Can the soul experience anything other than what is displayed on the mind’s screen?
So the soul is basically observing what is displayed on the screen of the mind so can the soul have some other experiences also yes definitely in fact the soul's eternal nature is to have spiritual experiences and that means that as I talked about you know child is watching a horror movie child is sitting next to the mother child is caught so much in watching the horror movie child is trembling shivering crying screaming but child is just not seeing the mother next to him so like that it may well happen that the soul is observing what is displayed on the screen of the mind and it's caught in that but the soul is not able to perceive the presence of God like next thing so the Upanishads give the example of two birds it says that there's a tree on which there are two birds one bird is simply observing and the other bird is busy pecking the fruits in the tree sometimes the fruits are sweet and the bird rejoices and sometimes the fruits are bitter sour and the bird feels disgusted so the Upanishads indicate that these two birds refer to the Atma and the Paramatma the Paramatma is simply observing us but the Atma is caught not trying to enjoy this and sometimes gets pleasure sometimes gets suffering but the basically when we practice yoga when we practice especially Bhakti yoga what is happening is that that same Krishna who is present at the spiritual level of reality he makes himself accessible at the material level of reality so just to expand that metaphor the child is watching the horror movie and it's caught in watching the horror movie the mother is trying to shake and get the child out the child is caught in that so say if somewhere that horror movie is being shot and so the mother goes over there and enters into the TV screen etc hey do you see me? what who are you? what are you doing here? and then within that the child's attention gets caught on this person and then as the child becomes more and more tuned to the mother and it becomes more and more aware of the mother and then child oh the same person is sitting right next to me so like that this is actually the meaning of Avatar God exists at the spiritual level of reality but he descends to the material level that is our consciousness is caught in the material level right now so God manifests at the material level so his holy names they are Nama Avatar in the temple we have the deities they are the called the Archa Avatar so the Bhagavad Gita is called as Grantha Avatar they are all manifestations of God and so God is manifest the spiritual reality God is manifesting at the material level and the more we expose our consciousness to him the more our consciousness becomes spiritualized and as it becomes more and more spiritualized then we can become aware of his spiritual presence also and the more we become aware of the spiritual presence there are many experiences of great saints you know they physically exist in one place but they're in trance they're experiencing great emotions great ecstasies Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu while playing the role of a great saint you just be talking with some people and suddenly you get a sight of Krishna and you get so delighted so ecstatic just go into a trance of ecstasy because of that so what is happening is physically as long as the person is there in this world physically they have the body they pursue things physically but they can pursue an alternate reality also because the soul is capable of spiritual cognition originally but because of attachment the soul's consciousness is presently caught in matter but when there is no attachment the soul can pursue spiritual reality and be stimulated, excited, fulfilled by those spiritual visions and spiritual experiences also does this answer your question? okay.