In this lecture, Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj answers the questions: Who am ‘I’? Who is ‘mine’? He says only a few in a million know the answer to such important questions, which harms us greatly by making us suffer under the bondage of maya, since millions of kalpas.(A kalp is one day of Brahma, equal to 4.32 billion years.)
Kripaluji Maharaj explains that in this world there are two kinds of entities, one is Insentient (lifeless) and other is Sentient (conscious). So ‘I’ must be either insentient or sentient. The sentient entity, the jeev (soul), gives life to the body, as long as it resides there. When jeev (soul) leaves the body, it takes with it the senses, the mind, the intellect and the subtle body, and the gross body left behind is insentient. During maha pralaya (universal dissolution) the subtle body, with senses, mind and intellect, also cannot enter God’s abode, as nothing made of maya (related to material existence) can enter there. Thus, the soul that stays in karanaranva (the causal ocean) within God is the real ‘I’, with just our sanskars (impressions of our deeds of innumerable past lives).
To simplify further, Kripaluji explains, “Whatever is not ‘mine’ is ‘I’. My house, my body, my mind, my intellect are mine, not me.” Wherever we use ‘mine’, indicates possession, which is not ‘I’. Since all that just belongs to ‘I’ (me), all faculties by which we are trying to know Who am ‘I’ are related to the material world. We see, hear, smell, taste, touch, then think with our mind, and our intellect gives a judgment. But this subject of ‘I’ is Divine. We use ideas to deduce: if there is smoke, there should be fire; but this will not help here. So, no direct perception or inference will help, but scriptural evidence can help, which is irrefutable. Scriptural evidence is of two types: nitya anadi (with no beginning) and sadi (with a beginning). Vedanta, Sankhya, Mimansa, Bhagwatam and Ramayan were created one day, but Vedas manifested and emerged from God’s breath, so they are above any defect, doubt, impurity or stigma. Hence, Who am ‘I’ can be determined by the help of Vedas.
Vedas are a form of God. Thus, understanding Vedas with our limited material intellect is very difficult. Through material faculties, to know ‘I’ (soul) and ‘mine’ (God) is another challenge. Kripaluji Maharaj states that, like a mad man, we do not know our true identity; we will have to take refuge of Vedas to know Who am ‘I’.
