Journey of the Soul – Part 2 Q&A

Spiritual realization, self-realization, and God-realization is not for special people. You are not asked to do something that’s not available to you. This is a process to actually uncover, from your heart, to uncover your eternal spiritual nature and to reconnect with the Supreme Soul. It’s natural for you. You may have forgotten and feel disconnected, but this is something natural. So, that I hope will be encouraging for people to take away and consider.

Okay, did you like it? Yeah? I love it. I get invited to go around and share stuff, and I’m very grateful to you for all coming out. I tell people I have an extraordinary debt to my spiritual teachers for what they have shared, and my attempt to repay that debt is by trying to share, even if it’s very imperfectly, the things that I’ve been given. So I am very indebted to all of you for showing up and providing a forum for me to try and do that. So thank you.

Okay, anybody have a question?

Audience member: You were talking earlier about every seven years, which I know of, that our cells die and are all renewed. [Acd: Mm-hmm.] But I’ve always thought of that as just being the physical body that’s changing. [Acd: Yes.] But hang on—I’m interested in whether the mind, the thoughts, the memories, how can, I don’t think you can, I don’t think that changes.

Acharya das: No. They don’t.

Audience Member: Oh, okay. They don’t.

Acharya das: And that—okay, you know, we’re only scratching the surface. I’m trying to share maybe essential things that are really important, but there’s so much more behind it. For instance, the yogis, by experimentation and realization, and by receiving spiritual knowledge through these wonderful texts, they describe how the living being is covered by two bodies. You have a gross physical body. This is called the sthula sarira. And you also have a subtle body called the linga sarira, and that subtle body is comprised primarily of the mind.

But two other faculties, one is called buddhi, or intelligence, and it’s different than the way people in the West think of intelligence; and ahankara, the false concepts of self that we deeply embrace; and these act as like filters.

The body doesn’t have its own consciousness. The consciousness that is manifest in the body is lent to it by the spiritual being, you, the person. And similarly, consciousness is lent to the mind, so it becomes active and seems to be independent and has kind of like its own life.

The gross physical body undergoes deterioration. And when the event known as death occurs, when the living being leaves, the living being goes, and it takes the consciousness with it. And so the body is no longer manifesting personhood, consciousness. Personhood also comes from the spirit soul. But while one remains trapped and entangled in material consciousness, and therefore the material world, then they bring that subtle covering with them. That doesn’t change—or it’s not changed for a new one, but we all know the mind is constantly changing. Okay?

Audience Member: Thank you.

Acharya das: Thank you! Hee hee. How you been doing? Okay? It’s been a while, yeah? I haven’t seen you.

Audience member: Been a long time since Mt Warning.

Acharya das: Yes.

Audience member: So, I, taking a bit forwards, at the beginning you said something like you are a little bit to surface conversations, and you like to go deep, you know a lot about humans [hard to hear] you like to talk about deep [Acd: Yeah]

So for me that’s, obviously that’s, you’re a very spiritual person. You go deep, you’re a spiritual person. So when you’re constantly making the other humans that are always [hard to hear]—and we are all—we all have a spiritual nature, but not all of us have a spiritual practice. [Acd: Yeah] Um, how did you—you know, I always hear this saying, the people saying, ahh, these people that are so-called spiritual, they kind of, they’re very, instead of loving everybody, they become more kind of sep—[Acd:isolated] isolated. And having been on a spiritual like deep journey myself these past few years or so I, find that I struggle with connecting with those people that don’t share spiritual practices, not because I expect everybody to think the same way I do, it has nothing to do with the way they think. It’s more about a way of being, maybe a way of acting in the world, and I want to know your thoughts in terms of connecting with others.

Acharya das: Connecting with others?

Audience member: Yeah. That don’t have a spiritual [Acd Yeah, well…] spiritual dimension to their life, I guess.

Acharya das: The transcendental perspective is that all living beings are equal, there’s no higher and lower, but they may be in different states of, you know, on the journey. They may even be going backwards. The feeling that a spiritualist or a transcendentalist should have is one of great love and compassion, and desiring their well-being. But sometimes people are not open to hearing, and so you can show them kindness, but you don’t try to force them, nor should you be neglectful of your own spiritual well-being in order to perhaps appease them in where they’re at, that you have to start adopting their behaviours. We should ask them to be respectful, but at the same time we should be compassionate and caring and actually relate to them that way. Does that answer the question?

It’s a balance. And when we ourselves are not spiritually strong enough, then there are certain dangers associated with just loosely associating with someone who’s just heading in a whole ‘nother direction, especially when you have to compromise your spiritual cultivation, your spiritual understanding and principle in order to be accepted. You know, that’s not spiritual, and it’s not helpful to them.

So, one should never feel in any way superior to another. Humility is an absolute requirement for spiritual life, but humility doesn’t mean stupidity either. So, because everybody’s an individual and their situation is different, I can only just share with you some broad principles, but on a case-to-case basis you have to be the one to figure out how you’re going to deal with people, but it’s not good to become an isolationist.

We are actually asked by the great spiritual teachers to first and foremost to make our life successful, and that means to become self-realized and God-realized, and then to offer our life, our words, our actions, our wealth, in the service and upliftment of others. That’s the broad principle of how one should live. Okay?

Yes?

Audience member: Can I ask you then for clarity on the true meaning in your rule, of self-realized and God realized? So what—how can we [words hard to hear] [Acd: Yeah] who haven’t attained that, which is something [Acd: Okay] that I’ve been thinking about for a long time, [Acd: Okay] what should we do?

Acharya das: So there are fundamentally in—coming out of India, two principal schools of thought in relation to self-realization and God-realization. The school of Adi Shankar, Shankaracharya, from the seventh century, he proposed the idea that we are fundamentally all God, and through meditation and everything, we can realize our godhood. That realization is actually only a realization of our essence, that we are spiritual, brahman, aham brahmasmi.

But it is not a realization of my position, the fact that even though I may be an extraordinary spiritual being, I’m only one of a limitless number. And as is stated in the Upanisads,

nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam,

that amongst all the limitless ocean of eternal and conscious beings, there is one that is unique and different. And even in the yoga system, the darshan, yoga darshan, Patanjali describes Isvara as being a purusa visesa. He is a unique purusa, unlike other purusas, and then delineates the characteristics.

So, we have a source, and while we are separating ourself from our source, we are stricken with loneliness, with emptiness, with the desire for something more complete. In relation to God realization, do you have background in some of this? Yes?

Audience member: Sikh tradition.

Acharya das: Sikh tradition? Yeah. Any particular part of the Sikh tradition, like [2 words indecipherable], Radha Soami or…?

Audience member:  Sikh Guru Nanak.

Acharya das: Okay, Guru Nanak was a profound spiritual personality, a worshipable spiritual personality. So in the Vedas, it actually describes that the highest spiritual truth is manifest in three ways, as Brahman, Paramatma, and Bhagavan. So, Brahman means the experience that some people may speak of where you can, the living being can leave their body and merge into an ocean of spiritual light, the Brahmajyoti. That is one feature of Godhead.

There is another feature called Paramatma. Just as I am the atma, I am the self, there is a Supreme Self, the Paramatma, who actually resides within the heart of all living beings. In the Upanisads it speaks, they give the example, wonderful example, of like two birds sitting in the same tree. And in this analogy, the tree is like the body that we have, and the two birds, one is the atma, the other one is the Paramatma, and one bird is busily hopping from branch to branch trying to enjoy the fruits of the tree, but all the while feeling morose, and something is missing, but they use the word, the equivalent of morose. The other bird is in a fully transcendental position and is waiting for that first bird to turn and recognize their eternal friend and become free from their suffering.

So, it’s actually unknown today that the most common experience amongst yogis, or the practice, was Paramatma meditation, dhyana, to come to experience the reality, this feature of Godhead that manifests within the heart of all living beings and directs the wanderings of all.

But there is a third feature of Godhead that is a transcendent and extremely lovable personality that resides in a transcendental dimension. And so these three things constitute an understanding of Godhead, fully. And according to the nature of the spiritual practices that people adopt, they may be focused on one or the other of these things.

If the question is, “Well, which is better?” they are all considered perfect, but Brahman realization is considered perfect, Paramatma realization is considered more perfect, and Bhagavan realization is considered most perfect. And it is considered most perfect because when we look at essence, position, and function to understand the nature of the spiritual being, the spirit soul, part of our nature is to be engaged in loving and to manifest that divine love in a form of pleasing service, to please—just as in this world, if someone says they love someone, they offer them service, they seek their pleasure, they want them to be happy. So in a similar manner, in a transcendental reality, that is also there.

So when a person experiences union with the brahmajyoti, for instance, they are not—they are realizing and experiencing their essence, but not their position and function, and so it is considered to be not yet, not as full as it can be.

This is a really big subject, and there is a lot, lot behind it. I have given you a real—yeah, we are like speed dating, the abbreviated fast version. Then you have to figure out whether you want to pursue that or not. But, well, I mean, in all the things that we’ve spoken of, in reality, we are only scratching the surface. There is such extraordinary, transcendental truth and experience that we can gain access to.

Okay, you’ll probably have to talk loud. I’m an old guy. Yeah, we got a microphone. Wow. Now we’re talking.

Audience member: Hello. I’m really impressed with all the teachings and all your experience you’re sharing with us. Am I audible? I don’t know. [Acd: Yes, you are audible.] Okay. All right. Yeah.

So my question is like that why most of the like yogis, the supreme achiever in the self-realization, this—they have a like a child-like nature. Just be like a child. Let’s not get into this and that. How to be, how to get that child-like nature back. That’s my question.

Acharya das: I know where you have heard this. I don’t usually discuss personalities, but this teaching leaves something to be desired. Can I just finish with that? It’s—You don’t find in the Vedas where you are told to become like a child. I mean, the reality is a child is not—yeah, there’s—it is good that there’s some innocence in children, but there’s also a lot of selfishness. They need to be protected. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know what is danger. So why are we wanting to become—I can understand that we become less complicated and look at things in a more simple and straightforward way. I understand. But I don’t agree with or embrace the advice that we have to become like children. Sorry, not buying that one. I mean, do you want to be like your own child?

Some audience member:  Oh, never.

Acharya das: You know, they’re all confused and—anyway, that’s about all I’ll say on that one if it’s okay.

Somebody else? Yeah?

Audience member: Yeah. Just to work through, how to describe the word Truth, when it comes to truth.

Acharya das: How do I?

Audience member: Describe it.

Acharya das: Truth?

Audience member: Yeah.

Acharya das: There is absolute truth and there is relative truth. Relative truth means it is true under some circumstances and perhaps under other circumstances not. Absolute truth is always true. There’s a big problem in the world today, everybody’s adopted this terminology, “my truth.” It’s like, [mimes vomiting] It’s just like, oh my, give me a break. People have become so self-centred. You think that what you think is going to be the—

You know what, not one word that I’ve spoken tonight is coming from my mind. It’s got nothing to do with me. I am passing on spiritual teaching that has been handed down for thousands of years. It is profound, and you can begin to experiment with it and discover the reality of it or not, but none of it’s mine. And so I actually cringe when somebody asks me, what’s my opinion of something? It’s kind of like, arrrrr. One of my spiritual masters, he said, if you begin a sentence with “I think,” he said, you should go in the closet and close the door and then continue speaking. We’re not interested in what you think. We should be interested in what those wise teachers thought.

Audience member: [some words hard to hear] I’m still teaching yoga at 85, and what I say is to my students, “It is said that…” Not coming from me, [Acd: Yeah] from I’ve learned and practiced, in pranayama [hard to hear] So I always say, “It is said that…” and sometimes  I quote the person.

Acharya das: Yeah. Good way to do it. So, um, was that enough or you want to keep going?

Audience member: Oh, I could do it all night.

Acharya das: Okay. No, but I don’t think I had fully…

[Pointing to another questioner] Yeah, I’ll get to you in a second. I’ll just make sure I can finish this one off.

Audience member: Oh, for me there is never enough…[words indecipherable] question. So can I ask you why[words hard to hear][Acd: Yeah, yeah] I think, um…

Acharya: So, there is truth, there is reality, and that’s not, it doesn’t change because of somebody’s mind or their desires or their opinions. Truth is truth. It’s become, actually even relative truth, the way it’s challenged and created these days, it’s just this weird modern phenomena. People will get over it. And in 150 years, people will look back at this embarrassing moment in time that we went through, and everybody just got so weird.

Yes?

Audience member: I think the advice that I’m seeking from you is quite—we could be talking about it for days and—but it’s one of the hardest thing for me is to cope with my own ego. And…

Acharya das: Cope with your?

Audience member: Ego. [Acd: Yeah] And when we try to practice these teachings we often find ourselves dominated by our ego, and often we listen to respond but not to understand. So what would be your advice for us, to keep practicing, of course, all the teachings that we have the privilege to learn, but on a daily life how can we keep practicing?

Acharya das: Yeah. So, the word ego, what do we mean by that? And I’m not asking for an answer, but I’m just putting it out there. You know, Freud adopted the term ego and used it in a specific manner that is somewhat embraced broadly in the Western world and today. But his use of the term ego was not the way it was used in ancient times. We don’t really use the word ego, but we do frequently use the word false ego, which is the false concept of self.

There is no problem with what we might loosely term the real ego, which means the real self, which by nature is humble and loving and deeply engaged in loving service of the Lord and all His children, if we can put it that way. But the false ego, or the false concepts of self that dominate the mind and are focused on the body and things—and in Sanskrit, the term they used is ahankara, which literally means “I.” It’s the representation of I that’s actually built upon a false foundation, meaning it’s describing the body or the mind or characteristics related to the body and the mind, but not to the actual spiritual being. And it was considered highly problematic. Its existence and manifestation in people’s life is considered deeply spiritually corrupting because it’s heading in the opposite direction to what self-realization is and the way in which one deals with it.

They have a term sadhana, sadhana means like a spiritual practice, but this word actually describes the process by which one attains something, or they reach a goal, they reach something at the end. So the spiritual practice meant to adopt a sadhana. That involves meditation. It might involve worship and submission. It might involve prayerfulness. It might involve seeking what are broadly termed holy association, sadhu sanga, because when we associate with those who are more spiritually advanced than ourself, then we’re constantly reminded. We see in them and their behaviour, even if they’re not perfect, but if they’re more spiritually advanced, then being around them, it’s going to kind of—it gets my life and my trip and my mind in check a little bit and it helps us.

But part of one’s sadhana was also often referencing or reading spiritual texts where the highest truth is constantly manifesting, and then look at that in relation to my life so that I— you know, it’s not, I was going to say it’s not easy. It actually is easy. We have to want it badly. When we’re kind of lukewarm, we want it, but we also want a whole bunch of other stuff, then that other stuff is often suppressing our spiritual endeavours and what growth is happening can become covered temporarily. And then we think about it later and go, yeah, and we sort of swing back the other way a little bit. Having good association, having a regular spiritual practice, a regular meditation habit, these things really help us to continue our growth. Okay?

Audience member: I just wanted to ask you what’s the difference between soul and consciousness, so when we leave…

Acharya das: Soul and consciousness?

Audience member: Yeah, soul lives eternally, [Acd: Yeah] what’s this word consciousness?

Acharya das: So, in this world in which we live, there are fundamentally only two forms of energy, that which is material, and that includes very subtle forms of material energy; and that which is spiritual. The atma, the living being, the soul or the spirit soul, that is spiritual. And one of the characteristics of spiritual energy is consciousness. So anything that is conscious, it is because this spiritual energy exists there, otherwise consciousness wouldn’t be there. We can also say life. One of the symptoms of the presence of that which is spiritual is life. And when what is spiritual, that component leaves, there is no longer life there, it is dead. It just reverts to gross material energy. So consciousness is a characteristic of spiritual energy.

This is one of the big problems in materialistic science, hard-core materialistic science, is where is—what is consciousness? They don’t even have a definition for it. They don’t even know how to define it, and how it has arisen. And the idea that consciousness can arise from the interaction of atomic particles is pure nonsense. It’s just science fiction. Wow, science fiction, that’s a good one.

Audience member: … I’ve still got a question [Acd: Yeah?] Very briefly, the difference [Acharya das: Have I ever known to be brief?!] between soul and spirit. We’re often told—Gopala often talks about the spirit soul. Is it the same thing?

Acharya das: Well, yeah, you know, it’s really, really important to have, when you have any kind of spiritual discussion, to have, to share a common vocabulary. So, we often don’t like to use the word just soul, only because it’s so misunderstood. There is this idea that’s very prevalent in Christianity, and to some degree in Islam, it’s called ruh, where it’s sort of like you’ve got the energizer bunny, and you switch it on, and you put it down, and it’s moving, but then if you take the battery out, the energizer battery, and you put the bunny down, it just falls over, it’s pretty useless. But then you look at the battery, and the battery is pretty useless too. And so there’s this idea that I need to join these things together to have something of value.

So the idea—I mean one of the big problems with many religious paths is they don’t clearly understand what is the atma. One of the characteristics of the spirit soul is that it is purusa, which means it is a person. Your body is not a person, and your mind is not a person. But when the living being is residing within the body, it not only lends consciousness to the body and the mind, but it also lends personhood. And so we look upon a body as a person.

But if anybody has been—held in their arms, a relative or friend who has just departed, and there is this instant recognition of this massive change has taken place, and there is this instant recognition most people will have that the person is no longer there. The body looks like who I was relating to as the person, but the person is actually gone. And so it’s important to really understand that one of the characteristics of the spirit soul, the spiritual being, is that it is a person, and it is conscious.

So, I’m not going to explain somebody else’s use of spirit and of soul. That’s their problem to figure out. I’ll share with you the Vedic understanding and what the great realized spiritual teachers see, because you can come to see this. In this lifetime you can have this realization.

Audience member: I have a friend who died, I know a lot of friends who have died, and his wife, and they’ve done no spiritual practices, no meditation practices, but she said she saw his soul leave his body.

Acharya das: Well, I will agree but refine it, meaning that one of the Sanskrit words that describes that which is spiritual, it is adhoksajah. Adhoksajah means that which cannot be measured, that which cannot be perceived by the senses or the mind. So that, okay, so I know that that’s a reality, but sometimes people interpret what they are seeing.

I don’t doubt that she saw that the person had, her husband (her husband?) that he had left, that’s intensely—that anybody that’s very, even a little observant, will see that. But they may, it may present differently to them in their own mind and whatever. I wouldn’t argue the point with them. I mean, what’s really important for people to understand is that you are not that body. You continue to exist when you leave the body.

I was one time put in this really difficult—no, it wasn’t that difficult, but undesirable situation for me, where a friend that I had in Mumbai, a Muslim guy, that I was doing some business—we worked for the same company. We went to visit his dad. We found out while we’re there that his dad was dying at stage four cancer. He was terribly afraid of cancer. He was terribly afraid of death. And so we had the mum and my friend and his brother that had just flown in, we’re having a conversation in the hallway. And I went out, and the doctor told him, there’s nothing we can do. The best thing is to bring him home in a more comfortable environment. We can help manage pain, but this is a terminal situation. He’ll probably only last for six months.

And they decided that they weren’t going to tell him. And I got really upset at my friend Tanvir, I told him, you can’t do that. That’s treating him like an animal. And you think people don’t know when they’re dying? People know. And then everybody around you is telling, no, you’re going to be okay. You know what I mean? That’s cruel. And I said, you know, you need to give him the opportunity to prepare himself and to forgive those he may choose to forgive or to seek forgiveness for things that he’s done wrong. So you need to let him know.

So he went and had a big argument with his mum and his brother. Then they all finally agreed. His mum was a very intelligent lady. She was a math professor at one of the universities. And so they came in. So then I asked them, “So who’s going to tell him?” And they all looked at each other, and none of them wanted to do it. And so they asked me to tell him. And this was like the first time I met their dad! It was like 30 minutes ago. It’s just like, What!! So when I saw that they were just absolutely not going to be able to do it, so I said, okay.

So he is a Muslim. And so I sat beside his bed and held his hand. And I told him, “You notice that the doctor had just come in and you have the results. You know, they’ve come back and the prognosis is not good.” And then I told him, “But don’t worry, you’re not going to die”. And Tanvir’s mother goes, “What!?” [Mimes surprise, disbelief] I said, “You’re not going to die.” I said, “You will have to leave your body. Your body is going to die, but you’re fine. You’re not going to die. You’re going to be okay, that this is natural and normal.” And he squeezed my hand and tear came down his cheek.

And I told him, “What you need to do is now spend your time in your home environment.” And most Islamic practices, they have like 99 names of God. So I said, “You need to be constantly chanting or hearing the chanting of the names of God and appropriate verses from the Quran. You should be hearing these things. And anybody that you feel that you have done wrong to, and you want to seek forgiveness, you should do this, and allow people that want to seek forgiveness from you that you should grant it, and live like this peacefully and not be afraid. You will be taken care of. It’ll be okay. There’s nothing to fear.” He thanked me very much for talking like that.

And it’s good. People don’t need—people don’t know how to deal with death. And yet it’s the only thing that we know for sure is going to happen. Everything, nothing else is for sure. And anybody that leaves their body in a dignified and spiritual way, oh my God, the experience is wonderful. It’s like—it’s full of light. You know, people can make graceful and very sweet exits from this life.

You tell family members, “You don’t start crying and asking them not to leave. That’s—it’s not about you. And what they’re going through is infinitely heavier than what you’re going through. You need to put a sock in it. And your job is to take care of your father or your husband or your child or whatever and help them cross this threshold. Once they’ve done that, if you want to shed a tear, then that’s appropriate time. But don’t do it when they haven’t left yet. That’s bad form.”

Okay, we done? Thank you all so much for the opportunity. And, you know, these lovely people here, my friends, they have regular stuff going on. They’ve got so many resources to share. I have a whole bunch of online stuff to share also. Anybody wants to take advantage of that, you can ask them about it.

Audience member: Thank you so much for coming.

Acharya das: You’re very welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I had a wonderful evening. Haribol.

Convener: Thank you very much, Acharya das. Would everyone like to give him a hand, thank you very much.