When the senses, mind and intelligence do wrong, why does the soul suffer consequences?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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If the mind, body and intelligence do sinful activities, then why does the soul suffer for those sinful activities? Answer, the mind, intelligence and body, they don’t do it.
It is they propose it. It is the soul who accepts it. The example to understand this is, suppose somebody is surfing the net.
And you are surfing on some site for shopping. And suddenly some pop-up window comes up. And that’s also a nasty site.
Now the computer doesn’t take us to that site itself. The computer prompts us. It is we who click and then we go there.
So, like that, our mind, our senses, they bring the pop-up images in our consciousness. But when those images pop up, when those ideas pop up, when those desires pop up, it is we who accept them. It is we who act on them.
That’s why the doer is the soul. The doer is not the body, the mind or the intelligence. They can be the proposers.
We are the doers. To give another example to illustrate this, let’s say a person is driving a car. And next to them there is a child.
And the child is starting, see that, see that, see that, see that. And the child is directing everywhere. Now this person who is driving, that person has the steering wheels.
And the child cannot push this person away and take the steering wheel and take the car in some other direction. But the child can distract. And the child distracts, go there, go there, go there.
Now if this person listens to that child, they will go in that direction. If they don’t listen to that child, they will not go in that direction. So that mind, our mind is like the distracting child.
We as the soul are like the person at the wheels of the car. So it is we who choose. So it is because we, what do we choose? We may not choose the occurrence of the desire.
The desire may come on its own. But the indulgence of the desire is what we choose. And we are responsible for that choice.
So how does the ego play a role in this? The ego is what causes us to misidentify with the voices of the mind, intelligence. The intelligence here, by intelligence we refer to the materialistic intelligence or the senses. Krishna talks in Bhagavad Gita in 3.40 that That selfish desire is present in the senses, the mind and the intelligence.
So basically, it is because we choose to do the action, that’s why we get the consequences.