Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 9-7.

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Chapter 9. Gurudev Sivananda – Physician of the Soul-7.


A few days back, a person came from All India Radio, Delhi, and asked me for a message, to be broadcast in All India Radio, concerning 'the relevance of religion to national integration'. I was trying to tell him, in that short message which I gave him on tape, that it is very strange that he should speak of relevance of religion to national integration, as if there can be any other relevance, because that would be like speaking of the relevance of the soul to the body of an individual. What is the relevance of the soul to the body? There cannot be any other relevance. The soul is the only relevance conceivable. Minus the soul, what is the body?

You remove your soul from your personality, and let us see what you are. You will simply disintegrate into smithereens the moment the soul is withdrawn from your personality. You may wonder why it should happen. The soul is not a spark of light or a centre of gravity that is situated in a location of your personality, as ordinarily you may conceive wrongly. The soul is not any such thing as you may imagine. It is a peculiar 'something' which is difficult to explain in language. It is like electric energy. You cannot say where electricity is.

Is it inside the body or outside the body? Is it inside the powerhouse? It is in every speck of creation. In every atom of the world is electricity present. Likewise, the soul is present in every nook and corner of this creation. It is not sitting inside the body like a small insect or a flame of a candle inside a pot. To conceive it as being located somewhere would be a very peculiar and childish notion. The soul is that integrating 'something' which brings the cells of the body together into a bodily form.

It is the force which brings together the various thoughts of your mind and enables the harmonious functioning of anything that you can call as yourself. If, therefore, the soul is to be withdrawn, you will not exist any more. That which you call the 'you' or the 'I' is the soul. It is not something different from what you are. What you yourself are, that is the soul. And if the soul is removed, you yourself are removed. So what is left there? Nothing. You do not have a soul. You yourself are the soul. So, do not say, "I have a soul inside me." As I just mentioned, this is a peculiar baby's idea of the soul. What you yourself are, that is the soul. So, minus you, what is the soul; and minus the soul, what are you? They are identical. You are the soul; the soul is you.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ...


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