If someone says that being spiritually open-minded means believing that life doesn’t have an objective purpose how to respond?
Transcript
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so does the false ego bind the soul to the body or is it the mind that is the mode that binds the soul to the body I would like to clarify one thing over here that at the subtle level if we become too analytical things can become very confusing at the subtle level say for example now in my computer I have some application which I use and then there is a virus and then there is an antivirus program now from the structural perspective all of them are nothing but codes the application which I use in the computer the antivirus program, the virus all of them are simply codes but their differentiation is in terms of their functionality so similarly at the subtle level the mind, intelligence, ego, modes all these from a structural perspective if we try to differentiate it is very difficult we can differentiate primarily from a functional perspective so having said this we can differentiate but we should not get too caught up in it we just have to see what is the effect of what so now the soul is here the body is here in between there is a subtle body which can refer to mind or we can call it mind, intelligence, ego if I want to categorize it so in the subtle body the modes are what act on it so the difference between say the subtle body and the modes we will talk later about specific level of false ego is that the subtle body is intrinsic to us the modes are external sources and influences the soul goes from one body to another with the subtle body the soul does not go necessarily with the modes in different situations the modes will pull us in different ways so the modes are like external forces they pull us, they act on the subtle body now the soul gets bound to the body and how does this bondage happen that bondage primarily happens by projection of the consciousness the soul is separate from the body but when the soul’s consciousness gets projected into the body then the soul identifies with whatever is happening related to the body just like say a child may be sitting at home and watching a horror movie the child is comfortable at home, the mother is also nearby doing some work but starts trembling, shivering, screaming why? because the consciousness has got projected into the horror movie and the child is experiencing everything in relationship with that so similarly for the soul, the soul’s consciousness gets projected into the material world and that’s how the soul identifies so the bondage happens primarily through the projection of the consciousness now how the projection will happen and what the consciousness will get projected to that is shaped by the modes now when we talk about the false ego the false ego is also at one level the determiner of how the consciousness will get projected the word ego Krishna uses in two different senses at different times sometimes he uses it in an objective sense and sometimes in a subjective sense objective sense means that Krishna refers to the ego as an object, as a thing when he talks about in 7.4 in 7.4 he talks about the 8 elements 8 elements of material energy, there he talks about ahankar as one element, just like earth, water, fire, air like that the ego is also there as one element so here he is talking about ego as an object but then he also talks about the soul deluded by ego thinks I am the doer many places Krishna uses the word ahankar like that so ahankar can also be referred to as ego or arrogance so it can be a feeling that a person has this person is very egoistic so ego can be a conception that a person has, ego can also be the object that is present in us so when we say that the soul is bound by false ego what it essentially means is that the soul’s identity gets locked to a particular thing so I may identify that I am an engineer, I am a doctor, I am an Indian these conceptions are what are shaped by the ego so this misconception that we get that is what we call as false ego so the projection of consciousness is channeled through the subtle body as per the modes influencing the subtle body the specific mode of misidentification that happens the conception of who I identify myself with that is the false ego so in that sense the modes are subtle forces so the false ego is the conception by which your identification takes place