Can soul and consciousness exist separately from each other?
Thank you, Hare Krishna. Can a soul not have consciousness? Can soul and consciousness exist independently of each other? Actually, consciousness is the innate energy of the soul, just like sun and sunlight is there.
Sunlight naturally comes from the sun. Similarly, consciousness radiates outwards from the sun, from the soul. Of course, there are different levels at which the consciousness is manifested.
So, actually, I have a diagram, maybe afterwards I can show it to you. Our body, maybe I can just look at it here. Yeah.
Is this visible to you from here? Let's make it full screen. Maybe you'll just get the concept even if you don't see it fully. So, basically, this is the soul, center, and there is a subtle body around it, and there is the gross body.
So, it's like, say, if I am a person, I have a shirt and I have a sweater on top of it. The soul is there around the subtle body, which is the mind, basically. And there is a gross body, which is the body that we see.
So, now the soul is the source of consciousness. And the soul's consciousness can go outwards towards various degrees. So, the soul's consciousness comes out through the subtle body to the gross body, means through the mind to the body and outwards.
That is our normal stage, the wakeful stage. That is called as Jagruti, the stage we are aware right now, hopefully. Some of us may be sleeping also.
So, that is the other stage. When the soul's consciousness comes out till the level of the mind, but not to the level of the body, not to the outer level, that is the stage of Swapna. So, in Swapna, also the soul is conscious.
That's why we have dreams. Now, we may not sometimes remember our dreams, but we do have dreams. So, the soul is conscious at that time, but the consciousness is not manifesting at the physical level.
That is the Jagruti stage. Then there is also a deeper stage of Sushupti. Sushupti means that the consciousness stays only at the soul.
It doesn't even manifest at the level of the mind. That happens at transition stages, when the soul is going from one body to another body, from one phase of existence to another phase of existence. At that time, the soul's consciousness does not even manifest at a certain level.
So, that means the consciousness is there, but it is drawn into itself. It is not manifested outwards. And then there is Sushupti, the deep dreamless sleep we could approximate it as.
And then the last stage is the soul's consciousness gets spiritually directed. That is called Turiya or Samadhi, when we become spiritually aware. In these cases, the soul is conscious of material things.
But there is a spiritual reality also. Say, to give an example, a child at home is watching a horror movie. A child is sitting here.
The TV is here. The child is watching the horror movie. And watching the horror movie, he is getting horrified, trembling, screaming, crying.
Now the mother is sitting next to the child, but the child is not aware of the mother. And the consciousness is completely caught in the horror movie. And because of being caught in the horror movie, there are all kinds of emotions that the child is going through, although there is safety and love, affection available right next to the child.
So like that, the soul is spiritual, but the soul's consciousness gets caught in matter. And it gets caught in matter, we go through a whole panorama of emotions, which are actually not intrinsic to us. But if the child sees that the mother is there, the mother comes and embraces the child.
Oh, you're here. Much of the anxiety disappears. Like that, when we become, so God is right next to us.
Sarvasya chaham hrdi sannyavisto. It is because Krishna is present in the hearts of all of us. But we are like the child who is watching the TV so much, watching the movie so much, that is not aware of the mother next to us.
Like that, we are not aware of the presence of the Parmatma next to us. But when we become spiritually aware, that is the sthurya stage or samadhi stage. So the soul's consciousness is its natural energy.
So it is not that the soul can have, the two can be separated. But what can happen is, there can be different degrees of expression of consciousness. So technically speaking, what we call medically as unconscious, that is, unconsciousness is also a state of consciousness.
But it is a state of consciousness where consciousness is not manifested at the physical level. So the soul still has consciousness. But that consciousness, when it doesn't manifest at the physical level, at that time we call it as unconscious stage.
So consciousness as the energy of the soul is innate to the soul, that is intrinsic, that is never separable. But consciousness as the state of awareness, that will vary depending on how much the consciousness is manifest and at what level of reality it is manifest. Does that answer your question? So the soul can exist? Yeah, just a minute.