So this process of yoga is really to bring a person to this platform of actual spiritual realization, to begin to really explore the very nature of life itself. The understanding that is taught in all of the yoga texts is that within this universe, within this world that we know, there are actually only two fundamental types of energy. One is called matter and the other one is known as spirit.
Matter has very specific characteristics. It is dull, meaning it is not vibrant, I mean look at a stone. Can you get any more dull than a stone or a piece of cement? (Audience laughter) This is matter. And the living being, which is the source of life, the source of all life energy…
Matter has very specific characteristics and the particle of life, or spirit, also has unique and specific characteristics. One of the characteristics of life is consciousness or awareness. Matter, there is no such thing. And a very amazing thing happens when these two things come into very close proximity. When you take a living being and you clothe it in matter, that is, it has a material body, matter takes on completely different characteristics. You see things like growth, you see natural biological processes occurring in the presence of life and when that life particle is removed we see what we know as death and we see matter begin to revert to much more basic constituent parts. It really completely breaks down.
There is a very deep and a wonderful science on how this is going on. The living being actually has two bodies - a subtle body which is not visible to the eyes, and a gross material body. The subtle body is made up of what is called the false ego, the intelligence and the mind. The gross body is made up the five gross material elements and according to the laws of karma people will accept different types of bodies and suffer from this common ailment of thinking, “Whatever body I have got on, that's me.”
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There is a yoga system known as the Sankhya Yoga system. There are two types of Sankhya Yoga. The very ancient Sankhya Yoga system was developed by Kapiladeva. Kapiladeva was an incarnation, and he taught his mother, her name was Devahuti, this very amazing spiritual knowledge that makes it so a person can analytically discern the difference between spirit and matter. In more recent times, but still a long time ago from this period, there was another Kapiladeva who also taught a form of, what he described as Sankhya Yoga, the analytical process of the distinction between life and matter, but it is classified, even within Vedic terms, as being atheistic.
But this Sankhya Yoga system and process, was a process by which a person deeply contemplated on life, on this world, trying to ascertain the truth about our existence. Applying some of those principles we can come to learn quite a lot about the nature of the living being. All living beings share common characteristics; one of them is fear of death. Have you ever been extremely frightened, or no?
When I was a kid, I was actually not very pleasant, not that I am now. (Audience laughter) But one of the things I used to do, we were sitting in the living room. We were just little kids watching television after dinner and we would turn the lights out and just have a little light on in the room so you could see the television easily and my brother would get up and go off to use the bathroom and I would immediately jump up and go put my hand in the freezer on the ice and get it all cold, then I would run to the toilet, and lie on the floor outside the toilet, and I would turn out the light in the hallway (audience laughing) so he would open the door and turn the light out, and he steps out into darkness and you can't see anything and I would put my cold hand on his foot and just make a sound 'haaaaaaaaa' (hisses). (Audience laughter) And he would just be like 'aaarrrgh' (chuckles, audience laughter). Of course I always used to get into major trouble. I would visit Mister fly swat. My mother would beat me on the bum with it.
But that fearfulness that exists in all living beings, that fearfulness of death is there for a very specific reason. And the specific reason that exists and why people struggle for life, I mean, all you have to do is try and kill someone and watch how major a fight they put up. And it occurs even with animals, with insects. You attempt to kill them and they're going to fight for their life. The reason is because part of our spiritual nature is that we are eternal. The living being, it says in the Bhagavad-gita:
Never was there a time when I or you or all these kings did not exist, nor will there be a time when we cease to be.
Bhagavad-gita 2:12
The very nature of the living being is that we are eternal. And because it is our inherent spiritual nature, therefore when we are covered with this body and completely engrossed in it, thinking, “This is me,” when it starts going into a state of near death, there is panic. Or if there is a threat of death there is great panic and great fearfulness because it is so against our actual spiritual nature to die. In fact there is no death, but because we are caught up in the idea that this body is me, and we know that death occurs to the body, when we face the possibility of death, it is completely frightening, and it is frightening for anyone. You visit any hospital, old age home, you talk to people and when that time is approaching it is a very fearful time for the vast majority. So this desire for eternality, to not die, exists because it is part of our spiritual nature.
