Soul | The Hare Krishna Movement

Consciousness

20 Dec 2024 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita As It Is 1972 Edition, Changing Bodies, consciousness, Soul Tags: ac-bhaktivedanta-swami, Bhagavad-gita, consciousness, philosophy, psychology, soul, spirituality

This morning as I went out to feed the birds, I saw a dead bird on the patio who must have crashed into the window, and it just got to thinking about what is the difference between a dead body and a live body? Consciousness. So I did a little research on that word. The simple definition of the word is:

“Consciousness is the state of being aware of oneself, one’s body, and the outside world.”

OK that is the simple definition. But in the Bhagavad-gita As It Is, Srila Prabhupada gives us a more advanced understanding:

“Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable soul.” (Bg. 2.17)

PURPORT

This verse more clearly explains the real nature of the soul, which is spread all over the body. Anyone can understand what is spread all over the body: it is consciousness. Everyone is conscious of the pains and pleasures of the body in part or as a whole. This spreading of consciousness is limited within one’s own body. The pains and pleasures of one body are unknown to another. Therefore, each and every body is the embodiment of an individual soul, and the symptom of the soul’s presence is perceived as individual consciousness…

…This very small spiritual spark is the basic principle of the material body, and the influence of such a spiritual spark is spread all over the body as the influence of the active principle of some medicine spreads throughout the body. This current of the spirit soul is felt all over the body as consciousness, and that is the proof of the presence of the soul. Any layman can understand that the material body minus consciousness is a dead body, and this consciousness cannot be revived in the body by any means of material administration. Therefore, consciousness is not due to any amount of material combination, but to the spirit soul. . Neither Vedic knowledge nor modern science denies the existence of the spirit soul in the body, and the science of the soul is explicitly described in the Bhagavad-gita by the Personality of Godhead Himself.

So we can conclude, that that consciousness is the presence of the soul.

Which Way Home for the Wandering Soul?

09 Sep 2014 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Back to Godhead, Soul, Spiritual Life Tags: A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Pabhupada, Back to Godhead Magazine, Bhagavata-dharma, BTG, God, Krsna, part and parcel of God, relationship with God, sons of God, soul, Supreme Lord Krishna, wandering soul

Which Way Home for the Wandering Soul?

A lecture by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Founder-Acarya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
Excerpted from Back to Godhead Magazine Vol. 18, No. 10, 1983

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for kindly participating in this Krsna consciousness movement, which is spreading bhagavata-dharma. Bhagavata-dharma means “the activities performed in relationship with the Supreme Lord.” The Lord is Bhagavan, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and the devotee is bhagavata, one who acts in relationship with Bhagavan.

Some Day the Tiny Soul Will Want to Get Out of Illusion

09 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in Back to Godhead, Soul, Spiritual Life, The Hare Krishna Movement, Vishnujana Swami Tags: Back to Godhead Magazine, Bhagavad-gita 2.59, BTG, His Holiness Visnujana Svami, illusion, illusory energy, mercy of the Lord, neophytes, regulative principles, soul, Spiritual Life, the Hare Krsna movement, vairagya, Visnujana Swami

Some Day the Tiny Soul Will Want to Get Out of Illusion

Instructions to the devotees of the Hare Krsna movement
given in New York City, March 31, 1974
by His Holiness Visnujana Svami
Excerpted from Back to Godhead Magazine 1974 Vol. 1, No. 65

…As soon as one gets the association of the bhakti-vedanta, the pure devotee or spiritual master, and hears from his lips the nectarean waves flowing just like the wonderful River Ganges, these waves enter his ears and his heart and purify him. Thus he is freed from the seeds of contaminated material desires. When he hears sufficiently, his intelligence becomes satisfied, and he agrees to act on the instructions of his bona fide spiritual master. The more he acts on these instructions, the more he becomes freed from past bad habits and the conditional responses of this material world. Thus his conditional association is completely vanquished. This, of course, is where he achieves a spiritual taste (ruci) and spiritual strength (vairagya).

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Soul Slokas

05 Aug 2014 Leave a comment

by The Hare Krishna Movement in A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Bhagavad-gita, Soul Tags: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, Arjuna, Bg2.12, Bg2.30, bhagavad-gita, boyhood to youth to old age, dehino smin yatha dehe, eternal soul, ever existing soul, for the soul there is never birth or death, Krsna, krsna consciousness, reincarnation, science of the soul science of self realization, soul, soul passes into another body, soul slokas, Srila Prabhupada, unborn

This morning I was thinking about the soul and its eternal journey. So I went to Srila Prabhupada’s Bhagavad-gita As It Is and found some of the important slokas that pertained to the subject of the soul.

As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not bewildered by such a change. (Bg. 2.13)

For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. (Bg. 2.20)

As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, similarly, the soul accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones. (Bg. 2.22)

The soul can never be cut into pieces by any weapon, nor can he be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind. (Bg. 2.23)