Question: If one thinks oneself as the body, he will say he is John.
If one thinks oneself in the platform of spirit, he will say he is jiva or servant of Krishna. What if one thinks oneself in terms of subtle body?
Answer by Romapada Swami: Thinking in terms of subtle body means identifying oneself with the mind and intelligence. For example one thinks: ‘I am smart’, ‘I am stupid’, ‘I am a cheerful person’, ‘I am a very irritable person’, ‘I like to be active’, ‘I am an extrovert/introvert’ and so on. These are not the qualities of the soul, but temporary characteristics acquired by the subtle body in association with modes of nature. But one begins to think of one’s identity in terms of these acquired natures.
The mind is fickle and its business is to accept and reject. When we become overwhelmed by the temporary mental states and fully identify ourselves with our fleeting emotions, feelings, our likes and dislikes, our ideas and plans and so on, it means that we are identifying ourselves with the subtle body. Sometimes we find that people become very hurt if their idea is rejected or if their feelings are not validated, as if they themselves were personally rejected or hurt – this is due to identifying oneself with one’s mind.
Srila Prabhupada indicates that many of the classical western philosophers, poets and psychologists fall within this category of identifying with the subtle body. They may be able to go beyond gross bodily identification such as American, Chinese, man, woman, beautiful, ugly etc, but they get caught up in identifying with mental phenomena such as feelings, emotions, aesthetics and so on.
For example, Descartes’ famous statement ‘I think, therefore I am’ indicates that he could not go beyond the mind and understand the nature of spirit soul; he was identifying himself with the mind and thought the functions of the mind to be the ultimate nature of the self.
