“States of Consciousness” (SB 3.28.37)

TRANSCRIPT:  Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 3, Chapter 28, Text 37. “States of Consciousness.” San Diego – May 22, 1993 / (044)

[Text 37]

Because he has achieved his real identity, the perfectly realized soul has no conception of how the material body is moving or acting, just as an intoxicated person cannot understand whether or not he has clothing on his body. 

Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda: 

This stage of life is explained by Rūpa Gosvāmī in his . A person whose mind is completely dovetailed with the desire of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and who engages one hundred percent in the service of the Lord, forgets his material bodily demands. 

So, I always wondered what this meant. There's another verse that says the same thing. I was trying to understand what it meant. So, I looked up this one. Let's see... this one says, yeah:

Just as a drunken man does not notice if he is wearing his coat or shirt, similarly, one who is perfect in self-realization and who has thus achieved his eternal identity does not notice whether the temporary body is sitting or standing. Indeed, if by God’s will the body is finished or if by God’s will he obtains a new body, a self-realized soul does not notice, just as a drunken man does not notice the situation of his outward dress. 

So, this is some report telling us the state of consciousness of the self-realized soul. Of course, one can immediately ask: Well, in that case, how does the person conduct his affairs? Because if he doesn't notice what his body is doing and if you talk with him, who are you talking with, for example? Maybe someone will have some insight. The only understanding I can intuitively arrive at of this is that the... it's not that the self-realized soul has absolutely no knowledge of what his body is doing but he's not concerned with it. And the demands of the body and mundane mind and senses and so forth, don't bother him. So, there's sort of like background noise or something like that. I suppose you could make maybe an analogy of somebody having a conversation with someone, and in the background all kinds of noise may be going on but the people don't notice; although in one sense they do notice, but they don't particularly pay attention. Anyway, that's about as far as my insight goes, which isn't particularly far. So, a topic about which I could speak with greater authority would be the state of the conditioned living entity, and the consciousness of the living entity who is influenced by the three modes of material nature. 

So, let's see, there are some interesting verses in this 11th Canto, which refer to that. Let's see, first of all, there's an interesting definition of death. It goes as follows: 

When the living entity passes from the present body to the next body, which is created by his own karma, he becomes absorbed in the pleasurable and painful sensations of the new body and completely forgets the experience of the previous body. This total forgetfulness of one's previous material identity, which comes about for one reason or another is called “death.” 

So, that's an interesting definition of death. Death is the forgetfulness of the previous body. So, because sometimes people ask: Well, if you lived before, then why don't you remember that? And this would answer that death actually by definition is the process of forgetfulness of the previous life which enables you to become absorbed in another life. So, of course one might ask: Why is it done in this way? It seems that karma is delivered in chunks so you have... it's sort of like it's quantized – we can borrow terminology from physics. And physics energy goes by quantum jumps with no transition in between so it seems that karma comes in quantized units known as lives. So, one life is terminated and you forget about that and then based on the karma that you've accumulated, you start over again with a new life. That seems to be the circumstance.

[5:28]

So, then there's a definition of birth here:  

O most charitable Uddhava, what is called birth is simply a person’s total identification with a new body. One accepts the new body just as one completely accepts the experience of a dream or a fantasy as reality.

So, let's see, 

Just as a person experiencing a dream or daydream does not remember his previous dreams or daydreams, a person situated in his present body, although having existed prior to it, thinks that he has only recently come into being.

So, the self-realized soul comes to recognize his own true identity, but at least, even if we're not self-realized, we can try to understand theoretically what our real identity is, so that we can act in such a way... act in a way that will be conducive to developing self-realization. So we have this discussion of the relationship between the soul, the subtle body, and the gross body. And this is useful for guiding us in the matter of attaining self-realization. So there are some interesting descriptions here describing the nature of the material body. The soul is actually a substantial entity and is eternally existing. So, the material body however is a... actually a sequence of transformations of some underlying energy, which is quite distinct from the material body itself. Sometimes it's described that the material elements enter into the body but at the same time they don't enter. You can see intuitively what that would mean: consider, for example, that there's carbon in your body. Actually, there's quite a bit of carbon – you could make quite a number of lead pencils from it. So one could say that, to a carbon atom, it doesn't really make any difference whether it's in your body or it's in the lead of a pencil, because... well, for the carbon atom it's the same thing; it's just doing what carbon atoms do. The same for an atom of hydrogen or nitrogen or whatever. So looked at from that point of view, your body doesn't really exist, because if you take any given atom in your body, that's just an arrangement of... well, whatever an atom really is. The scientists speak of valence bonds and all this kind of thing, but the atom is just situated in a particular condition. Likewise, an atom of the same type situated in a piece of dead matter is bonded to certain other atoms; it's situated in a particular situation. 

So, your body is just the sum total of all those atoms. So, in that sense the body doesn't really exist. Of course, it does exist, but what exists there is really only the pattern formed by the atoms in that particular arrangement. Just as if you put dots on a piece of paper, you can create a letter. So the letter is just the sum total of the dots on the piece of paper. Likewise, the... by putting together letters you can create a word, a sentence, or an entire book that expresses a whole elaborate idea – but all you've got are dots on a piece of paper. So that's what the body is like. So there are verses here that describe that idea. For example, it’s stated: “The different stages of transformation of all material bodies occur just like those of the flame of a candle, the current of the river, or the fruits of a tree.” So you can consider the current of a river. You may think a river is a permanent thing, but actually at one given moment in time you have particular bits of water that are there, and then a little while later there will be other bits of water moving in a different way. And there's constant transformation going on. So, in one sense there's no river. There are just many different instances of rivers. And you just lump them together and you say: this is the river. 

[10:31]

As far as the flame of the candle, this is... Kṛṣṇa describes this in greater detail in the next verse. Actually, this sounds like physics, also. It says:

Although the illumination of a lamp consists of innumerable rays of light undergoing constant creation, transformation and destruction, a person with illusory intelligence, who sees the light for a moment, will speak falsely, saying, “This is the light of the lamp.” 

So the physicists also say that photons are being produced by a source of light. So they're constantly being created and annihilated when they hit things and are absorbed. So in one sense, it's false to say that there's that that is the light, because really there are just particular photons being created and annihilated and that's always changing. It's never the same from one moment to the next. So the idea of the light is actually false. Or here again, the river: 

As one observes a flowing river, ever-new water passes by and goes far away, yet a foolish person, observing one point in the river, falsely states, “This is the water of the river.” Similarly, although the material body of a human being is constantly undergoing transformation, those who are simply wasting their lives falsely think and say that each particular stage of the body is the person’s real identity.

So, this is the situation of the material body. Now in contrast to this, the soul actually exists. So in the case of the soul, if you say this is the soul then you'd be right, because the soul has substantial reality. It's an actual existing thing, whereas the body is a process which is just a succession of states of something else different from the body. Whether it be atoms, or quantum fields, or the elements of Sankhya philosophy, you could describe it in different ways but the same idea comes across. So in that sense the body is not really the self at all and in one sense it doesn't really exist. This virtual reality metaphor also is useful for illustrating this. So nowadays they've been able to create what they call virtual realities within computers. So the way this works is that you have a apparatus which covers the senses of an individual. So, this could consist of an arrangement that puts little TV cameras in front of... TV screens, in front of the eyes so that what you see is what is on the TV screens. And then you could have earphones over the ears so that what you hear is coming in from the earphones. And one could even go further and put some sort of form-fitting suit on the body so that what you feel is also transmitted to you by the computer. And then your bodily motions are transferred back into the computer by another sensory link-up. 

So the computer takes the data that it's getting from your body, plus programming that it has, and it calculates a scene in which there are different bodies and different objects and so forth. And one of these bodies is linked up with your senses, and the result of this is that you are under the illusion that you are that body because the senses are hooked up so that you're seeing from the point of view of the eyes of that body, and you're hearing from the point of view of the ears of that body. You would be feeling from the point of view of what that body is supposedly touching. So the effect that this has is that the person linked up with the virtual reality is under the impression that they are there in the virtual reality in that body. And the illusion can be quite astonishing. Another way of doing this is the mechanical method with something called a “telerobot.” What you do is you build a robot, you give it TV-camera eyes and microphone ears and a little servomotors for muscles and so forth. And you then link up the person's senses with that. 

[15:23]

It's described that this was done once in Japan. So the person was in the telerobot, so to speak. He was looking around and feeling that this is where he was. And the other people were there and he was talking with them, shaking hands, and all that sort of thing. They said, “Look over in the corner of the room there.” So, he looked over in the corner of the room and experienced a shock: at this point he had an out-of-body experience, because he saw his own body sitting in the corner of the room. And he was identifying with the robot, so this looked like somebody else's body, but he realized it was his body, and it was rather shocking to him. 

So, this shows the... actually in one sense how easy it is to become identified with the false bodily form. So if you go back to this computer example, though, even though you're under the illusion that you're in a body and you're performing different activities within an environment, the body and the environment don't exist. Actually, the only thing that is there is the computer which is doing computations. So it has memory, storage areas, and numbers are stored there; and it's retrieving numbers, multiplying them, dividing them and so on, putting the numbers back – and that's all that's really happening in the machine. There's no body there at all. But there is a transformation of stages of something which is not a body. So in that sense it's completely analogous to the situation of these bodies, just a series of transformations. Anyway... so this is the situation of the material body. Are there any questions or comments? Yeah?

Question:  [unclear]

Answer:  Telerobot. 

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Well, yeah. That's...

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Yeah, you could switch it around that way. The self-realized soul... well, he's realized the self, so what does that mean? What is the self anyway? So you actually have a spiritual body, in fact you are that spiritual body. But in the conditioned state of consciousness, we're unaware of that, just as a person in a dream is unaware of his gross body. Dreams also are a good example for this! It's amazing how one falls into illusion in a dream, because you can be dreaming some totally ridiculous thing and while the dream is going on that's all that you know – happens every night, practically. So the power of illusion is really incredible. But... so, our spiritual bodies exist and that's what we are, but right now we're dreaming this material dream. But the self-realized soul is presumably aware of his spiritual body. He's self-realized, and so to him the physical body is not so important. He doesn't pay much attention to it. And of course, a self-realized soul can really go into what would be called as a state of trance in which he engages in some spiritual pastime and completely ignores the material body. There are so many examples: for example, Lord Caitanya would do that. Of course, He was merely... well, let's say, illustrating the situation for others because his body is not actually a material body, since He's Kṛṣṇa himself. But at least He was illustrating the idea, because His external body would apparently go unconscious and He would be experiencing the līlā of Rādha and Kṛṣṇa – He'd be making garland's for Rādha and Kṛṣṇa and so forth and so on. 

[20:31]  

Of course, many great saints have engaged in this sort of trance state. Was it... just trying to think which one it was... I think this was either Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura or Śrīnivās Ācārya – I forget which one – but the description was there that this saintly personality was sitting in a state of trance, his external body was inactive. And internally he was fanning Lord Caitanya in the spiritual realm, which means he was doing that with his spiritual body. And Lord Caitanya turned and placed His garland around his neck. And this broke his meditation and he woke up, and actually this amazing garland was around his neck. So there’re quite a number of accounts like that. Of course, there's the one in Kṛṣṇa Book also about the brāhmaṇa who was meditating on devotional service. Because he was very poor, he couldn't afford elaborate paraphernalia to... for deity worship and so on. So in his meditation he was making this sweet rice and put his finger in the sweet rice to see if it was cool yet. It wasn't and it burned his finger and then his finger was burned. So, a bit of feedback between the spiritual realm and the gross physical realm. Yeah? 

Q:  [unclear]

A:  Yeah, well, he's certainly an example. He was just... like the last volume of the Tenth Canto that he translated, that was done when he was in a condition in which doctors said he must be suffering intense pain. Now, I do have experience of pain – not really intense pain – but it's certainly not easy to compose sentences and so forth in that condition. But Śrīla Prabhupāda was doing it. Yeah?

Q:  ...is the soul in its unmanifest state like a child in the womb? Everything's there okay: talent, development... or is it because sometimes, a lot of times it is... [unclear]... 

A:  Well, there are so many descriptions of the soul as being exceedingly small within the gross body: one ten-thousandth the tip of a hair in size. And it's always being presented as a spark and so forth. So that aspect is certainly there. But Śrīla Prabhupāda has indeed said on various occasions that just as a glove has five fingers and so on, because the hand has fingers and form, so likewise the material body has form because of the underlying form of the soul. And if the soul is eternal, then its form must exist in some fashion. So I don't know any... does anyone know any... have any reference on that? 

[25:02]

Q:  [unclear]

A:  So, would this mean that the soul has complete form: arms, legs and everything, is ten-thousandth the tip of the hair in size, but in the spiritual world he simply expands to the appropriate size? That, I guess, would make sense. 

Q:  [unclear] 

A:  Yeah, well, I’d like to hear that one. The... of course, the size that bodily forms take on undergoes great variation also, because just like when Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna went to see Mahā-Viṣṇu – of course, you've pointed out, it wasn't exactly Mahā-Viṣṇu, but in any case – their bodies must have changed in size. Either that, or Mahā-Viṣṇu shrank down. It would have to be one or the other, because how could they meet and have a conversation? So... and of course, even materially, the mahimā-siddhi and aṇimā-siddhi enable one to change the size of the material body, if you have that siddhi. So, that the material body can be reduced... Hanumān was fond of doing that. He would expand himself up to the size of a mountain and create earthquakes by jumping around, and things like that. So, if that's even possible for the material body, by the mystic siddhi, then consider what the soul might be able to do!