-Summary of the Above Video-

The body is not your true self; it is simply a vehicle that you are temporarily using. Often people panic when they lose a part of their body, such as their legs, their finger, their tongue, etc. It’s very shocking when it happens!

Or during a war if people lose their limbs, they feel very sad because people treat them differently. Although other people look at the person differently, inside that person knows, “I am the same person. I’m still me.” The person experiences that they’ve lost a possession, not their self.

You can do a meditation to help illustrate this point by going over each part of your body and asking, “Am I my leg? Am I my arm? Am I this hand?” If go over every part of your body, you will naturally conclude that you are not your body.

Another way to understand that your essence is non-material, is to understand that you have a completely different body today from the body you had seven years ago. After seven years, every single molecule in your body will have changed. Some cells may stay the same, such as brain cells, but the molecules that make up your brain cells are all completely new after just three days.

So your body is always changing; the molecules that make up your body are always changing. This is another way to understand that you are not the body.

So if you’re not your body, what are you? Aham brahmasmi. In Sanksrit this means, “I am spirit, not matter.” This is the first part of understanding identity – understanding that you are spiritual in nature.

Siddhaswarupananda - founder of Science of Identity Foundation