one simply puts philosophical theories for some utopian ideas, "Now time is coming which will be like this, like that . . ." No. Time is there already. You cannot manufacture time like this or like that. It will go on. It is eternal. It is eternal. Just like Kṛṣṇa has said in the Second Chapter of Bhagavad-gītā that, "Arjuna, you and Me and all the soldiers and kings who have assembled here, it is not that we did not exist in the past. We are existing now, and we shall continue to exist in the future.