Bhagavatam-daily 51 – 11.07.41 – Detachment coming from analysis is reinforced by experience coming from bhakti

Unaffected, unentangled, even amidst entangling situations. Thank you.
This body is made up of earth and other such elements. Having, one enters into that, one enters into the body and actually when we enter into a particular body, we cannot entirely deny or reject the influence of that body. Actually, the yogi, his body may have particular nature, but the yogi doesn’t get entangled in that because gandhi vayur ivatmatruk, just as water, just as vayu may seem to acquire the fragrance or aroma of whatever place it passes through, but that is only temporary.
The vayu’s essential nature remains unchanged. So, actually the interplay, the interaction between soul and body is a source of great mystery, both in science and in religion. The mystery is so great in science that many scientists try to take the easy way out by saying there is no soul itself and they say somehow matter produces consciousness, the brain matter produces consciousness, but there is absolutely, leave alone no proof for that, but there is also no empirical, theoretical conception of how unconscious matter may produce consciousness.
So, science fails in that. Now, when we come to religion, religion faces the issue of how the spiritual soul and the material body interact and some religious traditions try to solve this problem by saying that actually the soul and the body are not as different as we think them to be, that actually, and that’s how they have the idea that there will be bodily resuscitation, resurrection or something like that and that’s why they try to embalm and preserve the body or at least bury the body with the whole and the idea is that in heaven when one is reinstated, actually one will be getting the same bodily form. So, some thinkers have come up with the idea that the body and the soul are inseparable and in one sense as long as they are there together they are almost indivisible.
The Bhagavad Gita, however, talks about a radical mind-body duality, dualism, where the soul doesn’t have much to do with the body intrinsically, though the soul does have a body and though the soul’s behavior while in that body is definitely shaped by the body. So, a soul in a dog’s body acts in a particular way, a soul in a bird’s body acts in a different way, a soul in the human body acts in a different way, but still the key point is that there is no way one can go beyond the illusions of the bodily misidentification without developing detachment. So, the soul remains different from the body and the soul can realize its difference from the body to the extent it becomes detached, just like a person watching television to the extent detached can see the illusoriness of the television and the world that is depicted in the television.
So, the way forward out of illusion is firstly by recognizing that I am different from the body and secondly by withdrawing oneself from bodily activities, just as if a person is too caught in the movie and one wants to come out, first of all one has to recognize that actually whatever is happening in the movie, on the television, to the hero, to the protagonist is not actually happening to me and secondly I have the capacity to be aware of things beyond the television. So, like that similarly we understand that my consciousness has got caught in the body and I’m identifying with what happens to the body but actually I am different from the body and to the extent I dwell on this point that I am different from the body and I have a life different from the body’s life to the extent we won’t let the body suck our consciousness completely. Certainly, while we are in the body we will be conscious of the body but the body can be either a tool to root our consciousness towards worldly things for worldly pleasures which will cause entanglement and suffering or the body can be a tool for rooting our consciousness towards Krishna and for performing devotional service.
So, either way the body in the condition stage is something which we need and which we have to use but how we use it is something which we can change by purifying ourselves. Now when we work on the understanding why you work just as actually the there is a difference between say the air and the place where it goes. So, similarly there’s a difference between me and my consciousness on one side and the material things through which that consciousness is being rooted.
Now bhakti actually makes this process more experiential than analytical. It’s not just a matter of analysis. Oh, I am different from the body.
I’m different from the I’m different from the body. Experiential means bhakti helps us to use our body and senses to connect with Krishna and when we connect with Krishna we experience through that connection a profound non-material enrichment deep divine happiness which is far far richer than any other pleasure that we may have experienced with our senses. Now we all if we can sing with our mouth and we may get some pleasure by singing some songs but when we sing the names of Krishna it’s a different quality of pleasure much richer much deeper much sweeter and even if such experiences don’t come daily even if they are occasional still the point is that those experiences do come and we see them as precursors as advanced samples given by Krishna of what will come much more regularly and much more richly in the future.
By this understanding our transcendental nature not just through analysis but also through experience. Bhakti does not reject analysis. There is a lot of philosophical foundation for bhakti where there is analysis but bhakti verifies that analysis strengthens and reinforces that analysis through experience.
Bhakti gives us that lord who is para who is transcendental and who cannot be experienced by any of our senses he is experienced through devotion and then there is the experience of Krishna that experience is so fulfilling that that one becomes detached from other things. And such a devotee can go anywhere be anywhere and still stay in Krishna. Prabhupada was in lower east side.
Prabhupada was in some of the most degraded places. He went to the avalanche ballroom where you know people were completely hedonistic. Many of them were largely hedonistic but still Prabhupada did not get affected by that.
So whereas jnanis may try by analysis to distance themselves from their body and the body surroundings. Devotees by their eagerness to serve stay raised above circumstances and about their circumstances and the circumstances induced material desires and material identification. So to the extent we can deepen our devotion to that extent or at least we can we can strengthen our desire and intention to serve to that extent we too will experience the experiential dimension of bhakti yoga verifying and reinforcing its analytical conclusion.
Thus we will be able to march even stronger and swifter being unaffected by whatever we meet in this world. We march