Lesson One
EACH OF US IS A LIVING
SOUL
WITHIN A MATERIAL
BODY
At every moment our bodies are changing.
Just contemplate on your present body. You are in the prime of
youth now. How did your body look like twenty years ago? Try to
comprehend how this body will be after fifty years. In the course
of our life we actually have many different bodies – infant, child,
youth, adult, and so on – but we remain the same person.
Am I a Lump of
Chemicals?
According to Dr. Harry Monsen, Professor of
anatomy at Illinois College of Medicine, your body is worth only
Rs. 110/- if the cost of all the chemicals that constitute your
body is considered. Do you think you are worth only
Rs. 110/-? Will your
parents sell you off even if someone pays them 50 crore rupees?
When a living person looses his small finger or has to get his
kidney replaced, he is ready to spend lakhs and lakhs of rupees.
What is there in a living body that makes it so valuable? And why
is a dead body utterly valueless, although all the chemicals are
still there in it?
The most fundamental knowledge delivered by
Sri Krishna to Arjuna in Bhagavad-gita is that we
are not these bodies; we are spirit souls. The body is only mere
temporary covering or dress. The soul (living force) is present in
the plants, animals and human beings. Wherever there is life there
must be a soul, because the soul is life. Whether it is an amoeba
or an elephant or a human being, the soul is present within each
body.
What Exactly is the
Soul?
The soul is the spark of life that
activates every body and enables it to function,
just as electric current activates a device
and enables it to function. The soul can be compared to a driver
and the body to a vehicle. The soul is the spark of life that makes
the body appear alive and when the soul leaves the body, the person
is said to be dead.
Scientific Proof of the
Soul’s Existence
We are
accustomed to understanding the term ‘science’ only in relation to
matter and energy. There is however, a higher dimensional science
that deals with the subject of the soul and spiritual energy. By
nature spirit is ‘transcendental’ to matter. In other words, the
soul is intrinsically beyond material sense perception. The
techniques of material science are inadequate to ‘prove’ the
existence of the soul in as much as the ear is incapable of
detecting light. The soul can however, by realized as a higher
reality by following the laws of spiritual science. Ultimately, all
spiritual truth is revealed and ‘proved’ from within, by
experience. Yet the following points may help us better understand
the presence of soul.
Common
senses
When a
person dies we say, “He has passed away.” Now who has passed away?
The body of the person still lies there. The fact is that the
source of life, the soul, has passed away from the body and
therefore the person is now called dead.
Intuitive Understanding
We have an
intuitive understanding the the real self, the ‘I’, is distinct
from the body, mind and intelligence. We speak
in terms of ‘my hand’, ‘my head’ etc. This way we can start from
the top of the hair down to the tip of the toe and say every part
of this body is ‘mine’. This indicates that these things belong to
somebody, an owner. The eyes, ears and brain are merely organs,
through which we see, hear or think. These organs in themselves
cannot do any activity. There are eyes, ears and a brain even in a
dead body. The activities have stopped because the driver, the
soul, has left the body.
Consciousness
There is
consciousness in a living body, Just like the sun spreads heat and
light all around, the soul spreads consciousness all around the
body, from the tip of the toes and fingers to the top of the head.
It is this consciousness that enables us to think, feel, move and
so on. Thus, consciousness is the symptom of the
soul. Consciousness
is what distinguishes a dead body from a living one. A machine can
easily be built to respond to red light with the statement, “I see
red light”, but does the experience of seeing red light accompany
this mechanical response? As Thomas Huxley rightly said, “There is
a third thing in the universe, to wit, consciousness, which I
cannot see to be matter or force.” Consciousness gives the proof of
the soul.
Near
Death Experience (NDE)
NDEs, as
the name suggests, involve people who have a close call with death.
Many people having NDEs also have Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) in
which they report observing their physical body and events relating
to it from a perspective outside the body during severe illness or
physical trauma resulting in unconsciousness. A typical case might
involve a person who is resuscitated from a heart attack and
reports that he observed, from a point outside his body, the
medical personnel endeavouring to revive him. At such times,
according to standard medical opinion, the normal functioning of
the brain, as indicated by certain brain waves, is impaired, and
the patient should be unconscious, if indeed consciousness is a
manifestation of the brain.
There is
enough research work in NDE presented by individuals with
impeccable scientific credentials. For example,
Dr Michael B Sabom, a
cardiologist and professor at the Emory University Medical
School, was openly
skeptical of NDEs but changed his mind after investigating them.
Based on rigorous research, Sabom writes: “If the human brain is
actually composed of two fundamental elements – the ‘mind’ amd the
‘brain’ - then could the near death crisis event somehow trigger a
transient splitting of the mind from the brain in many
individuals... The out-of-body hypothesis simply seems to fit best
with the data at hand... Could the mind which splits apart
from the physical brain be, in essence, the soul,
which continues to exist after final bodily
death, according to some religious doctrine? As I see it, this is
the ultimate question that has been raised by reports of the
NDE.”
Past
Life Memories
Rigorous,
unbiased studies have been carried out by serious researchers on
past-life memories. Dr Ian Stevenson, Carlson Professor
of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia,
has extensively investigated spontaneous
reincarnation memories recounted by children. In such cases he has
been able to positively corroborate what the child has claimed by
thorougly investigating details of the place and people they
describe, including the dead person they claim to have been.
Stevenson has assembled numerous accounts and verified them, always
taking great care to screen out fabrications.
His studies give
convincing evidence that the conscious self can travel from one
physical body to the next.
Clearly,
when one body dies, the contents of its brain are destroyed, and
there is no physical process by which they can influence the
contents of another brain. The simplest interpretation is that the
conscious self must be an entity distinct from the
brain.
Is Man Just a Powerful
Computer or Robot?
A computer
is controlled by a series of instructions (written in suitable
computer languages like C, C++, VB). It is evident that a computer
has to be programmed by an intelligent human being. Whatever
ability a computer has, be it number crunching, object
identification, natural language processing etc. is imparted to the
computer by a sentient conscious human being. In other words, if
the programmer programs his computer system to sum two plus two as
five it would do so. Similarly if a computer system hooked with a
vision system is programmed to recognize a square object as round
it would do so. A computer cannot understand anything by itself. By
itself, without bring programmed, it is a dumb
machine.
For
example, consider a drama, which is being observed by a panel of
judges and is also being recorded by a video camera. The judge is
using his eyes to record the scene being enacted and the video
camera is recording all the incidents using the lenses, which are
the machine analog of the eyes. Both the machine and the human
observer record the data and information, but the human observer
also ‘experiences’ the phenomenon. The judges, for instance, go
through a whole range of emotions like elation, sorrow, anger etc.
while they view the play. The video camera, on the other hand,
merely records the play visually. At the end, the judges make a
decision as to which actor was the best based on the series of
images projeted in front of the eye. However the video recorder
cannot make any such judgements, although it has recorded every
scene of the drama.
The
difference is that although, both the human observer and the camera
are watching the play, the human being is ‘conscious’, whereas the
camera is devoid of any consciousness. Hence the main difference
between man and machine is consciousness.
A Clear Understanding of Life
and Death
The Gross Body and the Subtle
Body
According
to Bhagavad-gita you are
not this body. You are not the mind. You are not the intelligence.
You are not the false ego. You are beyond the constituents of this
mortal form. You are the consciousness that pervades this body. You
are the imperishable soul.
The soul has two coverings – the
gross body and the subtle body. The gross
body, also known as the ‘sthula sharira’ is made up of five
elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether. Earth represents all
solids, water represents all liquids, fire represents light and
radiation, air represents all gases and ether represents space and
sound.
The mind,
intelligence and false ego constitute the subtle body. The subtle
body is also called as the ‘sukshma sharira’. ‘True ego’ is to
understand that ‘I am spirit soul, eternal servant of God’. ‘False
ego’ is to think in illusion that, ‘I am this body’. The subtle
body and the gross body are coverings on the soul. Such a soul
entrapped in these subtle and gross bodies is called a ‘conditioned
soul’. One who becomes free from these covering and attains
spiritual consciousness is called a ‘liberated
soul’.
Relationship Betweeen Body and Soul
The body is compared to a car and the
soul to the driver. If an
unintelligent puppy sees a big car coming on the road, it may be
scared thinking a big animal is coming on four wheels. But a
knowledgeable man will know that it is only a dead car, which is
driven by a driver. There are headlights in the car to see the
road, you also see with your eyes. The car produces sound with the
horn, you also speak. The car has four wheels, you also have two
hands and two legs. The car moves from place to place and you also
do the same. But once the driver gets down from the car, the car
cannot budge even one inch after 100 years. Similarly when a person
dies, his body becomes completely inactive. It is exactly liek a
car without a driver. The body that we see is actually dead. It
appears to be lively because of the presence of the soul. When the
soul leaves the body, the body becomes inactive.
“The Unseen Driver of
Bodily Car”
Mouth to Speak = Horn to Produce Sound
Eyes to See = Headlights to See
Heart to Pump Blood = Radiator to Supply Water
Hands and Legs to Move = Four Wheels to Move
Car Cannot Budge One Inch Without The Driver = Body Cannot
Do Any Function Without The Driver i.e. Soul
What
Happens at Death?
The Bhagavad-gita (2.13)
explains: “As the embodied living soul
continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old
age, so the same soul passes into another body at
death.”
Our bodies
grow and change because the living soul is present within the
heart. But when the soul leaves the body, then all physical
activities cease. The eternally living soul
transmigrates to another body. This experience is known as
death.
At the
time of death, the gross body lies down, and the soul covered by
the subtle body, according to the dictation of nature, occupies
another body. The Bhagavad-gita (1.22)
explains transmigration with an analogy: “As
a person puts on new garments, giving up the old ones, similarly,
the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless
ones.”
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