Srila Prabhupada, Srila Acaryadeva's Spiritual Master

The Difference Between the Body and the Soul

Excerpt from a Lecture by Srila Acharyadeva

First the person must understand the difference between body and soul. Learn the difference between material and spiritual, between temporary and eternal. Without this knowledge nobody can be considered wise. Obviously we are not this body. If we think about it, it becomes clear that we cannot be this body. Even in this life, we have experience of the transmigration of the soul. Krishna gives us the example in the Bhagavad-gita(2.13), of a person, a conscious soul, which is existing throughout different stages of the body (childhood, youth, and old age). The body that we have now is not the same one we had ten years ago. That body no longer exists physically. It's over, it's somewhere else. The elements that constituted my body no longer exist. Now, I have another body. Thus, simplifying, the so-called babies of this world are not babies. They have the bodies of infants, but inside the body there exists an eternal soul. And the practical manifestation of this soul is consciousness. We are conscious because we are the soul. Consciousness is not a physical element. This consciousness is originally pure, clean, and transparent, almost omniscient, because it is a part and parcel of God. But, in this material existence, the soul is placed inside a body and the consciousness is being filtered by the screen of the body. For example, when a white light is filtered through green glass, we obtain green light. If we place a red filter, we obtain red light. This means that, when filtered, the light acquires the characteristics of the filter. Something like this also happens with consciousness. Consciousness is like light. When consciousness if manifested through the body of an animal, we have the consciousness of an animal. The soul, inside the body, starts barking enthusiastically. When we had the body of a little baby, you acted like a little baby. With a child's body you manifested the consciousness and activities of a child. The same thing happens in the body of an old person, even though the soul is exactly the same. We can all understand that we are the soul. Any sane person can understand that there exists a soul inside the body and how the body is affecting the consciousness of the pure soul. Being able to isolate in the existence of the soul in the mind, guiding it away from all material influence, and letting it shine with its own pure consciousness, in its original condition, one reaches the stage of self-realization. Otherwise we can see how many wrong designations arise from the body - Brazilian, man, woman, old, young, English, Argentinean, Lebanese, Syrian - creating, even, societies, clubs, and wars, everything based on concepts that arise from this body, which is not who we are.

Traveling from One Body to Another

Without accepting the fact that the soul is different from the body there cannot be spiritual life. If the soul lived together with the physical body, there would be no such thing as spiritual life or God. There could be no possibility of advancement. The fact that the soul transmigrates, traveling from one body to another, was a concept accepted by the first Christians and later this philosophy was again taken up by the Albingens of the south of France, and, before that, Plato and Socrates had already accepted this same idea. This indicates that, despite the restrictions and efforts to suppress it, this is an idea that is always reappearing in the West. The view that there exists an eternal soul traveling through different bodies is something generally known and accepted in the West. This concept gives place to a purely spiritual philosophy, because, otherwise, we could not explain how, despite the existence of an all powerful and benevolent God, suffering nonetheless exists.

Answer to Many Questions

Why is it that, despite an all powerful and benevolent God, suffering still exists? This question was never fully answered philosophically in the West. If we accept that the soul was created now, together with this body, why did God give one person an ugly body and to another a beautiful and educated body? Why are some born strong and others weak? Why does He make someone be born in an atheist country? Accepting the fact of reincarnation, of the action of karma, offers the possibility of dealing philosophically with these problems of the suffering of mankind, despite God being all powerful and benevolent. Accepting that the soul has other lives we can thus understand better that the suffering is due to our own past actions. Nobody complains when he is justly punished. In fact, there is a certain feeling of satisfaction when we see the triumph of the law, of justice. The philosophy that the soul is created and destroyed together with the body leaves many questions unanswered. Why does God let the world suffer?

But this is no secret. We are suffering the reaction of our own sins. There is a best-seller in the United States, written by a Rabbi from Boston, which tells the story of his son who suffers from a disease by which a person ages very rapidly. As a result, a 15 year old dies like an old man. This Rabbi became completely shocked and could neither maintain nor justify his faith in God. And thus he wrote, in his book, that there exited two possibilities: That God is benevolent, but now all powerful, and thus, despite His goodness, suffering and pain would be beyond his control; or, on the other hand, that God is all powerful and not benevolent, and, thus, He would be indifferent and would cruelly abandon his Creation. And he says that he rather think of God as being benevolent but not all powerful. But this is just the result of not understanding the reincarnation of the soul, of how we are suffering or enjoying, according to our past activities. Accepting reincarnation explains a lot of things, gives clear, philosophical solutions, because it proposes the existence of two things, one soul and one physical body, which have their own distinct natures, thus creating well defined categories. Further, there does not exist, in material science, any knowledge which can contradict these facts.

| The Difference Between the Body and Soul | Philosophy and Truth | The Importance of Women in ISKCON | Getting to Know Him, the Absolute Truth | Isolation in Krishna Consciousness | Krishna in the Bhagavd-gita - A Beginning Ontology | The Logic of the Absolute | Guru and GBC in ISKCON | Moral Vaisnava Philosophy and Homosexuality