Lesson B-3

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"What Are You?"The Ultimate Self Realization Course, Lesson B3 by His Grace Sriman Sankarshan Das Adhikari Under the all-merciful guidance of His Divine GraceSri Srimad A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

 

 

In lesson B2 we understood that we are not our bodies. Negating a false conception of the self does not mean that we do not exist. It simply means that we are not what we may have thought ourselves to be. That we do in fact exist is self-evident by the mere fact that we can ponder our existence. If the self was false then who could possibly be doing the pondering? So, we do in fact exist. And since we do exist it is our benefit to understand precisely what we are so we can be exactly what we are meant to be. This is the unique prerogative of the human form of life. The animals have no choice of being this way or that way. They are simply being carried along on the automatic pilot of instinct. We human beings, however, are running on manual pilot. We have to a choice of discovering what we are and living totally in harmony with that, or we can ignore what we are and live in a state of disharmony with our intrinsic nature. Sadly the modern

society has gone with the second option. Thus we see wide scale suffering and anxiety throughout the entire planet earth. Life is not meant to be the way we see that it is now in the current human society. Everyone is meant to be fully joyful, but there is so much misery. By seriously following the Ultimate Self Realization Course anyone can revive their original state of consciousness beyond all miseries. If the leaders of the world could somehow also follow this most sublime self-realization system the entire planet would become spiritually awakened and the world's population would become free from all anxieties. Of course this is not likely, but we can always hope for such a wonderful thing and try for it. In this connection my spiritual master, Srila Prabhupada, one time said, "Impossible is a word in a fool's dictionary." So, what in fact are we? There is a conscious self who is sitting within the body, who has spread his or her consciousness throughout the entire

body. At the time of death that conscious self withdraws his consciousness from the body and goes somewhere else. That's why after death the body no longer reacts to external stimuli. The conscious self is no longer present. It's not that the conscious self has ceased to exist. It has simply gone somewhere else according to the laws of karma.The conscious being who temporarily inhabits the material body is not created by the sexual union of his parents. Only his body is brought into being by that act of sex. The conscious being that animates the external covering, the material body for a period of time is actually a subatomic, indivisible, and immortal particle of pure spiritual energy. Where do we the particles of spiritual energy come from? We are eternal emanations of the Supreme Energetic, the Complete Whole, God. That we are persons, or individual conscious beings, is, as above mentioned, self-evident. We are part of the Supreme Energetic just as a gold

nugget is part of a gold mine. The same substance gold is found both in the gold nugget and in the gold mine. But the quantity is quite different. There is a qualitative oneness and a quantitative difference between the gold nugget and the gold mine.God is the Complete Whole and is unlimited, and we, being part of that Complete Whole and not totally making up the Complete Whole, are limited. If we, the limited parts of God possess consciousness and personality, God must also possess consciousness and personality. It is not possible for the part of the Complete Whole to possess something that the Complete Whole does not possess, because everything the part possesses is automatically a part of the Complete Whole.Therefore we can understand that just as we are conscious persons, God is also a conscious person. As we know by studying our own nature, persons like the association of persons. This quality of enjoying the association of others originally exists in God;

otherwise we could not possess this quality. Therefore God is emanating from Himself millions and billions of conscious persons so that He can enjoy a loving relationship with each and every one of them. So this then is very purpose of our existence. We exist for the purpose of enjoying a loving relationship with God. Our actual identity is that we are eternal spiritual beings, the eternal servants of God. This philosophical conclusion is verified in the revealed scriptures as indicated in the Sri Caitanya Caritamrita:jivera 'svarupa' haya -- krishnera 'nitya-dasa'"It is the living entity's constitutional position to be an eternal servant of Krishna or God." SCC, Madhya 20.108-109Om Tat SatSankarshan Das AdhikariCompleted en route from Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico to Bhaktivedanta Ashram, Austin, Texas, USA