“I am atma. I'm a Divine soul. I'm not this body.” You all know this. You've read it. You've heard it.But none of us live in that spiritual type of consciousness or mindset. We know it just like an answer you could give on a test, but we don't live our life according to that. Kind of like if a thief took a test on morality and ethics, and on that test there was a question, “Is it immoral to steal?” He would say, “Yes, that's true.” He would give the correct answer, but he'd walk out of there and go steal something from your house or your backpack. So, he has the knowledge, but he's not implementing it.
Similarly, we would check that box. What is my true identity? Soul or body? We'd check the soul box, right? But we don't live that way. We actually live as if we are the body, and this is why we consider all the relatives of our body to be our only relatives. When the fact is that since we are Divine souls, we also have a Divine relative.
Yesterday when we were singing the bhajan before my lecture, we sang,
“Tu hi tu hi tu hi to hai mera Nandnandan.”
‘Tu hi’ means ‘you only’. I just used the word also. Maharaj Ji would really scold me for using that word. I said, “You have family related to your body and you also have someone related to your soul.” Maharaj Ji says, “Bhi mat lagao! Hi lagao!” Why? Because your true self is the soul.
Maharaj Ji also says, “You have a physical relation to your family and that comes with certain duties and responsibilities and you cannot ignore those. It doesn't matter if you're on the path of raganuga bhakti. That's not an excuse to abandon any kind of worldly responsibilities.” But following the path of raganuga bhakti means understanding that there's another responsibility which supersedes all because you're the soul.
स वै पुंसां परो धर्मो यतो भक्तिरधोक्षजे ।
Sa vai puṁsāņ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣhaje- Shrimad-Bhagwatam 1.2.6
You heard this shlok yesterday.
Your supreme dharm is to love God. Making dal, roti, cleaning your house, feeding your family, earning the money to keep the roof over your head and to buy the food and to send your kids to school. That's also your dharm, but that's your apar dharm. That is your physical dharm. It's the dharm related to your body. But your spiritual dharm is related to your soul and there's only one related to your soul. That's Radha Krishna.
