God loves me – is this just a psychological feeling or a spiritual reality?
Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So if we say that God loves us, what is the difference between a psychological feeling and a spiritual feeling? Yeah, this is a little technical question. I will first explain these different levels. Ultimately, the source of consciousness is spiritual.
Our existence is currently at three levels. I talked about two initially, material and spiritual. But within the material there is physical, mental and spiritual.
Mental is the same as psychological. So if you consider a computer system, computer is hardware, software and user. So like that, the hardware is the body, the software is the mind and the soul is the user.
The soul is the source of consciousness. That means it is in consciousness that we experience feelings. So ultimately whatever is being experienced, it is being experienced by the soul.
So right now, it is not my mouth that is speaking. The mouth is a tool through which the speech is coming. What is speaking is not just the brain.
It is not the throat. It is actually the eye, the person and that person is the soul. So the soul is the activator of everything.
The soul is the experiencer of everything. So ultimately, all experience of emotions is done by the soul. Now when we talk about differentiating spiritual emotions, a spiritual feeling that God loves me, and just a psychological, sentimental idea, oh God loves me, what is the difference between them? The difference is between where does that feeling take me.
All consciousness originates from the soul. But what is the result of that feeling on me? That means if it is just a sentimental idea, oh God loves me, everything is alright. Yes, that may calm me a little bit.
But that feeling will come today, it will go tomorrow. If it is spiritual, that means my life is a part of a process where I am moving spiritually. I am growing spiritually.
So I have an overall spiritual understanding of life. And I have a spiritual purpose to my life. And within that spiritual understanding and spiritual purpose, when I experience some feelings, then I understand what those feelings are.
And those feelings help me to move forward. Many people may go to a temple and they may feel some peace over there. They may hear some kirtans.
Oh, this is nice. I feel calm over here. Now many people will come and do that and they will go away thinking, okay, nice experience I had.
Some people may probe deeper. Okay, what was this experience? Why did I get this experience? How can I get it more? What can I do to change my consciousness or to make my consciousness more receptive so that I can get this experience more? So if our experiences are placed within a framework of philosophical understanding and they are placed within a trajectory of spiritual growth, then those feelings will be triggers for further spiritual growth. Otherwise, those feelings will just be occasional experiences which will be like just flicks on our consciousness.
They will come and they will go. And we may say, oh, God loves me. But then, if we are not a part of us, we are not growing spiritually, then we feel, this is wrong in my life.
That is wrong in my life. That is wrong in my life. Where is God’s love for me? That feeling will not be able to last.
But when we are actually spiritually conscious, our whole way of looking at things will change. We will be able to focus on, this is right in my life. This is also right in my life.
This is also right. And through that spiritual understanding, that experience of God’s love will be a real experience for us because it will trigger us towards spiritual growth. So even sentiments related to God are good.
But if the sentiments become the replacements to the process, because God loves me, that’s fine. So He is happy there, I am happy here. Let’s go on with life.
If I think like that, then those feelings will simply stay very amorphous, very vague. They will not be at all transformational. But yes, if God loves me, let me connect with Him deeper.
I got this experience. I got this feeling. I got this epiphany.
It’s good. Let me try to go closer to Him. So by placing our feelings within a framework of philosophical understanding and a trajectory of spiritual growth, then those feelings will propel us towards inner transformation.
And even if they are psychological, they will take us towards spiritual growth. But without that, they will just be like blips in our consciousness, will come and go.