(2/14) Within and Without

His Divine Grace Om Vishnupad
Srila Bhakti Nirmal Acharya Maharaj
Preaching programme in Hooghly district,
26 February 2019, noon, part 2
Translated from Bengali

For example, you can see me moving my arms and legs and speaking now – who is doing all this? I am doing this. What does it mean? It means that my body is doing all this, but if something happens and I die, then my arms and legs will not move anymore, and I will stop speaking (all functions of the body will stop). So, what is that thing inside this body that makes it work? It is called the soul. The soul and the body are not one and the same. Because we are misled about the relation between the body and the soul, we think that our souls and our bodies are one and the same thing.

Our bodies of flesh and blood are created from five material elements: earth (ksiti, ক্ষিতি), water (apa, অপ), fire (teja, তেজ), air (marut, মরুৎ) and ether (vyoma, ব্যোম). When we die, our bodies are burnt, turning into ash. Muslim people do not burn dead bodies but they bury them and let them decay on their own. In both cases, the remains of the body gets mixed with the soil. After that, some rain falls, enters the soil, mixes with other elements, and some crops appear. This is how another body is created. But the soul is not made of soil, air, water, etc. The soul is extremely small in size. It is said in the scriptures that the size of the soul equals the size of the tip of a single hair divided 10,000 times. It is impossible to see it with the naked eye. The soul is there in a tiny ant's body and it is also there in a huge elephant's body. All people, no matter whether they are tall, short, thin, fat, have the same soul – their souls are the same in size and quality.

The main question is whether we ever think about our souls. Actually, we only think about what we will eat, what we will wear, where we will sleep, what our children will eat, how we can rough it through some hard times. Running behind such trifle happiness, we keep throwing ourselves into this material world, always thinking about our material lives. Everybody lives like that. When we were dogs, we thought about the same things: where I eat, where I must go to find some food, and so on. We spent days roaming around in search of food. When I was going in the car last night, a cat ran across the road. Why did it run there? It was looking for food because all the rats come out and run about at night. Cats hide in the daytime and come out at night, looking for food. Many hungry animals come out at night to look for food. So, everybody in this world lives like this. We never think about our actual selves.

You may object, 'But everybody is selfish in this world – everybody lives thinking about themselves only.' Yes, but they always think only about their bodies! People do not think about themselves. Remember this. People live only thinking about their bodies, 'How will I live?', 'How can I become a doctor?', 'How can I get well?', 'What medicine do I need to take?' and so on. We waste our time in this world on all these thoughts. We only think about temporary, fleeting things. For example, we live in a house, thinking proudly, 'My father/grandfather has built it, and now this house belongs to me!' But when we die, our children and grandchildren will come and take charge of this house (what we cherished and thought to belong to us will no longer be ours)...

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Size: 37 Mb
Length: 76 min
Language: Bengali

READ OTHER PARTS:

1) Bound and Benumbed
2) Within and Without
3) Think about Your Actual Self
4) Pivotal Difference
5) Forget Me Not
6) Antidote to Material Life
7) Mixing in Adulteration
8) Wholesome Life
9) Devoured by Darkness
10) Spiritual Power
11) Depths of Devotion
12) Guard Your Spiritual Purity
13) Focus on Lord's Happiness
14) Pure Devotees' Pure Hankering