• Table of Contents
  • Pain and Ignorance by Swami Veda Bharati
  • Vairagya by Swami Rama
  • Pilgrimage to Sikkim by Lori Beron
  • Returning to my Spiritual Home
  • Full Moon Meditations in Toronto
  • Life in the Gurukulam by Ahimsa Ishaya
  • A Visit to AHYMSIN Korea by Dr. Stephen Parker
  • Practical Gains from Esoteric Practices
  • Dear Yoga Mentor, My Question Is…
  • Swami Veda in Beijing by Shi Hong
  • Sometimes Words Diminish the Communication
  • Inspirations by Meeta Jagtap
  • 2015 Events and Beyond
  • Full Moon Meditation Dates
  • Location of our SRSG ashram
• AHYMSIN Newsletter Archive

Dear Yoga Mentor, My Question Is…

Sometimes students write to or ask Swami Veda and other senior teachers in our tradition questions about practice.  This is one such “Question and Answer,” or Q&A.

Question:

Where does the soul live?

Answer: Michael Smith answers this question.

Your question will be answered from the article: Silence Can Be Your Wishing Stone:

“ . . . any statement about ātman can only be nonsense statements. Nonsense, like the questions that people often ask: “Where does the soul go after death?” “What happens to the soul after death?” – as though something can happen to a soul. “Where does the soul go after death?” What an absurdity of questions! What absurdity is that one question! Because, “where” implies place, space. “Goes” implies movement in that space from point to point. “After” implies time. “Death”?! Whose death? The soul’s death?!  Ātman’s death?! ­ All absurd. No language can ask a question about ātman; therefore no language can answer it. You would have to say, “NA – Does not apply.”  To any question about ātman I will say, “NA – Does not apply.”  So let us leave ātman alone. It loves kaivalya: aloneness, solitude, being solo. Kaivalya, the last word in the Yoga-sutras: solitude of the soul. 

“But to get to that solitude of the soul, one has to pass through those barriers of noises, these frequencies, these high-frequency, low-frequency regions of energies, force-fields. So at each level, the silence is a relative one. Relative to what? Relative to the exterior [level], to that force-field which is exterior to it.”

(from Silence Can Be Your Wishing Stone by Swami Veda Bharati)

Editor’s Note:

If you have a question about spiritual practice, you can use this link to ask it:  http://ahymsin.org/main/adhyatma-samiti-spiritual-committee.html