What are phantom limbs – how do they prove the soul’s existence?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPxZ-lUQMc0

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. What are phantom limbs? How do they prove the existence of the soul? Answer, phantom limbs refer to the phenomena that after an accident or some such surgery or something, when a person’s limb is cut off. After that, the person still feels as if I have that limb.
So, for example, if a person had a habit of scratching the hand and then the hand is cut off because of some reason and after that the person still feels an itch and feels it very strongly. Now, there is no hand to itch but still the person feels the hand to itch. So, now, why this happens is something which is very difficult for modern science to explain.
Now, the modern science tries to explain this. By modern science I refer to modern materialistic or reductionistic science. So, scientific materialists try to explain this in terms of the wiring of the brain.
But the point is that it doesn’t happen in everyone and if the brain wiring should be the cause, then it should be a uniform cause for everyone. But it happens still. So, then the point here is even if we talk about the wiring that is just, you know, often the, there is no specific clear correlation to explain this.
So, the brain wiring explanation is a very simplistic magic commands sort of explanation which reduces, which basically reduces to a non-explanation on critical examination. But the point is that from the Vedic perspective, this isn’t to the existence of the soul. This points as evidence to the existence of the mind.
The mind is the subtle interface between the soul and the body. And the mind is the integrating center of the information coming from the senses. And significantly enough, there are subtle senses that we have apart from the gross senses.
So, for example, we can see with our eyes, but when our eyes are closed, as when we are sleeping, at the time also we can still see. We can see in our, we say in our mind’s eye. Now, mind’s eye is not just a metaphorical figure of speech.
Mind’s eye actually is also an ontological reality. So, so, actually there are, we all have subtle senses. And so the soul has its original eyes, which are currently closed, which are currently obscured, because we are at the level of consciousness.
Mind has its eyes. And then the senses have, at the body we have the physical sensory organs. So, the perception happens when the sensory organs and the mind’s eye are together in a line and then they are received by the conscious soul.
So, if our eyes are closed, we normally cannot see what is outside. And even if our eyes are looking, if the mind’s eye is also not linked, the mind is elsewhere, then we can’t, then what enters into our eyes doesn’t register in our consciousness. So, the point is that even if a hand is cut off, there is a subtle counterpart of the sensory organ that is present in the mind.
signals, sensations come not just from the physical organ, but from the subtle counterpart of the sense. So, in this way, the phantom limbs are, the phantom limb phenomena points to the existence of a subtle counterpart to the sensory organ. So, although the body’s physical organ has been cut off, but still, now all actions and sensations, they actually are rooted through the mind.
So, now, although the body does not have the, say, hand now, but because of the past habit, which has become like a program in the mind, so, the need for tickling, the need for scratching is a habitual program that is there and that program makes one feel not just the need to scratch, but also makes one feel the itch in the organ. So, the itch is not, the organ is not there, so itch is not in the organ, but the organ has a subtle counterpart in the mind, which is still there and that subtle counterpart is where we feel, where the need to itch comes from. So, the phantom limbs actually point to the existence of the subtle body with the subtle counterpart of the external limb that has been removed.
Thank you.