“The Soul will go to heaven,” so we think! “There are 'good' Souls and 'bad' Souls. After death the Soul will suffer. Souls are reborn.” All these beliefs continue to keep us in ignorance about the Divine Soul. Somehow, humanity is enveloped in ignorance when it comes to the Soul. We say, “May his Soul rest in peace” without even realizing what we are saying! “Let's pray for the departed Soul,” we say this not realizing that the Soul itself is Divine. Do we pray for the Divine? The mystery of the Soul, the myths that we have believed in for thousands of years envelop us in darkness. When will we realize the truth?
Since time immemorial, the world thought that the Sun revolved around the Earth. However, this was a myth. But it took several centuries for the world to realize that it was the other way around. So is it with the Soul! We think that the Soul is a distinct individual entity just like the body- yours different from mine. We believe the Soul is in some way associated or connected to the mind. Somehow, we have come to believe that the three entities, the body, mind and Soul together form our life and the Soul is within us. While some of our beliefs are true, our misunderstanding of the truth makes us go on to believe that it is the Soul that is reborn to face the actions of the person who was alive.
What is the cause of this ignorance? It is because we do not go on a quest to find the reality about our Soul. We don't even know who we are and who God is. Our ego makes us believe that it is 'me', the one I can see in the mirror. What we don't realize is that this appearance is fictitious. Every day, our body has cells that are dying and are being reborn. Every 8 to 10 years, we have a completely new body. And one day, this body will eventually die. We are quite ignorant about where we come from and where we will go. We call the day we were born on earth as our birthday, but in reality, we were born much before that. Our existence started in our mother's womb, but we choose to be blissfully ignorant about the truth of our existence. We think we will die, but we are ignorant that death is not the end, it is only a bend and we transcend from one life to another. Who is it that dies and who is it that is reborn? Is it the body, the mind or the Soul?
Our ignorance takes us further into acts of irrelevance. We pray for our ancestors. We put up their photographs and make fervent prayers for their well-being. Who are we praying for? The body that has been cremated or buried, or the Mind, Intellect, Memory, Ego - MIME, that has taken rebirth? Or are we praying for the Soul which we believe is somewhere in heaven or in the skies? As long as we continue to live with ignorance, our actions will be motivated by irrelevance. All this is because of our ignorance about the Soul.
As long as we don't realize that we are not this body and we are not even this mind, we will never realize we are the Divine Soul. Even if we read and believe we are the Soul, this knowledge will never sink into our life due to the deep ignorance that surrounds us. Unless our knowledge evolves to realization, unless we go beyond knowing, we will never realize the truth. To realize the truth, we have to open our 'real eyes'—eyes that look within.
Guru Nanak, the famous Sikh Guru, said something very profound. We human beings are given 9 doors in the human body—two doors of the eyes to see, two of the ears, two nostrils, one mouth, an organ of excretion and an organ of procreation. All these nine doors are looking outside. The Guru says that unless we open the 10th door, the door that looks within, we will continue to live in ignorance.
What causes this ignorance? Our ignorance is caused due to the cosmic illusion, called Maya. What does this illusion do? It has two powers. It conceals the truth and projects the myth. We human beings sink in this cosmic illusion. We often go for a movie and we get carried away by what we see on the screen. We even feel sad and shed tears when our favourite actor dies in the movie. Why? We know this is not real. It is just a projection. But because of the illusion that is projected, we get carried away and become emotional believing the projection to be real. By doing so, the truth that it is not real gets concealed by the myth that is projected. Maya does the same for the Soul. Maya projects us to be the body and mind, and as it projects this myth, it conceals the truth that we are the Soul.
This world is a cosmic drama, a drama of the Divine. But we tend to believe that it is real. Thus, we get attached to all our possessions and think that our relationships are eternal. Nothing is eternal. Everything in this movie called Life is transitory. We are just actors, we come, we have to do our part and go. Instead of observing the cosmic drama as a drama, we think it to be real and we do not overcome our ignorance to realize the truth.
A human being has been created in a manner that he believes what he sees when he is awake as real and what he dreams in a dream is an illusion. He doesn't realize that even what he experiences when he is awake is nothing better than a dream. If we human beings borrow some money from somebody, we feel morally obliged that we must return it. However, if we dream that our neighbour has borrowed a large sum of money from us in our dream, when we wake up, will we go to our neighbour and demand the money? Of course not! It was just a dream. How can we demand money borrowed in the dream? We human beings think that the dream is false and what happens when we are awake is real. This is because we think we are the body, mind, and Soul. We don't realize that the body and mind are a myth, an illusion, a projection of the cosmic drama. When we overcome our ignorance, we will realize the truth that we are the Divine Soul.
What stops us from realizing the truth? What creates this ignorance? Our biggest enemy is ME – the Mind and Ego. It is the mind and ego that makes us believe that we are the body, mind, and ego. It conceals the truth that we are the Soul. Why is this so? It is because the moment we realize that we are the Divine Soul and not the body, mind, and ego that we believe ourselves to be, it destroys the very existence of the ME, the Mind and Ego. Therefore, the Mind and Ego resist the overcoming of ignorance and continue to imprison us in the illusion.
How does the Mind and Ego do it? The mind is producing thoughts. It constantly produces thoughts at a rate of about one thought per second. These thoughts that are popping like popcorn in a machine do not let us contemplate the truth. They make us swing into the past to nurse, curse and to rehearse our past regrets. Then they make us jump into the future and create fear, worry, and stress. Because of this constant shuttling of the mind, from a past that is gone to a future not yet born, we are unable to remain in the present moment and be conscious that we are the Divine Soul. The ego joins the mind in its efforts by making us believe that we are ME - the Mind and the Ego when in reality we are the Soul.
When we look at our photograph, we tend to identify ourselves as our body which we are not. Then the ego goes on to say, “These are my parents and my wife and children.” It doesn't stop at that. The ego says, “The house is mine, the car is mine and the money is mine.” All this is a part of the universal ignorance. As intelligent beings, we know that nothing is ours. Life is a journey. We come and we go. Everything that we possess is like a trust that we have to return at death. Even the relationships are transitory. Because of our ignorance, we suffer pain, misery, and anguish, apart from losing an opportunity of living a life of peace and bliss as the Divine Soul.
When will we realize that our life on earth is just a drama? In the drama, we may be a king or a beggar. We may fall in love and have children, but once the drama is over, we realize that all that was happening was just a part of the drama. It was not real! Although life is like a drama, we do not realize the truth. Whatever happens in this drama is momentary. It is not eternal.
Why is it that we continue to live in ignorance? This is because we do not use our intellect. We human beings are blessed with a subtle body, invisible and intangible, that has four known entities - Mind, Intellect, Memory, Ego - MIME. Most of the time, our ignorance considers all the four to be the mind. But we know, don't we, that we have an intellect? The intellect discriminates right from wrong and the truth from the myth. Unless we become conscious of the intellect, we will never go on a quest to realize the truth. The intellect doesn't just believe in every thought of the mind. It asks questions, it investigates till it realizes the truth. If we don't activate the intellect, we remain slaves to our mind and continue to live a life of ignorance till we die.
What does most of humanity experience due to ignorance? A