What form do we have in the spiritual world? Do we choose?
We have a Sunday school for kids in our community, where we get the best questions. For example, what form do we have in the spiritual world? Do we choose? Can we be kids, or adults? What about cows?
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We have a Sunday school for kids in our community, where we get the best questions. For example, what form do we have in the spiritual world? Do we choose? Can we be kids, or adults? What about cows? Tough questions for me. Maybe you have some ideas.
These are quite difficult questions to answer, because they deal with the intrinsic differences between material and spiritual reality. However, Prabhupāda speaks about it in some passages, so through him we can understand something.
The first point to understand is that we are currently not in our normal state of consciousness. Kṛṣṇa explains in the Bhagavad-gītā that we are eternal souls, without a beginning and without an end. How can it be so? Everything we see around us has a beginning and an end. A phone is manufactured on a certain date, and breaks after we use it for a few years. Even people are born and die. That’s exactly the point Kṛṣṇa makes in the Bhagavad-gītā: there is another nature, a whole world that operates under a completely different set of rules from this world where we current life. There, things have no beginning and no end. Everything there is simply eternal. Everything that exists, simply exists. Nothing is destroyed. If you have something, it is yours forever. If you have a child or parents, they never die.
We are part of this eternal nature. We, as souls, have no beginning and no end. Prabhupāda explains that we have a spiritual nature that eternally exists. This nature is never lost or destroyed, and it also never changes, just as Kṛṣṇa never changes. This spiritual nature can, however, become covered for some time. That’s exactly where we are.
Right now, we are in an unhealthy position, identifying with something we are not: this material body, and this material identity we call “us”. How do we call a person who thinks he is Napoleon, or Cleopatra? Crazy. And we send him or her to the madhouse. That’s exactly where we are. This material world is the universal madhouse. We will not find many sane people here.
Another example that Prabhupāda uses is of a dream. When we are dreaming, we forget who we are. We assume a different identity. In the dream, I can think I’m Napoleon, or anything else. Outside of the dream, however, I have my real identity. If someone would appear inside my dream and tell me about my real life, who I am, and what I do, I would probably not identify with it; maybe I would want to be something else, maybe I would decide that being Napoleon in the dream is better. However, when I finally wake up, it feels completely natural. I’m back to being who I am, and the dream quickly fades away.
Similarly, as Prabhupāda explains, we have an eternal nature, a certain relationship with Kṛṣṇa that is completely natural to us, and where we feel completely satisfied. Although we learn that the love of the gopis for Kṛṣṇa is the most intense, Prabhupāda explains that ultimately there is no better or worse in the spiritual world. Everyone loves Kṛṣṇa according to their natural inclinations, and Kṛṣṇa appreciates and reciprocates with everyone. That’s the place where we can be who we really are and be appreciated for it. All of this is perfectly natural once we get there. We just need to throw away this current identification with what we are not.
Different souls assume different forms according to the type of service they desire to perform. The main point, however, is not the form, but the devotional mood. We tend to become too fixed in form, what kind of form we may have or not have, and forget about the important part, which is the substance. The point is not about what form, but about developing our devotion to Kṛṣṇa. When this devotion is awakened, our natural mood of love and worship for Kṛṣṇa awakens, and when this natural love is awakened, our spiritual form is automatically revealed.
The mistake is in losing time discussing what kind of appearance I have or what activities I perform from inside the dream. Not only is it impossible to know, but it will ultimately lead us to create another dreamy identity, which will only make it harder for us to awaken.
For example, many devotees in Vṛndāvana practice what is called siddha-praṇālī, in which a babaji supposedly reveals our spiritual identity, telling us that we are a gopī, a peacock, or something else, and instructs us to practice this identity. One may thus start dressing like a gopī or imitating a peacock, for example. Sounds funny, but people really do that.
The problem is that neither the so-called guru nor the so-called disciple who gives him a few rupees is transcendental. The guru invents an identity out of his mind, and the disciple, who doesn’t know what the real consciousness of a gopī or a peacock in the spiritual world is, starts to imitate an ordinary girl or an ordinary bird. The only thing it does is to create yet another material identity that we will first have to forget about in order to revive our true spiritual consciousness. In other words, it becomes just another upādhi, just another layer of material conditioning on top of what we already have.
Others may come to the conclusion that they don’t have any relationship with Kṛṣṇa, that they were never out of this material world, that they came from the impersonal brahmajyoti, and so on. Again, none of this is true, and none of this helps us in the process of finding out our real identity. They just make us even more entangled in the dream.
Prabhupāda teaches us that when we are drowning in the water, there is no point in inquiring how we fell there, or anything else. The priority should be how to get out, how to be saved. Similarly, when we are dreaming, the priority is to wake up. After we are awakened, everything feels perfectly natural. We automatically understand who we are and what we are supposed to do.
All we have to do is practice Kṛṣṇa consciousness and become comfortable in serving Kṛṣṇa, understanding He was always there the whole time, learning to trust Him. As this relationship of service is deepened, automatically everything becomes revealed. It is said that the guru reveals our spiritual form when we are ready, but what most don’t realize is that the guru doesn’t have to appear to us in his material form for that. Just as we are eternal, the guru is also eternal. When we are ready, which may be at the time of death, or sometimes before that, he can appear to us and reveal whatever we need to know, since at this point we will also be on the spiritual platform. He doesn’t need to appear to us in a form made of flesh and bones for that.
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