It is imperative that you understand the power that is within you. I am not talking about your physical strength or even your mental powers, but rather the essence of your being — you as a spirit soul. This thing we call ‘soul’ is beyond the perception of the mundane senses or the tools of molecular science but can be understood by the symptom of consciousness.

This soul power that is within you is beyond measure and is the very essence of your existence. The inherent thirst to survive is at the very root of that power and is symptomatic of the soul’s immutable nature. Take, for example, the humble blade of grass; it is able to crack the cement pavement, not because of physical strength, but due to the internal urging of a soul to reach sunlight. The same can be said of water; it always seeks the deepest point. It may take thousands of years, but over time, its constant weathering will crack the rock allowing the water to seek the deepest level. Even among martial artists, that fighter who can best align with their core is the one that is praised for having the greatest will to win.

When you learn to tap into the unlimited storehouse of soul power, you unleash the potential to make the impossible possible and firmly establish your mark on the world.

Never underestimate the power of soul — for doing so is the greatest injustice to who you really are. So don’t sell yourself short, but honor your inherent power and realize your full potential. Celebrate this truth by honoring every molecule of your being until all you feel is pure joy all the time! You are greater than you can possibly imagine. Inside, at your deepest level of consciousness, surges a hurricane of immense power — spinning with unlimited courage and strength, just waiting to be unleashed. The choice to unleash that hurricane-like power is in your hands. If a small plant can break through mountain rock, you too can break through ‘mountains’ of obstacles before you. Believe it. You have the strength.

Potential (kinetic energy)

The power of the soul is there within all. It is the common birthright of every living being. Indeed, despite our obvious physical differences, in terms of energetic quality, we are all equal to each other and therefore possess the same innate potential. In the same way that a drop of the ocean possesses the same qualities as every other drop and the ocean as a whole, we as spirit are equal in quality to the entire energetic ocean.

For instance, if we could freeze time just before the so-called Big Bang, we would see that, for an instant, only one common energy existed. Everything in the universe emanated from that singular energetic event. Whether we accept that in the beginning the universe was created by a great cataclysm, or by the seed of a pure sound, as in the holy name of God, it makes no difference because ultimately in both scenarios, energy is the clear impetus. Every tangible thing we experience in this universe, whether it be mountains, trees, insects, fish, animals, humans, planets, or galaxies, are in essence different forms of the same stuff that stars are made of. Therefore, we have the same energy potential as everything else in the universe.

We are Little Gods

The corporations that govern this world have sold you a lie. They have told you that you are not good enough; not attractive enough; not strong enough; not smart enough, or not rich enough. All lies, because they are based on a false paradigm, which, sadly, we have all been buying into. That is: We are nothing but a physical body. No! You are a beautiful, powerful, intelligent, and abundant spiritual being just bursting with loving potential.

Sanskrit scholar, Srila Prabhupada explains:

“… any living entity, being part and parcel of Krishna, has the qualities of Krishna, but just not in quantity.” In other words, we are like ‘sparks to the fire.’ We are not the fire (or the source of those sparks), but rather are made of the same fire-like (spiritual) energy.”

The barrier to our full realization of this potential lies in our ability to manage our minds and deal with our karma. Let me explain …

Managing our Mind and our Karma

To manage the mind means to bring it under the control of the intelligence. You do this by understanding the difference between the two. Essentially the mind conjures up ideas and desires, and the intelligence analyses and decides whether to accept or reject these concepts. Above the intelligence, however, is the soul — the ultimate controller of the body/mind complex — the witness, if you will. Unfortunately, due to ignorance of our higher spiritual nature, as a witness to these psychological affairs, we either allow the whimsical mind to dictate the direction of our lives, or we fail to keep our intelligence alert and thus lose all sense of discrimination. India’s famous spiritual classic, the Bhagavad-gita (Song of God) explains:

While contemplating the objects of the senses, a person develops attachment for them, and from such attachment, lust develops, and from lust, anger arises. From anger, complete delusion arises, and from delusion bewilderment of memory. When memory is bewildered, intelligence is lost, and when intelligence is lost one falls down again into the material pool. (Bhagavad-gita 2.63)

The other component of our potential is karma. Simply put, karma means work, or rather the reactions to the work you have performed. The Bible states: “As you sow, so shall you reap.” The universe operates on a complex system of give and take in an effort to create harmony. Everything in the universe is seeking balance, or the most natural state of being. It is the same with our karma. As a universal law, karma is always seeking a fair balance of good and evil. If you act in such a way to cause suffering to another, eventually that same suffering will reflect back to you. Not necessarily in this life, but eventually, it will catch you, much the same as an old parking ticket may follow you from state to state until you pay it off. Of course, this analogy is overly simplified because karma is an enormously complex web of interactions stretching over vast regions of space and time.

In any case, although our potential is unlimited, it is directly affected by the state of our mind and the ‘playbook’ of our karma, which subsequently determines the type of physical body we get, the place we are born, and the people we will come into contact with.

Therefore, you have to think carefully about the decisions you make today because they’re painting a picture of your future. What you are today is an accumulation of all the decisions and actions you have made in the past. You are entirely responsible for your present situation.

The Bhagavad-gita warns us:

The living entity, thus taking another gross body, obtains a certain type of ear, eye, tongue, nose and sense of touch, which are grouped about the mind. He thus enjoys a particular set of sense objects. (15.9)

“No, it is not my fault,” you protest. But yes it is, for karma follows us throughout our spiritual evolution and not just in this one lifetime. What is happening today may just as likely be a result of something we did in a past life. The good news is that you do not have to be locked into a karmic downward spiral. If you have learned your karmic lesson, you can move on and break the pattern.

You, as soul, the ‘witness’ always has a choice to effect a positive change in your circumstances. Change has to begin now though. Not tomorrow, but now! You have to focus all your attention on what is happening around you now because life really is just a string of ‘now’ moments. The past is gone forever and will only remain as fragmented pictures in our mind, while the future is always in a state of elusiveness — you can never touch it. All that really matters is now. Just as the micro is equal to the macro, or the ocean drop is equal to the quality of the entire ocean, the full power of the cosmic creation is within you. Draw on that source power now and start living life the way you want to now. And as for past bad karma, well, all you can do about that is to do the right thing now and allow whatever lesson is meant to come your way unfold as it is supposed to. Acting in the present is how you live eternally.

Aligning with your Core

To align with your core means to be aware of your inner divinity at every moment of the day. This includes while eating, sleeping, having sex, socializing, defending yourself or when engaged in recreation. If you are conscious of your nature as a soul, your actions and influence on others will powerfully reflect this. Eastern mystics believe that the state of mind of another person can never negatively affect someone who is fully conscious of the presence of God within their heart. This is how the great sages and saints of yore and even in modern times are able to move among us. Christians speak of striving to be “in this world, but not of this world,” while Jesus prayed: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.”

The expression ‘Namaste’ when greeting someone in India is to say: “I honor the presence of God in your heart.” Acknowledging someone’s divinity is the highest honor you can give. The gesture states very clearly that you are not concerned with race, religion, gender, or social status. It is completely non-discriminating. However, we sometimes see people using this expression while privately holding onto feelings of separateness and inequality. It seems that people adopt these foreign expressions in an attempt to feign spirituality when it would be sincere to simply express the meaning of Namaste through actions of unconditional service.

Practical Namaste

There are six ways that unconditional love is expressed in this world between two people. These are:

1. Revealing our most intimate secrets. By doing this we align our consciousness with our higher self, our most intimate identity, which is deeper and subtler than the illusory ego associated with the body.
2. Hearing in confidence and with an empathic heart. This requires us to suspend all judgment and honor the true essence of another by embracing their spirit with unconditional love.
3. Giving a gift for no other reason than gratitude. Practicing this habit will enrich your consciousness with an “abundance mentality.”
4. Receiving a gift gracefully. Honoring the giver by gracefully receiving will allow them to foster their unconditional love and service and will help them to realize that there is more joy in giving than in receiving
5. Giving blessed food with the pure intention to please. Since food is the most basic principle of life and the center of every culture, it has a unique role to play in creating peace and unity in the world. When we give pure food with love it creates deep, lasting impressions.
6. Accepting food that has been given with love. Just as in receiving a gift, to receive food gracefully is essential for closing the cycle of reciprocation. However, because food is so intimate, it has even more power to heal the soul.

Each one of these acts of unconditional loving exchange enriches the heart of both the giver and the receiver and is, therefore, the most practical way to express the meaning of Namaste.

In his book, The Nectar of Instruction, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments:

“Even in ordinary social activities, these six types of dealings between two loving friends are absolutely necessary. For instance, when one businessman wishes to contact another businessman he arranges a feast in a hotel, and over the feast openly expresses what he wishes to do. He then inquires from his business friend how he should act, and sometimes presents are exchanged. Thus whenever there is a dealing of priti, or love in intimate dealings, these six activities are executed.”

Purest Love

A person who is truly conscious of their own spiritual nature and the divinity within all other living beings will naturally filter every experience through that paradigm, and, in so doing, increase their vibration to the point where they consistently attract people and experiences that resonate with that vibration. You’ll know when you meet such saintly people because their presence will be overwhelmingly comforting to the point where your heart chakra blossoms and you become like putty — excited and ready to conform to their every wish.

A similar experience can be had when a man and a woman connect in body, mind, and spirit. The love can be so intensely synchronized that each are willing to fully surrender to the other’s satisfaction. Unfortunately, such loving exchanges tend to be short-lived because of the nature of conditional desire — it burns high but does not last forever.

Love in the spiritual realm, however, burns eternally, as perfected in the pastimes of Radha and Krishna. They are one in love, each seeking newer heights of selfless service to the other. It is this ongoing selfless loving exchange that is wanting in the material world. Even the purest of loving exchanges in this world are temporary and, in one way or another, are conditional.

In his book, The Teachings of Lord Chaitanya, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada comments on the pure love of Radha Krishna:

“The loving affairs between Krishna and the gopis in Vrindavana are also transcendental. They appear as ordinary lusty affairs of this material world, but there is a gulf of difference. In the material world, there may be the temporary awakening of lust, but it disappears after so-called satisfaction. In the spiritual world, the love between the gopis (village maidens) and Krishna is constantly increasing. That is the difference between transcendental love and material lust. The lust, or so-called love, arising out of this body is as temporary as the body itself, but the love arising from the eternal soul in the spiritual world is on the spiritual platform, and that love is also eternal.”

The Soul is Unborn and Undying

For the soul, there is never birth or death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain. (Bhagavad-gita 2.20)

Nothing can kill the soul. In fact, according to the Gita, the soul, being transcendental to time, was never born and will never cease to be. You and I are eternal beings and that is why death feels so unnatural and why we have such a difficult time accepting it. The fact is: you never die, but rather, you, the soul that currently animates this physical body, live on forever. Our destination after the death of the material body is determined by your karma and desire.

How you act and the thoughts you accumulate in this life are gradually shaping your next body. Notice I did not say ‘incarnation’ because the fact is that we may not incarnate, or ‘re-flesh’ into another physical body, but move on to a higher plane of consciousness where there is no need for a gross physical body. It all depends on our state of consciousness at the time of death. If your consciousness is fixed on this physical plane, you can expect to remain bound here and take on another physical form. However, if you are able to remain detached from the body by fixing your awareness on your divine nature, you can expect to attain a more subtle form, the highest of which is our original spiritual form and thus return back to our source, the Godhead.

We can assume, however, that because of our attachments to this physical plane and our need for further enlightenment, most of us will likely have to take another physical form after this body becomes uninhabitable. And, therefore, the type of body we get will be determined by our karma and impassioned desire.

According to the Bhagavad-gita, there are basically three layers to our existence in this world: a gross physical form made up of the five most basic elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether); a subtle form consisting of mind, intelligence and false ego; and finally a spiritual form from which consciousness evolves and that is the most subtle form of all.

Since the spiritual form is our core, we are addressing the two outer shells. Some esoteric books speak of a combined mind and intelligence as the source of the soul. However, it is important that we distinguish the astral form of mind and intelligence from the even more subtle form of the soul. There is a major difference. Whereas the soul is the driving force behind our very existence, the astral or ‘spirit’ body is merely the subtle container that carries us (the soul) to our next destination after the demise of the physical body. The physical body of earth, water, fire, air and ether, or more grossly, blood, muscle, bones, skin, hair, pus, bile, mucus, and so on, provides a medium for the soul to express itself in this physical plane. Its existence is temporary and over time it goes through dramatic changes, finally returning to its most basic constitution of the five gross elements.

The astral body, on the other hand, lives on past so-called ‘death,’ carrying the soul (the source of consciousness) to its next destination. Depending on the condition of the astral body, the soul will either reincarnate into a lower or higher birth in this physical world or move beyond the limitations of the five gross elements by resonating at a higher frequency of consciousness. In other words, the more conscious you are of your higher self, the higher or purer your destination will be. However, in using the word ‘destination,’ I am not implying some distant place out in the galaxy.

Theosophist and clairvoyant Charles Leadbeater described it this way:

“… the sub-planes (subtle realms) must never be thought of as divided from one another in space, but rather as interpenetrating one another; so that when we say that a person passes from one subdivision to another, we do not mean that he moves in space at all, but simply that the focus of his consciousness shifts from the outer shell to the one next within it.”

The ultimate destination of every soul is to return back to the energetic Source, the Godhead, the highest and subtlest of all planes of consciousness. To achieve success will require complete sanitization of the mind and intelligence so that your consciousness is vibrating at such a high frequency that no gross material element can settle. At this stage, the soul sheds all gross and subtle material bodies and realizes its full conscious existence, fully awakening the original spiritual body, spiritual mind, and spiritual intelligence.

It is for this reason that all spiritual traditions recommend renunciation of the vices of this world, for by maintaining an attachment for physical things and experiences we attune our consciousness to the frequency of this physical realm. Hence, at the time of death, we will be forced to ‘re-flesh’ to continue experiencing the same things and the mundane roadshow goes on. Sometimes, though, spiritual practitioners misunderstand the full meaning of renunciation, leading them to artificially renounce the world. This is also a trap. Let me explain …

Detachment

We incarnate into this physical world, naked and bereft of any possessions. Whatever we accumulate during our lifetime may be temporarily in our care, but once we give up the physical body, those same possessions are either gifted in the form of a will or distributed by the state. Since we are not able to take anything tangible with us after ‘death,’ how can we honestly claim ownership? And who is the true owner anyway? According to the Bhagavata Purana, everything that is animate and inanimate in this world is ultimately controlled and belongs to God.

Out of fear of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the directing demigods in charge of the modes of material nature carry out the functions of creation, maintenance, and destruction; everything animate and inanimate within this material world is under their control.

Therefore, to truly renounce something is to not artificially give it away, but rather to fully understand to Whom it belongs to and use it accordingly. In other words, a spiritualist may be living in a great city like New York, but rather than artificially renouncing the comforts of an apartment, they can accept that shelter with the understanding that it is a gift of the Creator and should, therefore, be used in the service of God in order to bring balance, peace, and harmony to their life. How they do this is a very personal thing, but the foundations of their decision is an acknowledgment that God is the Supreme Controller, the Supreme Owner, and the Greatest Benefactor. According to the Bhagavad-gita, this is the purest form of renunciation and the ultimate peace formula.

In the Bhagavad-gita verse 5.29.13, Krishna states:

The wise, knowing Me as the ultimate purpose of all sacrifices and austerities, the Supreme Lord of all planets and demigods and the benefactor and well-wisher of all living entities, attain peace from the pangs of material miseries.

Learning detachment from this physical world is one of the great lessons we all must contend with. Death is no doubt the most brutal messenger of this lesson, and so we would be wise to prepare for death or the loss of a loved one by cultivating detachment. I am not suggesting you develop a cold and heartless attitude towards the world, but rather the kind of detachment I’m suggesting must be imbued with love within the context of the absolute spiritual reality that you are not this body, but are an eternal spiritual being. So to let go of any attachment to a body is healthy for the soul, and can be a joyful experience when done with the understanding that the departing soul is now free. Death need not be a time of sadness but can become a celebratory experience as you focus your attention on the soul’s success in moving beyond the limitations of a gross body. Granted, even with having this higher understanding, you may still have feelings of grief as you long for the association of that person. Last year, I lost my mother, so I know the pain of physical loss. However, since the soul is unlimited, there is no reason why a soul connection cannot go on beyond death.

One way to deal with the sadness of loss is to focus exclusively on the positive contributions that a person made in your life.

Dealing with Attachment

Being absorbed in matter prevents a materialistic person from understanding their higher self. Although an intellectual or philosopher may be able to discriminate between matter and spirit, it does not mean they’ll be able to transcend attachment to matter. However, a yogi, the best of whom are the bhakti-yogis, being exclusively fixed on the ideal of transcendence from matter, can easily attain ultimate success.

In other words, the materialist is completely in illusion; the philosopher may not be in complete illusion, but neither do they possess absolute knowledge; but the bhakti-yogi is completely on the spiritual platform, as Krishna confirms in the Bhagavad-gītā (14.26) :

One who engages in full devotional service, who does not fall down under any circumstance, at once transcends the modes of material nature and thus comes to the level of Brahman.

A yogi with devotion is therefore in the most secure position, having reached a state of transcendental consciousness, even while conducting themselves in material affairs. While philosophers and Hatha yogis can only gradually ascend to transcendental consciousness by nullifying their material discrimination on the platform of psychology and nullifying the false ego, by which one thinks, “I am this body, a product of matter.”

Srila Prabhupada comments, “One must merge the false ego into the total material energy and merge the total material energy into the Supreme Energetic. This is the process of becoming free from material attraction.”

Srila Prabhupada suggests here that by engaging all energies in the service of the energetic Source, one is able to achieve liberation from mundane attachment.

The Science behind Superhuman Powers

There are numerous examples of people finding a source of power that they never thought they had in them, when under extreme stress or crisis. Known as “hysterical strength,” or “superhuman strength,” it is a display of extreme strength by humans, beyond what is believed to be normal, usually occurring when people are in life and death situations. The most common anecdotal examples are of parents lifting vehicles to rescue their children, and when people are in life and death situations.

The mechanisms by which the brain is able to summon greater reserves of power are still being explored, but some think it may be related to analgesia, or the inability to feel pain. One minute, you’re going through your daily routine, everything is rather mundane and then the next moment you’re sucked into an intensely focused world, where time seems to move slower, colors are brighter, and sounds are more perceptible and you become “superhuman.”

It seems that under intense pressure — whether it’s a high profile competition like the Olympics, a child trapped under a car, or an attacking wild animal — humans (even non-athletes) can miraculously transcend pain and apparent physical limitations. The body goes into overdrive and lets you turn the dial way up. You don’t think, you just do what needs to be done.

If we consider that the nature of our true self as a soul is that we are qualitatively equal to God, then these moments of incredible superhuman strength could well be a moment when people tap into their true higher-self power. Often athletes will attest that those times that they excelled in competition, far beyond their expectations, were times that they felt most “in the zone” and were overwhelmed with a feeling of being unlimited. Could this be moments of tapping into soul-power?

Yantra and Meditation

I AM POWERFUL
I am a soul with unlimited potential.
I am aligned with my core essence.
I am eternal and transcendental to this material energy.

Excerpt from SOUL POWER — the Five Noble Truths for a Successful Life

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