Going Deeper

Excerpts from a talk by Balakhilya das

(9 min read)

Vedic Knowledge

The information that I am presenting is coming from the Vedic scriptures. The Vedic scriptures are the most ancient scriptures. They were written down 5 thousand years ago, but prior to being written down they were passed down orally from one perfect master to the next. A line of perfect teachers is known as a disciplic succession or a Parampara. Parampara is necessary for the truth to descend in its pure form. We are in the Parampara known as the Brahma Sampradaya. We feel very fortunate to receive our knowledge through this lineage. So this is not my opinion, I’m just passing on this eternal science.

Our Real Identity – Am I This Body?

When we are referring to our title “Going Deeper”, we’re actually referring to going deeper into life. So we have to understand what life really is. In general we don’t go very deep in life. We go deep into our problems. We stay there most of the time. But that’s not the kind of depth that really helps us, that’s just making things worse. The yoga system is a system where we are carried deeper into our real life by the teachings and the process of yoga.

Our Vedic teachings say that we should ask ourselves in a sincere way the question: who am I? Not just who am I, but thinking, reflecting, going deeper, who am I? Of course, now almost no-one asks that question and the reason is mainly because we think we already know the answer. Everybody’s got their own identity, we’ve had them our whole lives, we’ve got them in our minds, we have them on our lips, we even have them in our pockets. Meaning, this is who I think I am, this is who I tell others I am, and I can even prove it. Here’s my passport, my documents, this is me. But if we look closely, we discover this is only a compilation of many labels. We find this is all in relation to our material bodies. It’s true, the body is male or female, black or white, old or young, big, little, Canadian, American, whatever. The question is, is this who I am?

If we want the most authoritative answer, we should go to the revealed scriptures of the world and there we quickly learn, no, we’re not the material body. But this is the modern world, very rarely does someone go to scripture to find the truth about life. However, we do readily accept the conclusion of the scientist. And uniquely enough, in this case, the scientists have proven in the laboratory that we’re not our material body. They discovered that there’s no cell in the human body that lives more than 5 years. And some cells have a very short life. For instance, the cells that make up the lining of our stomachs live for 5 days, our skin cells 1 month, liver cells 6 weeks, etc. But in 5 years, everything has changed. So, if I look at a photograph of myself taken 10 years ago, the eyes in the photograph are different than the eyes that I’m looking at the photograph with, they’re actually not the same eyes. According to this scientific formula, if I’m 35 years old I’ve had 7 bodies, but of course we all know we’re not 7 different people. Everybody knows I’m still me, so the changing factor is our material body. The constant factor is our self.

Am I My Mind?

Now, at this point some people become introspective, meditative, they begin to look inside to find out who they really are and when we do look inside what do we find? Well, there’s emotion, desire, sentiment, feeling, will, these are all very real and it’s easy to conclude, this is who I really am. But this is actually another material body, it’s called the subtle mental or astral body. So really, we have 2 bodies – we’ve got our mental body and a physical body. It’s like having 2 layers of clothing – we’ve got an outer layer and then we have an under layer. But the question remains, who am I?

Material and Spiritual Energy

So once again we go back to the Vedas, and there we find that we’re in another category of energy. Everything is energy, our bodies are material energy but we learn that we are spiritual energy and we further learn we’re tiny little sparks of spiritual energy. We learn that material energy is temporary which is very easy to see. We know all too well our bodies are very temporary, but we learn that spirit is eternal. Eternal means no beginning and no end. We also learn that material energy is non-living and that’s again easy to see.  A mannequin has no life but with a  human there’s something different. There’s life inside the human person. So, matter is non-living, spirit is life itself. There’s no such thing as live matter and there’s no such thing as dead spirit. We are the life force inside the body and so as long as we’re present in the body, the body is called alive. That becomes very clear at the time of death. At the time of death, we leave the body and at that moment the body reveals it true nature. It can’t even sit in the chair, it falls on the floor.

We are the life force in the body, therefore our true identity is spirit soul. Spirit soul means we’re spiritual in essence, soul meaning this tiny spiritual spark that we eternally are. We are spirit soul, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. There is a Supreme, original soul from which we all come. We are known as the atma and the Supreme Soul is the Paramatma.

With this knowledge, you can understand life, without this knowledge you cannot, impossible. Like a person has amnesia, just one day they don’t know who they are, don’t know where they came from, they don’t know where they’re supposed to go, they don’t know who their parents are, they don’t know anything. They have a problem. So we have the same problem. We don’t know any of those things either. We fill up our life with this false identity, false understanding, false information and try to life a full, joyful, satisfying life in this condition. Impossible, can’t do it. That’s why this is the most important thing you can understand, it’s the foundation of knowledge. I am spirit soul, part and parcel of the Supreme Soul, I am not this material body.

The Tsunami of Life

That’s the beginning of going deep – understanding who I am. It’s not the end, but if we don’t go that deep we remain on the surface of life. We can compare it with the ocean. There is a surface of the ocean and then there’s various degrees of depth of the ocean. You can go some miles deep. The surface of the ocean is where all the turbulence is. There are calm days, and then there’s very turbulent days. There’s waves, there’s all kinds of things happening on the surface, very changing surface conditions. The wind comes up, whoosh, then the wind comes down, calm again. Waves come from thousands of miles away and they travel across the ocean and they make this big energy and then they whoosh, come up and they’re huge, so much power. All that’s on the surface, but it’s not like that in the depths.

There was a big tsunami that hit Indonesia about 10 years ago and killed thousands of people, destroyed homes, and destroyed lives in many different countries. On the surface it did huge damage. But I read that at that time, there was a couple of people scuba diving off the shore out somewhere in the ocean at quite a deep level, and when that tsunami came by them all they felt was a little wave, and they just continued. What’s the difference? They were going deep. The surface conditions didn’t affect them.

So when we go deep in life, the surface conditions of life, this every day hustle, bustle, struggle doesn’t affect us, it doesn’t bother us. Riding this storm of life which includes happiness and distress is not a big event, it’s happening but we’re not affected by it. In the Vedic literature, there’s one scripture called Bhagavad-Gita, this is the main Vedic text that we study in the Bhakti Yoga system. It’s described as the essence of all Vedic knowledge. And in the Bhagavad-Gita, it is instructed to us that we should remain steady in both happiness and distress.

How Do We Go Deeper?

The great spiritual masters have given us the perfect answer. By focusing on the transcendental sounds known as mantras we become purified and gradually begin to realize our real identity, and our eternal position and function. And as we go deeper we experience real calm and happiness. We’re no longer being tossed around by the waves on the surface, which is material life. By simply taking these mantras and adding them to our life, they change our life in a very, very profound way. They take us to the depth of pleasure.