Dedicated to my spiritual master His Divine Grace Abhaya Charan Bhaktivedanta Swami 'Srila Prabhupada'
All conditioned souls are subject to four defects due to the imperfection of their senses.
One defect is that the conditioned soul is certain to commit mistakes. There is no man who does not commit mistakes. In India, for instance, Mahatma Gandhi was supposed to be a very great personality, but he also committed mistakes. Five minutes before he came to the meeting at which he was killed, he was warned by confidential associates not to go, but he persisted. To commit mistakes is very natural in the conditioned state of life. Indeed, the popular saying has arisen: "To err is human."
Another imperfection of the conditioned soul is that he is sure to be illusioned. Being illusioned means accepting something which is not, phantasmagoria to be factual. Every one of us is under the impression that we are these bodies, but actually we are not. Accepting the body to be the self is called illusion, or maya.
The third imperfection is that conditioned souls have a tendency to cheat. We have often heard a storekeeper say, "Because you are my friend, I won't make any profit off you." But in actuality we know that he is making at least 50% profit. There are so many instances of this cheating propensity. There are also many examples of teachers who actually know nothing but put forth theories in words like "perhaps" or "it may be," while in actuality they are simply cheating their students.
The fourth imperfection is that the senses of the living entity are not perfect. Our vision is so limited that we cannot see very far away nor very near. The eye can see only under certain conditions, and therefore it is understood that our vision is limited. Similarly, all our other senses are also limited. It is not possible to understand the unlimited by these imperfect, limited senses.
Prabhupada Dasa
RadhaKrishna Sevak
The Real Soul Doctor - 'Jagad-Guru Srila Prabhupada'
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