There is a very clear picture that one can develop. We are spirit soul. That we have described. Whether we accept it or not, that is the truth. These bodies are very temporary. They are always sources of misery. It is said that in the material world this is one of sources of our sources of misery – the body and the mind. Don’t we continuously experience that? Our bodies are always giving us trouble. “Oh, I got a flu. My tooth is bad. I bit my tongue. My knee hurts. My back just went out. My stomach, I can’t digest my food. I am constipated. I got diarrhea.” (laughs/laughter) And on and on it goes. And not only that but it gets old! Like, “Wait a minute, I don’t want to get old!” But the body doesn’t care, you get old anyway, it happens automatically.
And then the mind, that is another whole misery. I was told last night by a person, “I can’t sleep, my mind is too busy.” We are supposed to be able to just lay down, relax, go to sleep, the body is designed to rest, to rejuvenate. But the mind doesn’t let us sleep. We are so tired but we can’t sleep, we are tossing, we are turning, worrying. And then the fact that we can’t sleep is the next anxiety. (laughs) So the scientist have taken care of that small problem. Sleeping pills. “Don’t worry, we will take care of it, take two of these.” You have to go to sleep now but you can’t wake up. (laughs) Wait a minute, I want to wake up! Anyway, we can make big jokes about it, it is actually hilarious but it is not hilarious, this is not funny. We laugh but we don’t laugh. So anyway, it is like that, it is designed in this way.
We come into the material world from the spiritual world. We learn in our Vedic scriptures about another world, another whole dimension. The spiritual realm. The material world is a reflection of the spiritual world. What we see here is actually in reality there. This is just a mirror image but it is opposite, like when you look in a mirror and everything is opposite.
So we come into the material world and enter into material bodies of many, many different varieties. And we change bodies every few years. That little baby in the womb, he didn’t start at that point. This is just entering into his new costume for the new theatre. What part will he play in this theatre?
So he plays his role, he is cast in a certain role according to his past activity. And so we play our parts in the drama and along the way engage in many activities preparing us for our next role in our next theatre. And it goes on and on and on. This is called the wheel of birth and death. There is a constant repetition of birth, disease, old age and death again and again. And we are just like a squirrel on the wheel; we are just running and going nowhere, just running and running, and running. That is not good.
But it is such a big picture that we only see one little part and think this is the whole thing, “My present life is all there is, it is the whole show.” And so we get fully into it and of course try to make it perfect. So we work very diligently to perfect it, arranging it like this or that. It is not quite perfect so we rearrange it. Like some people are continuously rearranging the furniture in their house. I knew one lady, that was her passion – just rearranging the furniture. Every time the husband came home, there was a new arrangement. And sometimes she said, “Oh, help me move this.” He answered, “Oh, you move it, I am satisfied with it, it has got no problem.” (laughs/laughter)
So anyway, we are always trying to rearrange things, to make it better. Because we know we need perfection, we need something different. But in reality in this material world there is nothing different, it is the same thing. Nothing really changes. We talk about, “Oh, there is a big change.” What changed? I travel to many different countries and people say, “Oh, it must be really interesting travelling to all these countries.” It is all the same. What is different? In one country they drive on this side of the road, in another country they drive on the other side of the road. They eat this kind of food here and that kind there. Really, what is the difference? Nothing different. That is reality.
We need to go to a different world. If you want go to a different place, it is not in the material world. Lord Krishna spoke this Bhagavad-gita 5000 years ago. And, by the way, in this knowledge we also learn that there are innumerable planets in the universe, all are inhabited, contrary to what scientific information may be. Some are called higher heavenly planets where material life is very pleasurable. Some are very hellish planets where life is very miserable. And some are in the middle, not too good, not too bad. That is Earth. Earth is a middle planet, intermediate planet. But the point is Lord Krishna says, “From the highest planet in the universe down to the lowest all are places of misery of repeated birth and death.” It is all the same.
So you will never find a purveyor of the truth telling you, “Stay in this world.” That has never been the message of any true messenger. The message is always the same, “Go to the spiritual world, this is your real home. This is where we came from, this is where we need to return to.”