Srila Gurudeva: Who is God? G-O-D. G, generator of the whole world. O, operator of the whole world, and D, destructor of whole world. He is so powerful. He is full of opulence. He is also so merciful. We are the part and parcels of that Godhead. We must believe in God because if there is no God, then there would be no creation, nothing. There cannot be anything without Him. We will have to at least suppose this. In this world there are so many controllers, but they cannot control the entire world. They cannot even create a leg of an ant. So we should think that all the creatures, human beings, demigods, creepers, trees, everything, that which has life and soul, we should know that they are parts and parcels of the same God. But we have forgotten Him and by this offense his illusory maya has captured us and thrown us in the jail of this world. So now we are in the jail of that illusory maya.
God is the embodiment of happiness. He has a transcendental body and transcendental intelligence. His body is not material, He has a transcendental body. It cannot be seen by these material eyes. When the soul leaves this body, we declare that this body is dead. Also we can see that when a child is born, any soul has now taken birth. The soul is part and parcel of God. That soul also has a very beautiful, transcendental body, a very good, transcendental intelligence and very beautiful qualities like God. But just like we cannot see God with these material eyes, we cannot see the soul in our body. Anyone may ask, “How can you say that the soul has so many qualities if you cannot see it?” We can explain this very easily.
What to speak of human beings, but all worms, insects, hogs, pigs, all animals, all trees, creepers, they all want happiness. By nature they are like this because they are part and parcel of Godhead and He is the embodiment of all happiness. Therefore we are also like this. We are also an embodiment of happiness, we are also eternal, but we are only an infinitesimal part of that. That is why we can be covered by this illusory maya and why we have been covered. Try to understand this. This subject is very deep. This is yoga, I am speaking about yoga. This is Indian yoga and this is what yoga really is. If you will not understand these things, you cannot know what yoga actually is and then you will think that anything is yoga. So try to understand. These are the fundamental principles of yoga.
[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on December 18th, 1998, Bali, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 24]