God reveals Himself only to those engaged in loving service, never through material effort or mental speculation alone.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 25.36–40 — January 23, 1967, San Francisco 670123CC-SAN FRANCISCO [25:30 Minutes] Prabhupāda: nātaḥ paraṁ parama sambhavata..., yad bhavataḥ svarūpam ānanda-mātram avikalpam aviddha-varcaḥ paśyāmi viśva-sṛjam ekam aviśvam ātman bhūtendriyātmakam adas ta upāśrito 'smi [SB 3.9.3, Cc. Madhya 25.36] [O my Lord, I do not see a form superior to Your present form of eternal bliss and knowledge. In Your impersonal Brahman effulgence in the spiritual sky, there is no occasional change and no deterioration of internal potency. I surrender unto You because whereas I am proud of my material body and senses, Your Lordship is the cause of the cosmic manifestation and yet You are untouched by matter.] So the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is the ultimate goal.
As it is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā, mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat asti kiñcid dhanañjaya [Bg. 7.7] [O conqueror of wealth [Arjuna], there is no Truth superior to Me. Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.] In the Bhagavad-gītā the Lord says, "There is nothing more superior than Me." So this statement of Bhagavad-gītā is also confirmed in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam by this verse. Ānanda-mātram. In the transcendental body of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, it is simply ānandam, blissful. We should note it that this body, our material body, is nirānandam, is without ānanda. We are trying to adjust to have ānanda, or pleasure, by the limited resources of our senses, but actually, there is no ānanda, bliss.
It is all miserable. This miserable body is condemned in every, I mean to say, practically, chapter and every śloka, every verse. Therefore Ṛṣabhadeva says, nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma yad indriya-prītaya āpṛṇoti [SB 5.5.4] [When a person considers sense gratification the aim of life, he certainly becomes mad after materialistic living and engages in all kinds of sinful activity. He does not know that due to his past misdeeds he has already received a body which, although temporary, is the cause of his misery. Actually the living entity should not have taken on a material body, but he has been awarded the material body for sense gratification. Therefore I think it not befitting an intelligent man to involve himself again in the activities of sense gratification by which he perpetually gets material bodies one after another.] Generally, people, they are mad, because more or less... Not more or less. Practically every one of us, we are mad.
Why mad? Pramattaḥ, this very word is used. Pramattaḥ. Pramattaḥ means mad.
Nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma. This material nature's program is such that the conditioned soul who are here, they should live in such a regulated life that ultimately they can go back to home, back to Godhead, because we are sons of the Supreme Lord. We have come here to enjoy material, pramattaḥ svārthe, and we do not know what is our self-interest. We are thinking that "I am this body," and therefore a little sense gratification... Because the body means there are different senses, and if we can gratify the senses we think that we are happy.
This is madness. Ṛṣabhādeva says, nūnaṁ pramattaḥ kurute vikarma yad indriya-prītaya āpṛṇoti [SB 5.5.4] The only business is sense gratification. He says, na sādhu manye: "This is not very good." Sādhu means good. Just to distinguish between the body of the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, and our body, here the body of Kṛṣṇa is said, ānanda-mātram. Ānanda-mātram, simply full of..., reservoir of all pleasures. So because we are part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, we have also ānanda-mātram; simply blissful body we have got.
That is called spiritual body. But because we have become mad, we have identified that this material body as "I am." Therefore... And material body means sense gratification. There is no other alternative.