Before I begin, I always offer my respects to my spiritual masters, my teachers who have brought this knowledge to us. All the information I’ll be presenting comes from the Vedic scriptures. The Vedas are very ancient scriptures, they were written down 5 000 years ago. But the knowledge itself is eternal. So, prior to be written down, it was passed down orally from one perfect master to the next. Such a line of perfect teachers is known as a disciplic succession, or parampara. We are in the parampara known as the Brahma Sampradaya, and we feel very fortunate to receive our knowledge through this linage. So, this is not my opinion. I am just passing on this eternal science.
Now, the subject of love is one of the most talked about and relevant subjects of life. It also one of the most complex. Let’s just say, it’s the most complex. It’s so confusing, hardly anybody understands really ‘love’. So, we are going to try to look at it very, very closely and see what we can learn. To do this, we must begin at the beginning.
Who is loving? Love is an exchange that takes between two people, you can’t love alone. That is a big problem for many people. They want to love, but they don’t have anybody to love. It takes two people. So, we must understand who we are. The Vedas say we all should ask ourself exactly that question. Who am I? But, unfortunately, we almost never ask this question because we think we already know the answer.
And, certainly, we all have our identities. We’ve had them our whole life; we have them in our minds, we have them on our lips, we even have them in our pockets. Meaning this is who I think I am, this is who I tell others I am, and I prove it with my passport, my documents. But is this our real identity?
And upon close examination we discover this is only a compilation of many labels. And the labeling process begins at birth. So, all of us here now, as soon as we took birth, received one of two labels: male or female. And we still identify like that: “I’m a man” or “I’m a woman”. At the same time we get another label according to our race: Caucasian, Negro, whatever it is. Our national identity can be very strong: “I am Russian,” “I am American.” And, of course, our family identity: we belong to this family. And, actually, this identity is so strong that every day on this planet one person kills another person just because they have a different label. And this is just the beginning.
Many labels come and go throughout our entire life. So, once again, at birth we’re also known as babies, then – kids. We start school, now we’re students. A few more years go by and we become teenagers and finally – adults. We take up some profession in life and we are known accordingly: doctors, lawyers, secretaries, nurses. Then we get married, immediately we’re a husband or a wife. We have a child, now we’re parents: fathers, mothers. A few more years go by – grandfathers, grandmothers. This is how we see our self, “This is me, this is who I am.” This continues on and on, until we finally get the last label – dead.
But looking closely we see: this is all in relation to our material bodies. It’s true: the body is male or female, black or white, old or young. Whatever the body is, it is. That’s true. The question is: “Is this who we are?” Every day we all take our pilgrimage to the mirror to see how “we” look. Sometimes we’re a little disappointed. We always come back the next day, “Gee, maybe there’s been some improvement!” But do we really see our self? So, the question is: am I this material body?
If we want the most authoritative answer, we should go to the revealed scriptures of the world. And there we learn: no, we’re not the material body. But this is the modern world. It’s very rare that there’s anyone who goes to scripture to find the truth in life. However, we do readily accept the conclusion of the scientists. We like the scientists cause they prove things. And, uniquely enough, in this case the scientists have proven in their laboratories that we are not our material body.
They have discovered there’s no cell in the human body that lives more than five years. Some cells have a very short life. The lining of the stomach: those cells live five days. Our skin cells – one month. Liver cells – six weeks. Etc. But in five years everything has changed. So, if I look at a photograph of myself taken 10 years ago, the eyes in the photograph are different than the eyes I’m looking at the photograph with. They’re not the same eyes. According to this scientific formula, if I am 35 years old, I‘ve had seven bodies. But, of course, we all know we are not seven different people. Everybody knows: I’m still me. So, the changing factor is the material body, the constant factor is our self. And we’re not these material bodies.
Now, at this point some people become meditative or introspective. They begin to look inside to find out who they really are. And when we do look inside, what do we find? Emotion, desire, feeling, will. It’s all very real. And it’s easy to conclude: this is who I really am. But we must confirm this with scripture and especially the Vedic scriptures, because they are very detailed in this knowledge.
And when we do, we learn we’ve made yet another mistake. This is not who we are either. This is actually another material body. It’s called the subtle mental body. Sometimes it is called the astral body. I’m sure some of you’ve heard of the astral body. So, really we have two bodies: our physical body and our mental body. Like having on two layers of clothes: an outer layer and an under layer. But the question still remains: “Who am I?”
So, once again we go to the Vedas. There we learn we are in a different category of energy. Everything is energy. Our bodies are material energy. Вut we learn that we are spiritual energy. We further learn we are a tiny spark of spiritual energy.
We learn that material energy is temporary. That’s easy to see. We know all too well these bodies are very temporary. So much so we don’t even want to talk about it, “Hey, hey, don’t talk about that!” But even the more permanent things like this building. Come back here in one thousand years, “Gee, where was that lecture again?” You see. Temporary. However, we learn that spirit is eternal. Eternal means no beginning and no end. So, we are eternal.
We also learn that material energy is non-living. And again that’s easy to see: this table, this microphone – there is no life. But we learn that spirit is life itself. There is no such thing as live matter, there is no such thing as dead spirit. We are the life force in the body. As long as we’re in the body, the body’s called alive. But actually that is not true. The body’s dead. We are alive. That becomes very obvious at the time of death. At the time of death we leave the body, and at that moment the body reveals its true nature. It can’t even sit in a chair, it falls on the floor. So, we are the life force in the body.
Therefore, our true identity is spirit soul. Spirit meaning that we are spiritual in essence and soul meaning this individual spiritual spark that we eternally are. We never become someone else. We never cease to exist. For some people this is very depressing news, “What? I’ll always be me? Gee, I thought it’s going to be over soon.” Sorry, it’s never over. However when we learn the truth in life, it becomes very wonderful news. So, once again, we are spirit souls.
And we further learn we are part and parcel of the Supreme Soul. There’s the Supreme Soul from which we all come. We are known as the atma and the Supreme Soul is the Paramatma. Now understanding this, then we can begin to discuss our topic of love.