How does the soul experience the pains and pleasures of the body?

From: Jugal

What makes us feel the pains and pleasures of the body? Of course it is due to the misidentification with the body but how exactly it happens…how the soul experiences the pains and pleasures of the body? What are these pains and pleasures?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Jugalbhag Prabhu. What makes us feel the pains and pleasures of the body? Of course, it is due to the misidentification of the body, but how exactly does it happen? How does the soul experience the pains and pleasures of the body? What are these pains and pleasures? Answer. The principle of misidentification can be understood by considering how we experience emotions while watching a TV program or a movie.
If in a movie the hero is being beaten by the heroine, and when the hero and heroine start embracing, the audience starts whistling. They imagine as if they are enjoying. So basically, it is a misidentification that leads us to feel the emotions that are being experienced by something or someone else.
So the soul, when it gets entry and residence in a particular body, identifies with that body. And because of that identification, we experience emotions. In one sense, the example for the precise way in which the misidentification takes place can be variegated.
And ultimately, the actual reality is in between all these. It is like the moon is between the branches. So at one level, I give the example of watching a movie.
So when people watch a movie first, especially in a theater, the lights are switched off. And then the illusion is portrayed. So that the persons will not get distracted to anything else.
But they will be able to focus on the movie. So like that, when the soul identifies with the body, maya acts on the soul through two shaktis. One is the avaranatmika shakti, which is like switching off the lights.
So that avaranatmika shakti makes us forget who we are. That I am a soul and that I have a real life in the spiritual world in relationship with Krishna. And rakshapatmika shakti is what attracts us to the material sense objects in the material world in general.
So that is like the agency by which the attractive illusion is portrayed on the screen in the movie theater. So by these two things, so first is forgetting our real identity because of the avaranatmika shakti and creation of the false identity by the rakshapatmika shakti. Another example where we experience emotions by misidentification is with respect to dreams.
When we dream, say that we are being chased by a tiger, at that time nothing is actually happening to us. We are lying down on the bed, but still we feel that very strongly and if we wake up we may find that we are breathing heavily and sweating profusely. That happens because again of misidentification.
Now in these two examples of the movie and the dream, the object with which we are identifying in the movie is someone entirely different with whom we have no connection except that of an emotional liking. I like a particular hero, so I want to watch what is happening with him. Whereas generally speaking in the dream, we see ourselves.
So I told Shakha Chandran, because when the soul identifies with the body, actually the misidentification is something which is in between the two. The misidentification is obviously not with one self because the body is not the self. But at the same time it is not with some other imaginary person.
It is actually the body which we have got by our karma. So in that sense we have a real connection with the body. So our identification with the body is not just emotional, we have attachment to the body.
But in one sense the soul is also situated in the body and the soul’s sense of identity is expressed primarily if not exclusively through the body in the conditioned stage. And that is why as long as we are in the body, the sensations that the body experiences are perceived by us as pleasurable or painful. So what exactly are the pleasures and pains? They are the sensations experienced by the body.
Now the body has its own nervous system and that nervous system is sensitized to experience pain and pleasure. So when the hand touches a hot object, the hand immediately moves away by reflex action. When the same hand touches a soft, comforting object, the hand may want to touch that more because that sensation is pleasant.
So the body is geared towards certain sensations and geared away from certain sensations. Geared in the sense of it is designed in that way. So as long as we identify with the body, the sensations that are favorable and unfavorable to the body are seen by us as pleasant and unpleasant.
So for an advanced devotee, the body sensations are still there but because the identification is not there so much, so the intensity of the emotions is far lesser. The standard example for understanding how the body works, body-soul works is the car driver. So if a person has just purchased a new car and then that person stops at the red signal road and suddenly the person behind in another car bangs against his car.
So this person will yell in anger, what have you done? How dare you hit my car? Now actually speaking, if the collision has been slight, all that has happened to the car is just slight marks on the bumper and nothing has happened to the person. But a lot has happened to the person’s heart, not physically but emotionally because of the identification with the car. Now on the other hand, if that same person is going in a hired car and the car meets with a similar bump, the person will be concerned but he will not be disturbed because that car doesn’t belong to him.
Okay, that car is important for him because he has to use it to go to the destination. So if the car gets a bump, it’s not a suffering, it’s an inconvenience. So even an advanced devotee who doesn’t identify with the body may be concerned about the sensations that the body is undergoing because those sensations indicate whether the situation for the service of Krishna is favourable or unfavourable.
But for the pure devotee, the unpleasant bodily sensations are inconveniences, they are not sufferings. Just like while driving to some engagement, if the car gets a puncture, that’s an inconvenience, that’s not a suffering. So inconvenience is something which is more external to us because of some external world facility not being the way we would have liked it to be.
On the other hand, suffering is something which is more direct and intimate. So normally speaking, a car puncture would be an inconvenience but a hand fracture would be a suffering. But for a pure devotee, even a hand fracture is an inconvenience because the body is like a car and the hand fracture is just like a body puncture.
At the same time, because that hand is going to be used to serve Krishna, therefore the devotee may try to cure it, and they may try to do what is required to prevent it if a fracture could be prevented also. So to summarise the answer, our misidentification happens through the Rakshapatmika and Avanatmika Shakti. And just like we may see a movie and identify with the character there, or we may see a dream and identify with what is happening to us in the dream.
So, like Shaka Chandra Nyaya, the exact nature of how the soul identifies with the body is neither demonstrable through the movie example nor the dream example, it is in between. So the body is geared towards certain sensations that it perceives as safe and dangerous or favourable or unfavourable, and when the soul identifies with the body, those same sensations are translated as pleasure and pain. To the extent we don’t identify with the body, to that extent, the bodily pains will be seen not as sufferings but as inconveniences.
So that’s why the process of spiritual advancement has two sides. One is, in one sense, switching off the movie, and second is switching on the lights. Switching off the movie means we can’t stop the events of the material world, but we switch off our interest in the ups and downs of the material world.
And secondly we switch on the light, that means we start focusing on the real life of relationship with Krishna. And as these two things happen more and more in our lives, we don’t get so much affected by the pains and pleasures of the body.