​How can we know for sure that the soul exists?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
so how can we come to epistemological certainty about the nature of the self about the reality of the soul the first thing is that any kind of knowledge epistemology refers basically to the knowledge about knowledge it is the methods by which we acquire knowledge so one principle of epistemology is that we need the appropriate apparatus for perceiving particular things so for example I cannot measure the temperature of a body by standing on a weighing scale that is something very simple to understand I just moved no it is fine so what we can do is look for appropriate method so if I have a fishing net which has say holes of the size of say 2 cm by 2 cm then any fish that is smaller than that size will not be caught by the fishing net no matter how much how long I keep the fishing net in the river so we need the appropriate apparatus and modern mainstream science primarily focuses on looking for material explanations for material phenomena and whenever the non material comes up science tries to sideline that neglect that so we need consciousness itself has to be experientially perceived in a simple example of this suppose there is a famous brain surgeon and his brain surgeon specialist he comes home and he finds his wife is upset with him now will he tell her that let me do a brain scan to find out why you are upset she will tell him you go and scan where you lost your brain isn’t it so there is an experiential aspect to our life which cannot be perceived through any technological instruments experienced first person reality so that is the level of consciousness and that consciousness cannot be perceived through any external experiments it is we have to subject ourselves to the necessary experiment so when we practice yoga when we raise our consciousness spiritual sound especially the sound of mantras is like an elevator for consciousness we say somebody is on the ground floor and at the first floor there is a feast and you can get the fragrance of some delightful desert now we can sense that but if you want to go there you have to rise to the first floor so like that consciousness is what is coming from the first floor of reality whereas we are presently at the ground floor of reality so at the ground floor of reality we cannot taste that delicacy we have to rise to the first floor of reality so that means to raise to the first floor of reality is yoga one of the practices of yoga is mantra so when we repeatedly receptively utter the mantras basically we situate our consciousness in spiritual sound and that spiritual sound raises our consciousness upwards to the spiritual level where where we directly perceive the reality this requires a process of growing spiritually when a to give a biological example for this when a baby is newborn the newborn baby she doesn’t understand anything for her all of existence is potential food whatever she says she puts in her mouth and tries to taste it now initially when she is newborn she may not even understand that there is my mother who is breast feeding me yes something somewhere some nice liquid is coming but as she grows she starts understanding this is my mother now suppose it’s cold at night and the baby is sleeping and she is shivering and then the mother comes and puts a blanket on the baby at that time the baby she may not even understand this is my mother and because of her love she put the blanket over me what she will experience is oh I am feeling cozy trembling now I am feeling cozy and as the baby grows up and she understands this is my mother my mother loves me and then when she feels the blanket on her at that time she will be able to connect oh my mother must have come here mother must have put the blanket on me she has not yet opened her eyes but she is able to make that connection between the warmth of the blanket and the love of the mother not just the love of the mother the presence of the mother my mother is there and she has put the blanket on me so similarly for us when we practice spirituality when we raise our consciousness through spiritual sound in this world there is agitation, there is anxiety there is stress but when we raise our consciousness upwards through spiritual practice we experience relief from that stress it is like a comforting blanket being put on us and this is a repeatable experience millions of people all over the world and billions throughout history have experienced the relief the peace the satisfaction that comes through yogic meditation through meditation on spiritual sound and as initially the baby just feels the relief but as the baby grows up she makes the connection between the comfort of the blanket and the presence of the mother so like that as our consciousness keeps getting raised consistently we start making the connection between the experience of peace the experience of satisfaction the experience of joy and the presence of a higher reality and that is something which no one else can do for us it is we ourselves have to experience the reality and by experiencing that reality then it becomes a lived reality for us just as in any scientific experiment first there is a theory then there is an experiment and after the experiment we come to a conclusion so like that the philosophy is a theory and the practice of mantra yoga is the experiment which will give us experiential verification of the higher spiritual reality ok any other questions how can we know