Gopesh
(Dandavats.com) – The spiritual or eternal self is not the sensations which the soul experiences within and from the body. “yantra rudrani mayaya”. What we directly experience is not actually the external hard physical material world, but a REPRESENTATION built by the mind, within the networks of the body’s brain, nervous and glandular systems, life air, etc., but primarily the brain, of the occupied body, exactly like a person experiencing the holo-deck from Star Trek fame. Subject, also, to defects.
By Tamohara dasa (ACBSP)
“.. the soul … sits as if on a machine built of material energy.” Lord Sri Krsna, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada Thakura.
We are, indeed ghosts within the machine. But, as aspirants for spiritual emancipation, we are actively working to fix that.
When we meditate, if we are inclined to remember, we may wish to occasionally remember that we are the ability to sense, not exactly the sensations themselves, which are but the mere elements of the representative holodeck of the human brain.
There is some variety, which adds to the difficulty and bewilderment of the soul in the human holodeck. as Srila Prabhupada said in Rome, “We are desiring of some (material) varieties”, as conditioned souls. Sometimes there are some sounds, (hopefully the maha-mantra!), sometimes the sensation of the tongue moving, sometimes some sense of breathing, etc. I am not this, but the experiencer, the seer of this. Supersoul is there also. Only Lord Visnu is omniscient, and we acquire our knowledge from Him. He is the doer and the activity of sensation, the seer, the experience and the object of sensation. We float within His Being.
We are not the doers, we are the desirers; the Lord actually carries out the activity, and even our foolishness is allowed, if we insist. Love means, among other things, not forced. If we go the route of seperatism and inevitable shrinkage of the self, we gradually become puppets trapped in identification with the non-pure Krsna consciousness, and instead of extending our love out to Godhead, we extend our consciousness outwards the sensory apparatus of the temporary forms allowed to us by Godhead to fulfill our every relatively wretched desire.
