Have you ever wondered who you really are and what defines your true self? How can being aware of your thoughts and current struggles shape your reality? What is the concept of reincarnation as discussed in the Bhagavad Gita? Why is it important to maintain calmness under both pleasure and pain?
In this episode, we will delve deep into the profound questions of identity and self-awareness. We'll explore what truly defines a person and how being conscious of our thoughts and struggles can significantly shape our reality.
Hope you enjoy and if you like my content, drop me a follow and find me on Instagram @stoicspirituality, Tiktok @stoicspirituality, and Youtube @stoicspirituality
Find my other podcast episodes and platforms here: https://rss.com/podcasts/stoicspirituality/
If you would like one-on-one mindset coaching, schedule a sample session with me:
https://calendly.com/stoicspiritualitylifecoaching/sample-session?month=2023-04
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Who really are you?
(00:03):
What really defines a person as who they are?
Why is it important to be aware of your thoughts and your current struggles and how they shape
your reality?
And what is the concept of reincarnation as discussed in the Bhagavad Gita along with
(00:23):
the purpose of being calm under both pleasure and pain?
Hello and welcome back to Stoic Spirituality, a podcast where I look through, analyze, and
dissect various thoughts, quotes, books, or other experiences I've had for the last few
years of my life.
My name is Juggan and I'm a student of the human experience trying to spread some knowledge
out to the rest of the world.
(00:44):
And so this episode is dedicated to a little bit of a philosophical undertaking into the
idea of determining who we are, determining what really makes up our very sense of self,
along with a little bit of a dip into the idea of non-duality in Advaita Vedanta, along
(01:07):
with the continuation of Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, dipping ourselves a little
bit into the theory of reincarnation.
Let's begin.
So Ramana Maharishi is one of the greatest philosophers in Advaita Vedanta, which as
a reminder is a theory of non-duality.
(01:31):
The theory that everything in our world is interconnected with one large self or supreme
power that kind of downloads a lot of cosmic energy then makes up individual beings like
us.
It is not something that can be rationally thought of through the mind but must be experienced
in a spiritual sense.
(01:52):
And this links to the power of now, one of my favorite quotes of all time, which is,
you are really not the mind but you are the awareness behind the mind.
You are the one who does not feel the emotion but the one that becomes aware that you are
feeling the emotion.
And so when we kind of start off with this perspective, when we kind of start off with
(02:13):
this backdrop, our question that we should ask ourselves becomes who are we really?
Are you the collection of thoughts that makes up your mind?
Are you the collection of behaviors that makes up your body?
Are you labeled by your name?
Do you have characteristics that define you?
(02:34):
Is your body the physical manifestation of your soul?
Is that who you are?
Or is there something else?
Some interconnected factor between everyone, including yourself, that really determines
what your identity is.
And that is your awareness.
(02:55):
The soul, the self, the one behind the mind, the one that lives on many bodies that is
consistent throughout all of it, the one that has a piece of cosmic energy from the being,
the one that identifies all the interconnectivity amongst everyone around us.
(03:16):
That is who we really are.
Ramana Maharishi is someone who has written a book called Be As You Are, and it talks
about, at least initially, the idea that we are not really defined by our body, by our
thoughts, but really what gives us the inclination of who we are is the awareness behind the
(03:42):
mind.
And for that, we have to look at it in terms of dreaming versus awakeness.
So imagine when you are dreaming.
Imagine you are just living in your dream and you have no idea that you're actually
dreaming.
And when you wake up, you are aware that you went through or you had a dream.
(04:03):
The metaphor here is that our regular sense of self that we think is who we are is the
one who is dreaming currently.
The one who is not aware that they are dreaming but just continually dreams, the one who lives
in their mind and their body without recognizing the deep soul or sense of self that lies behind
(04:24):
all of this.
And so, kind of to draw from a movie like Inception, there are many people kind of subconsciously
in the movie that recognize that something was off, that these people did not belong
in this layer of the dream world.
And so that subconscious is kind of a rough metaphor as to what our awareness is.
(04:51):
The kind of piece of us that recognizes the emotions for what they are, recognizes the
body as a temple that houses our real sense of self, which is our soul and our unchanging
portion, the unchanging like almost in a sense, universal intelligence that powers our many
faculties.
That is who we truly are.
(05:14):
Because just imagine it this way, if you really conduse yourself or if you really define yourself
by your body, what happens when it passes away?
What happens with your body?
Your body still stays the same, but that's not you anymore.
Something has left your body that has caused your body to become something else.
(05:40):
It is no longer powered by universal intelligence, it no longer has a sense of self behind it.
So we can't really define ourselves by our body.
Say we take a look at defining ourselves by our thoughts.
Can we say that our thoughts are as consistent and are unchanging throughout our entire lives,
(06:01):
even within the space of one minute?
Can we say that our thoughts are the exact same?
No?
So based on that presumption, it is hard to define something that we can't even pin down
or not even as consistent in the slightest as who we are.
Are we a set of qualities or labels?
Let's bring that another microscope.
Do you think that a set of labels, characteristics, or qualities can really define who we really
(06:26):
are?
Or do you really think that these labels and characteristics are unchanging throughout
our entire life?
Not necessarily.
This is not to demean these characterizations that we use in society to describe each other,
but it can never completely encompass and surround or illustrate who we truly are.
(06:49):
And the only thing that really can do that is the idea that the awareness, the soul,
the sense of self, the one that sheds bodies and goes to the next one, or seeks a kind
of liberation, that is who we truly are.
So remember that the experiencer of thoughts exists when even no thoughts are present.
(07:11):
So if we seek to define ourselves by our thoughts, imagine the times where we're just completely
still.
No thoughts come in, nothing happens.
So does that mean we have died?
Or does it mean we no longer exist?
No.
It just means that the thoughts really never were who we truly were.
The one who never really disappears is the experiencer of the thoughts, the awareness
(07:33):
behind the mind, the sense of self, and the soul.
So the answer becomes consciousness, awareness, soul, whatever you want to call it, is really
what defines us.
It's not the continual 90% of excessive incessant thoughts that really define us, but it's the
one who is aware when you get mad, the one who is aware of said thoughts, that really
(07:57):
kind of defines who we really are.
We are the subject, and our thoughts are just another object of which you can be aware of.
Because if that awareness were to disappear, it would be like we were dreaming.
We are never aware that we are dreaming until we have woken up.
But we are aware of our thoughts, we are aware of our emotions, and we are aware of our mind
(08:19):
patterns with practice.
If we really didn't have a sense of self behind all of this, we would never be aware
of all this, we'd be walking around without an inner monologue, unaware of life's events
happening around us.
And so in Hinduism, it can be defined as consciousness, or even spirituality is defined as consciousness,
(08:39):
which is the interconnectivity, or the interconnected sense of self of all organisms, stemming from
the one true higher power above all of us, that has no labels to describe his or her
or their magnificence in totality.
There would be no sense of self without this awareness.
(09:00):
So what we kind of get to through this discussion slash illustration is that to define ourselves
by things that are temporary, that are changing, that are finite, or that don't prescribe
our entire sense of self, is counterintuitive and is incorrect.
(09:22):
Because we miss out on trying to capture our entire sense of self, and we capture out,
and we miss out rather, on the important question, who are you?
Who really is you?
Not our thoughts, not our body, not our mind, simply the awareness behind all of it.
So a little bit of a technique to kind of understand this idea of thought buildup is
(09:46):
looking at everything in an energetic sense.
A lot of our thoughts are incessant, 90% of them don't really have much matter to them,
and they're just constantly looping around in our head, and what really contributes to
this buildup and continual dispersion of thoughts in our head is a buildup of energy.
Anxiety in one perspective, not an entire perspective, but one way of looking at anxiety
(10:09):
is a buildup of excess energy that causes our thoughts to loop around and rabbit hole
ourselves into a state of quote unquote oblivion, where we can think of nothing but the situation
at hand due to an over buildup and excess of energy in our own sense of self.
Obviously there is way more nuance and way more better physiological and psychological
(10:34):
definitions, but one way to approach the concept of anxiety is through the buildup of energy
that has not been dispersed properly, crafting a sense of noisy thoughts in our head.
And so now that we kind of have illustrated a potential hypothesis theory and a solidified
(10:54):
understanding of the sense of self that lies behind us that really defines us and who we
are, let's jump back into the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna, who is still talking to Arjuna
about the idea of our sense of self, our soul, and the necessity to keep calm and coamity
in all that we do, as we see Arjuna's mental shattering from seeing all of his cousins,
(11:18):
mentors, friends, and others as people who he has to fight on the battlefield, we jump
back in to see Krishna's, or the Godhood's, illustration, contemplation, and derivation
of what it means to be who we are and what reincarnation really is.
(11:40):
So he says, it's really not that at any time in the past was I not, were you not,
nor were these rulers of men not, nor, when we die, will we ever cease to be hereafter.
What Krishna is trying to say here is similar to what we discussed before, the idea of the
(12:02):
spirit, the sense of self.
The spirit in our body, the universal intelligence, the fact that lies behind who we are, is the
same.
It's conditioned by different body equipments we have, in terms of the many bodies our soul
goes through, through its lifetime of deleting all its karma, and resulting in a zero sum
(12:26):
to reach a sense of liberation.
But this idea of different body equipments is a theme common to all religions.
The embodied self, Krishna says, is every single person that is set out on a great pilgrimage
to reach a sense of liberation, a sense of moksha, where all karmic energy has been diluted
and discarded.
(12:46):
And through this pilgrimage, the sense of self identifies itself with various forms
on a temporary basis, to gain a set of determined experiences.
It's not really that there are any accidental happenings in our world, because there was
no in the Mahabharata war, for some context, there were two armies amassed together, ready
(13:11):
to fight against each other.
And what Krishna says is that no one really created or assembled these armies as mere
accidental happenings.
And at the death of these armies, they don't become nonexistent nothingness.
What he's trying to say here is that our current philosophical thinking, or accurate
philosophical thinking, should be that there is a continuity in events, and a continuity
(13:36):
in a sense of self, from the past to the future, that is endless.
And what the purpose of this continuity determination is to show that the spirit, the sense of self,
the awareness remains the same.
And while it may seem like our body dies, and our sense of self dies, the spirit remains
(13:59):
the same, conditioned by these different body equipments, living in self-ordained environments.
And so, this is the theory of reincarnation, connected to the idea of karmic energy.
So what Krishna asserts here is that everyone has received a body for themselves according
(14:25):
to their just deserts, or their karmic energy in previous lives.
This is a doctrine accepted in Solomon's book of wisdom by Buddhism, when the Buddha
constantly made references to his previous birth, and Christ himself directly or indirectly
(14:46):
proclaimed this when he told his disciples that John the Baptist was Elijah.
And so this kind of doctrine finds itself hidden amongst religions, and obviously there's
backlash, there's different interpretations of texts that cause people to kind of shroud
this doctrine, but at least from a Hinduistic perspective, this doctrine of reincarnation,
(15:10):
that the sense of self that we truly are never really dies, only trades in its body like
a pair of clothes for a new one, is widely accepted.
And so he goes on to talk about how wise men worry not when they leave one body for another.
Just the same way that our childhood dies as we become into an adolescent, and our adolescent
(15:36):
dies as we become into young adults, and our young adult lives die as we become into adults,
the same way we are confident in the continuity of existence between the deaths of our various
phases of life, all the theory of reincarnation states is that these phases of life are not
limited to the singular body that we occupy, but are rather continued in other bodies,
(16:02):
with the soul remaining, or the soul kind of continuation being the sense of self, our
soul, or the awareness behind the mind.
And so what he goes on to talk about as well is beyond this idea of reincarnation, it's
the idea of pleasure and pain.
(16:23):
So the contact of senses with objects causing heat or cold, pain or pleasure, have a beginning
or end, are all impermanent.
And Krishna cries out to Arjuna that it's not really an object that is perceived by
the sense organs, by our eyes, but it's perceived through them.
(16:43):
And to kind of demean that as something permanent is an inaccurate way of looking at it.
Because for example, say you have a friend who you visually see, visually hear, through
your sense objects.
This person could be a very close friend of yours, or could be even a relationship potential
person for you.
(17:05):
And this person can be an object of intense fantasy, intense creation of a future with
during a certain stage of our life.
But say you break off the friendship, say they turn out to be a toxic narcissist, they
can become a nuisance later.
And so to define ourselves by the experiences we have in the singular body, tying into the
(17:26):
idea that we are really not the mind, the thoughts, or experiences, but the awareness
behind all of those, illustrates the changeless law that really defines who we are.
Because we are the same person that would play as a kid, that would study as a teenager,
(17:46):
that would work as an adult, and retire as a senior.
We all consider that to be the same person, even though we undergo a death of a phase
of life as we go on, yet somehow it ends as our physical body ends.
And what Krishna says is that it never ends there, it ends when our soul has reached moksha
(18:11):
or liberation.
And for that, our soul, our sense of self takes multiple births based on karmic energy
we have accumulated that leans us towards one way or the other.
And Robert Greene kind of alludes to this in the idea of mastery, where each of our
DNA is unique.
And what Krishna does and Hindu spirituality does is that it attunes or ascribes this unique
(18:35):
DNA to be located from the karmic energy of a previous birth.
We all have unique strengths, we all have a unique message and a unique path to take
upon our life, and all we do is instead of localizing it to a probability, or localizing
it to an accidental happening that our DNA was crafted in this way, all Krishna does
(18:58):
is provide a purpose to it, provide a reason for it, provide a rationality for it, by looking
at previous births as the cause with our body and our karmic energy and our karmic path
as the effect.
And that kind of summarizes a bit of what the Bhagavad Gita talks about in terms of
reincarnation.
And so, if you want to dip a little bit into stoicism, the idea of pain versus pleasure.
(19:24):
So a lot of us, we kind of associate our sense of self by our experiences that we go through,
the experiences we undergo, and the thoughts that we form as a result of said experiences.
But Marcus Aurelius says that a man is defined by the quality of his thoughts, and that we
have every opportunity to look at a situation in a different way, if we so choose to.
(19:52):
And so pain and pleasure, someone being calm amongst the two, is someone who is detached
using the idea of rationality and understrain moderation to not fall into this trap of being
swayed by events that are out of his control.
Choosing not to fall prey to other people's thoughts, other people's actions, other people's
(20:18):
words that are intended to pierce our very sense of self, one who is stoic as the term
goes chooses not to react to events, but chooses to respond to them consciously, thoroughly,
and rationally.
And so why the word stoicism has a bit of nuance to it is that it's not a cutoff of
(20:46):
emotion, it's not a complete I will never be immovable in terms of my emotions, my emotions
will be so stagnant that nothing can shift the way I think of things, but it's rather
an allowance of space for your own self to consciously think through an emotion that
(21:08):
you're going through, giving it time to be looked at in the calm light of mild philosophy
and allowing a rationality to kick in instead of being judged or being dissuaded by the
events themselves.
There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, and there's no peace
(21:31):
for the spirit that thinks of nothing but itself, and there's no peace for the body
that follows itself in every single urge.
And so all of these events, these thoughts, these ideas are temporary, but the changelessnessness
is the one behind all of this, the one who is aware that all of this is happening without
(21:52):
judgment.
And so stoicism, the logos, the idea of stoicism of looking through everything without ego
also helps de-bride all of these negative qualities away.
And in my perspective, stoicism is kind of a step that can be integrated with the idea
(22:13):
of spirituality in the overall pursuit of happiness.
Because why I called stoic spirituality so spirituality is because one tends to feed
off the other.
Stoicism isn't a philosophy of pure rationality, but it's more of an acceptance of the nature,
(22:34):
the providence, the nameless self that lies above all of us as a higher power, integrated
with the spirituality, the realizations, and the calm, cool understanding that we are the
awareness behind the mind.
And so this amassment, this amalgamation of stoicism and spirituality is a positive feedback
(22:58):
loop.
Because with our stoic kind of principles and philosophy, we de-bride away a lot of
the pride that clouds us, the maya that clouds our illusion over ourselves, and spirituality
allows us to plug in a sense of awareness to all of our thoughts, boosting our stoic
(23:19):
and prudent way of looking at the world, and understanding that a lot of things that we
seem so worried about are temporary, and that there is a changeless self that lies behind
all of this.
So accepting a higher power, while it may seem more spiritual in nature, is based on
stoic principles.
Because it requires us to take care and kill our ego, submit ourselves, our sense of self
(23:46):
with humility to something greater than us, and having faith in something that we do not
have complete control over.
And the demeaning, or rather the decreasing of our pride required to get to such a point
is based on stoicism, and the resulting decrease opens ourselves up more to accepting a higher
(24:11):
power which boosts our spirituality.
So when we say stoic spirituality, in my opinion, it's not that there are two sides of a pendulum,
it's that there are two sides of a rather of a coin interconnected amongst each other
with one boosting the other.
(24:31):
And that's how we kind of cultivate stoic principles, to look at everything, to kind
of still our mind, and allow that part to be still enough for us to understand the awareness
behind the coin, and take a look at the true nature of who we are, not defined by our thoughts,
our body, or words we speak, but rather the one who observes all that.
(24:54):
I don't know if I've said that a lot, but it's an important philosophy to continually
kind of realize over and over again, especially when you find yourself gripped by intense
emotions, or you find yourself reacting to situations instead of responding to them.
It's an important philosophy to kind of define ourselves by, to look at, to realize,
(25:18):
so that we do not fall ourselves into the trap of the ego, both in a spiritual sense
of the veil or the maya, the illusion that drapes over the world as we know it, and the
ego of pride that allows us only to see what's in front of us and not think of things on
a bigger scale, accepting a higher power and seeking stillness.
(25:40):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode on the idea of defining who we are, taking
a look at the Bhagavad Gita, and viewing the theory of reincarnation in terms of our soul
seeking a sense of karmic solace through various body equipments, along with a stoic perspective
(26:00):
into the interconnectivity between stoicism and spirituality, in terms of accepting a
higher power, and other, logos, path to the universe, and the lack of accidents in whatever
we do.
Thank you so much for listening, if you'd like to hear more content, be free to drop
me a follow at Stokes Spirituality on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, or drop me a follow
on whichever platform you're listening to this podcast on.
(26:22):
Thank you so much for listening, and see you guys next time.
Who really are you?
(00:03):
What really defines a person as who they are?
Why is it important to be aware of your thoughts and your current struggles and how they shape
your reality?
And what is the concept of reincarnation as discussed in the Bhagavad Gita along with
(00:23):
the purpose of being calm under both pleasure and pain?
Hello and welcome back to Stoic Spirituality, a podcast where I look through, analyze, and
dissect various thoughts, quotes, books, or other experiences I've had for the last few
years of my life.
My name is Juggan and I'm a student of the human experience trying to spread some knowledge
out to the rest of the world.
(00:44):
And so this episode is dedicated to a little bit of a philosophical undertaking into the
idea of determining who we are, determining what really makes up our very sense of self,
along with a little bit of a dip into the idea of non-duality in Advaita Vedanta, along
(01:07):
with the continuation of Chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita, dipping ourselves a little
bit into the theory of reincarnation.
Let's begin.
So Ramana Maharishi is one of the greatest philosophers in Advaita Vedanta, which as
a reminder is a theory of non-duality.
(01:31):
The theory that everything in our world is interconnected with one large self or supreme
power that kind of downloads a lot of cosmic energy then makes up individual beings like
us.
It is not something that can be rationally thought of through the mind but must be experienced
in a spiritual sense.
(01:52):
And this links to the power of now, one of my favorite quotes of all time, which is,
you are really not the mind but you are the awareness behind the mind.
You are the one who does not feel the emotion but the one that becomes aware that you are
feeling the emotion.
And so when we kind of start off with this perspective, when we kind of start off with
(02:13):
this backdrop, our question that we should ask ourselves becomes who are we really?
Are you the collection of thoughts that makes up your mind?
Are you the collection of behaviors that makes up your body?
Are you labeled by your name?
Do you have characteristics that define you?
(02:34):
Is your body the physical manifestation of your soul?
Is that who you are?
Or is there something else?
Some interconnected factor between everyone, including yourself, that really determines
what your identity is.
And that is your awareness.
(02:55):
The soul, the self, the one behind the mind, the one that lives on many bodies that is
consistent throughout all of it, the one that has a piece of cosmic energy from the being,
the one that identifies all the interconnectivity amongst everyone around us.
(03:16):
That is who we really are.
Ramana Maharishi is someone who has written a book called Be As You Are, and it talks
about, at least initially, the idea that we are not really defined by our body, by our
thoughts, but really what gives us the inclination of who we are is the awareness behind the
(03:42):
mind.
And for that, we have to look at it in terms of dreaming versus awakeness.
So imagine when you are dreaming.
Imagine you are just living in your dream and you have no idea that you're actually
dreaming.
And when you wake up, you are aware that you went through or you had a dream.
(04:03):
The metaphor here is that our regular sense of self that we think is who we are is the
one who is dreaming currently.
The one who is not aware that they are dreaming but just continually dreams, the one who lives
in their mind and their body without recognizing the deep soul or sense of self that lies behind
(04:24):
all of this.
And so, kind of to draw from a movie like Inception, there are many people kind of subconsciously
in the movie that recognize that something was off, that these people did not belong
in this layer of the dream world.
And so that subconscious is kind of a rough metaphor as to what our awareness is.
(04:51):
The kind of piece of us that recognizes the emotions for what they are, recognizes the
body as a temple that houses our real sense of self, which is our soul and our unchanging
portion, the unchanging like almost in a sense, universal intelligence that powers our many
faculties.
That is who we truly are.
(05:14):
Because just imagine it this way, if you really conduse yourself or if you really define yourself
by your body, what happens when it passes away?
What happens with your body?
Your body still stays the same, but that's not you anymore.
Something has left your body that has caused your body to become something else.
(05:40):
It is no longer powered by universal intelligence, it no longer has a sense of self behind it.
So we can't really define ourselves by our body.
Say we take a look at defining ourselves by our thoughts.
Can we say that our thoughts are as consistent and are unchanging throughout our entire lives,
(06:01):
even within the space of one minute?
Can we say that our thoughts are the exact same?
No?
So based on that presumption, it is hard to define something that we can't even pin down
or not even as consistent in the slightest as who we are.
Are we a set of qualities or labels?
Let's bring that another microscope.
Do you think that a set of labels, characteristics, or qualities can really define who we really
(06:26):
are?
Or do you really think that these labels and characteristics are unchanging throughout
our entire life?
Not necessarily.
This is not to demean these characterizations that we use in society to describe each other,
but it can never completely encompass and surround or illustrate who we truly are.
(06:49):
And the only thing that really can do that is the idea that the awareness, the soul,
the sense of self, the one that sheds bodies and goes to the next one, or seeks a kind
of liberation, that is who we truly are.
So remember that the experiencer of thoughts exists when even no thoughts are present.
(07:11):
So if we seek to define ourselves by our thoughts, imagine the times where we're just completely
still.
No thoughts come in, nothing happens.
So does that mean we have died?
Or does it mean we no longer exist?
No.
It just means that the thoughts really never were who we truly were.
The one who never really disappears is the experiencer of the thoughts, the awareness
(07:33):
behind the mind, the sense of self, and the soul.
So the answer becomes consciousness, awareness, soul, whatever you want to call it, is really
what defines us.
It's not the continual 90% of excessive incessant thoughts that really define us, but it's the
one who is aware when you get mad, the one who is aware of said thoughts, that really
(07:57):
kind of defines who we really are.
We are the subject, and our thoughts are just another object of which you can be aware of.
Because if that awareness were to disappear, it would be like we were dreaming.
We are never aware that we are dreaming until we have woken up.
But we are aware of our thoughts, we are aware of our emotions, and we are aware of our mind
(08:19):
patterns with practice.
If we really didn't have a sense of self behind all of this, we would never be aware
of all this, we'd be walking around without an inner monologue, unaware of life's events
happening around us.
And so in Hinduism, it can be defined as consciousness, or even spirituality is defined as consciousness,
(08:39):
which is the interconnectivity, or the interconnected sense of self of all organisms, stemming from
the one true higher power above all of us, that has no labels to describe his or her
or their magnificence in totality.
There would be no sense of self without this awareness.
(09:00):
So what we kind of get to through this discussion slash illustration is that to define ourselves
by things that are temporary, that are changing, that are finite, or that don't prescribe
our entire sense of self, is counterintuitive and is incorrect.
(09:22):
Because we miss out on trying to capture our entire sense of self, and we capture out,
and we miss out rather, on the important question, who are you?
Who really is you?
Not our thoughts, not our body, not our mind, simply the awareness behind all of it.
So a little bit of a technique to kind of understand this idea of thought buildup is
(09:46):
looking at everything in an energetic sense.
A lot of our thoughts are incessant, 90% of them don't really have much matter to them,
and they're just constantly looping around in our head, and what really contributes to
this buildup and continual dispersion of thoughts in our head is a buildup of energy.
Anxiety in one perspective, not an entire perspective, but one way of looking at anxiety
(10:09):
is a buildup of excess energy that causes our thoughts to loop around and rabbit hole
ourselves into a state of quote unquote oblivion, where we can think of nothing but the situation
at hand due to an over buildup and excess of energy in our own sense of self.
Obviously there is way more nuance and way more better physiological and psychological
(10:34):
definitions, but one way to approach the concept of anxiety is through the buildup of energy
that has not been dispersed properly, crafting a sense of noisy thoughts in our head.
And so now that we kind of have illustrated a potential hypothesis theory and a solidified
(10:54):
understanding of the sense of self that lies behind us that really defines us and who we
are, let's jump back into the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna, who is still talking to Arjuna
about the idea of our sense of self, our soul, and the necessity to keep calm and coamity
in all that we do, as we see Arjuna's mental shattering from seeing all of his cousins,
(11:18):
mentors, friends, and others as people who he has to fight on the battlefield, we jump
back in to see Krishna's, or the Godhood's, illustration, contemplation, and derivation
of what it means to be who we are and what reincarnation really is.
(11:40):
So he says, it's really not that at any time in the past was I not, were you not,
nor were these rulers of men not, nor, when we die, will we ever cease to be hereafter.
What Krishna is trying to say here is similar to what we discussed before, the idea of the
(12:02):
spirit, the sense of self.
The spirit in our body, the universal intelligence, the fact that lies behind who we are, is the
same.
It's conditioned by different body equipments we have, in terms of the many bodies our soul
goes through, through its lifetime of deleting all its karma, and resulting in a zero sum
(12:26):
to reach a sense of liberation.
But this idea of different body equipments is a theme common to all religions.
The embodied self, Krishna says, is every single person that is set out on a great pilgrimage
to reach a sense of liberation, a sense of moksha, where all karmic energy has been diluted
and discarded.
(12:46):
And through this pilgrimage, the sense of self identifies itself with various forms
on a temporary basis, to gain a set of determined experiences.
It's not really that there are any accidental happenings in our world, because there was
no in the Mahabharata war, for some context, there were two armies amassed together, ready
(13:11):
to fight against each other.
And what Krishna says is that no one really created or assembled these armies as mere
accidental happenings.
And at the death of these armies, they don't become nonexistent nothingness.
What he's trying to say here is that our current philosophical thinking, or accurate
philosophical thinking, should be that there is a continuity in events, and a continuity
(13:36):
in a sense of self, from the past to the future, that is endless.
And what the purpose of this continuity determination is to show that the spirit, the sense of self,
the awareness remains the same.
And while it may seem like our body dies, and our sense of self dies, the spirit remains
(13:59):
the same, conditioned by these different body equipments, living in self-ordained environments.
And so, this is the theory of reincarnation, connected to the idea of karmic energy.
So what Krishna asserts here is that everyone has received a body for themselves according
(14:25):
to their just deserts, or their karmic energy in previous lives.
This is a doctrine accepted in Solomon's book of wisdom by Buddhism, when the Buddha
constantly made references to his previous birth, and Christ himself directly or indirectly
(14:46):
proclaimed this when he told his disciples that John the Baptist was Elijah.
And so this kind of doctrine finds itself hidden amongst religions, and obviously there's
backlash, there's different interpretations of texts that cause people to kind of shroud
this doctrine, but at least from a Hinduistic perspective, this doctrine of reincarnation,
(15:10):
that the sense of self that we truly are never really dies, only trades in its body like
a pair of clothes for a new one, is widely accepted.
And so he goes on to talk about how wise men worry not when they leave one body for another.
Just the same way that our childhood dies as we become into an adolescent, and our adolescent
(15:36):
dies as we become into young adults, and our young adult lives die as we become into adults,
the same way we are confident in the continuity of existence between the deaths of our various
phases of life, all the theory of reincarnation states is that these phases of life are not
limited to the singular body that we occupy, but are rather continued in other bodies,
(16:02):
with the soul remaining, or the soul kind of continuation being the sense of self, our
soul, or the awareness behind the mind.
And so what he goes on to talk about as well is beyond this idea of reincarnation, it's
the idea of pleasure and pain.
(16:23):
So the contact of senses with objects causing heat or cold, pain or pleasure, have a beginning
or end, are all impermanent.
And Krishna cries out to Arjuna that it's not really an object that is perceived by
the sense organs, by our eyes, but it's perceived through them.
(16:43):
And to kind of demean that as something permanent is an inaccurate way of looking at it.
Because for example, say you have a friend who you visually see, visually hear, through
your sense objects.
This person could be a very close friend of yours, or could be even a relationship potential
person for you.
(17:05):
And this person can be an object of intense fantasy, intense creation of a future with
during a certain stage of our life.
But say you break off the friendship, say they turn out to be a toxic narcissist, they
can become a nuisance later.
And so to define ourselves by the experiences we have in the singular body, tying into the
(17:26):
idea that we are really not the mind, the thoughts, or experiences, but the awareness
behind all of those, illustrates the changeless law that really defines who we are.
Because we are the same person that would play as a kid, that would study as a teenager,
(17:46):
that would work as an adult, and retire as a senior.
We all consider that to be the same person, even though we undergo a death of a phase
of life as we go on, yet somehow it ends as our physical body ends.
And what Krishna says is that it never ends there, it ends when our soul has reached moksha
(18:11):
or liberation.
And for that, our soul, our sense of self takes multiple births based on karmic energy
we have accumulated that leans us towards one way or the other.
And Robert Greene kind of alludes to this in the idea of mastery, where each of our
DNA is unique.
And what Krishna does and Hindu spirituality does is that it attunes or ascribes this unique
(18:35):
DNA to be located from the karmic energy of a previous birth.
We all have unique strengths, we all have a unique message and a unique path to take
upon our life, and all we do is instead of localizing it to a probability, or localizing
it to an accidental happening that our DNA was crafted in this way, all Krishna does
(18:58):
is provide a purpose to it, provide a reason for it, provide a rationality for it, by looking
at previous births as the cause with our body and our karmic energy and our karmic path
as the effect.
And that kind of summarizes a bit of what the Bhagavad Gita talks about in terms of
reincarnation.
And so, if you want to dip a little bit into stoicism, the idea of pain versus pleasure.
(19:24):
So a lot of us, we kind of associate our sense of self by our experiences that we go through,
the experiences we undergo, and the thoughts that we form as a result of said experiences.
But Marcus Aurelius says that a man is defined by the quality of his thoughts, and that we
have every opportunity to look at a situation in a different way, if we so choose to.
(19:52):
And so pain and pleasure, someone being calm amongst the two, is someone who is detached
using the idea of rationality and understrain moderation to not fall into this trap of being
swayed by events that are out of his control.
Choosing not to fall prey to other people's thoughts, other people's actions, other people's
(20:18):
words that are intended to pierce our very sense of self, one who is stoic as the term
goes chooses not to react to events, but chooses to respond to them consciously, thoroughly,
and rationally.
And so why the word stoicism has a bit of nuance to it is that it's not a cutoff of
(20:46):
emotion, it's not a complete I will never be immovable in terms of my emotions, my emotions
will be so stagnant that nothing can shift the way I think of things, but it's rather
an allowance of space for your own self to consciously think through an emotion that
(21:08):
you're going through, giving it time to be looked at in the calm light of mild philosophy
and allowing a rationality to kick in instead of being judged or being dissuaded by the
events themselves.
There is no stillness to the mind that thinks of nothing but itself, and there's no peace
(21:31):
for the spirit that thinks of nothing but itself, and there's no peace for the body
that follows itself in every single urge.
And so all of these events, these thoughts, these ideas are temporary, but the changelessnessness
is the one behind all of this, the one who is aware that all of this is happening without
(21:52):
judgment.
And so stoicism, the logos, the idea of stoicism of looking through everything without ego
also helps de-bride all of these negative qualities away.
And in my perspective, stoicism is kind of a step that can be integrated with the idea
(22:13):
of spirituality in the overall pursuit of happiness.
Because why I called stoic spirituality so spirituality is because one tends to feed
off the other.
Stoicism isn't a philosophy of pure rationality, but it's more of an acceptance of the nature,
(22:34):
the providence, the nameless self that lies above all of us as a higher power, integrated
with the spirituality, the realizations, and the calm, cool understanding that we are the
awareness behind the mind.
And so this amassment, this amalgamation of stoicism and spirituality is a positive feedback
(22:58):
loop.
Because with our stoic kind of principles and philosophy, we de-bride away a lot of
the pride that clouds us, the maya that clouds our illusion over ourselves, and spirituality
allows us to plug in a sense of awareness to all of our thoughts, boosting our stoic
(23:19):
and prudent way of looking at the world, and understanding that a lot of things that we
seem so worried about are temporary, and that there is a changeless self that lies behind
all of this.
So accepting a higher power, while it may seem more spiritual in nature, is based on
stoic principles.
Because it requires us to take care and kill our ego, submit ourselves, our sense of self
(23:46):
with humility to something greater than us, and having faith in something that we do not
have complete control over.
And the demeaning, or rather the decreasing of our pride required to get to such a point
is based on stoicism, and the resulting decrease opens ourselves up more to accepting a higher
(24:11):
power which boosts our spirituality.
So when we say stoic spirituality, in my opinion, it's not that there are two sides of a pendulum,
it's that there are two sides of a rather of a coin interconnected amongst each other
with one boosting the other.
(24:31):
And that's how we kind of cultivate stoic principles, to look at everything, to kind
of still our mind, and allow that part to be still enough for us to understand the awareness
behind the coin, and take a look at the true nature of who we are, not defined by our thoughts,
our body, or words we speak, but rather the one who observes all that.
(24:54):
I don't know if I've said that a lot, but it's an important philosophy to continually
kind of realize over and over again, especially when you find yourself gripped by intense
emotions, or you find yourself reacting to situations instead of responding to them.
It's an important philosophy to kind of define ourselves by, to look at, to realize,
(25:18):
so that we do not fall ourselves into the trap of the ego, both in a spiritual sense
of the veil or the maya, the illusion that drapes over the world as we know it, and the
ego of pride that allows us only to see what's in front of us and not think of things on
a bigger scale, accepting a higher power and seeking stillness.
(25:40):
Thank you so much for listening to this episode on the idea of defining who we are, taking
a look at the Bhagavad Gita, and viewing the theory of reincarnation in terms of our soul
seeking a sense of karmic solace through various body equipments, along with a stoic perspective
(26:00):
into the interconnectivity between stoicism and spirituality, in terms of accepting a
higher power, and other, logos, path to the universe, and the lack of accidents in whatever
we do.
Thank you so much for listening, if you'd like to hear more content, be free to drop
me a follow at Stokes Spirituality on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, or drop me a follow
on whichever platform you're listening to this podcast on.
(26:22):
Thank you so much for listening, and see you guys next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com