Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 1.8.48
—
Māyāpura, October 28, 1974
So real sanity is to understand that this body belongs to Kṛṣṇa. We are misunderstanding that this body belongs to my father, mother, or my master or to the cats and dogs or the vultures, in so many ways. That is material. Materially, we can understand that. But spiritually, this body belongs to Kṛṣṇa because the body is made of, I mean to say, prepared by the eight elements. We have got the five elements, bhūmir āpo 'nalo vāyuḥ [Bg. 7.4]. There is earth, water, air, fire, and the mind and the intelligence and the false ego. This is the eight combination of the matter. Then, the matter being agitated, there are ten senses and then sense objects. In this way this body is composition of twenty-four elements. But all these elements, Kṛṣṇa says, bhinnā me prakṛtir aṣṭadhā: [Bg. 7.4] "That is My energy."
This body is made by Kṛṣṇa's property. Earth, water, air, fire—this is all Kṛṣṇa's property. You cannot create earth, or you cannot create water. You cannot create sky, nothing of the material elements. It is created by Kṛṣṇa, and this body is..., this external body is made of these eight elements. Similarly, I am also Kṛṣṇa's. Apareyam itas tu viddhi me prakṛtiṁ parāṁ jīva-bhūtām. Me parāṁ prakṛtiṁ jīva-bhūtām. Jīva, the living entities, they are parā-prakṛti, superior energy, but that is also me: "Mine." So I, as ahaṁ brahmāsmi, because Kṛṣṇa is absolute, in that sense, I, the energy of Kṛṣṇa, and Kṛṣṇa, we are one. Ahaṁ brahmāsmi means that, or "I belong to Kṛṣṇa." The Māyāvādī thinks that "I have become Kṛṣṇa." No. The Vaiṣṇava philosophy is that "I am Kṛṣṇa's property, not that I become Kṛṣṇa." Just like the part and parcel of my body, this finger. The finger can claim that "I am part and parcel of the body," but the finger cannot claim that "I am the whole body." That is not possible.