​When the soul is beyond identity, why do devotees put identification marks such as tilak?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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be delivered thank you it’s a question why do we put identification marks as tilak when the soul is actually beyond such identities answer yes the soul is beyond all material identities like Indian American Canadian male female young old engineer doctor but the soul has original spiritual identity the soul is a part of part of God 15.7 in the Gita Krishna says that all living beings are my parts that means in the ultimate spiritual sense the soul is not identity less so there is there is false ego which wherein we identify ourselves with something which we are not but then the whole process of spirituality is to give up the false ego but then after that we have the true ego the true ego is who we eternally are so Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in one verse he rejects all material identities when he says so he rejects all the vanashram identities I am not a brahmachari but then he says who am I I am the eternal servant of the lord of the gopis so that means I am eternal servant of Krishna Vishnu that is our eternal identity so when we have identification marks such as the tilak they are not like other material identification marks which people may put different people can symbolize things by putting certain marks on their face but quite often they those perpetuate our worldly identity whatever it may be so some red Indians might put some decorations of earth on their forehead or other people might put things like that they are all related with our bodily identity but the soul’s identity as a servant of Krishna that we reinforce or that we remind ourselves of by applying some spiritual identification marks so that’s why tillak is in that sense not just a cultural or social identification mark it is a spiritual identification mark and by putting that identification mark we remind ourselves of our eternal