Seeing the Soul is Essential

The metaphorical illustration of the soul in Srila Prabhupada’s BGAII, shows a passenger riding in a chariot. The senses and the driver seem oblivious of the passenger. Similarly the mind and body and even the intelligence (the stage driver in the illustration) are oblivious to the soul. According to Hrdayananda and company, writing in the purport to Srimad Bhagavatam 10.87.17, the soul is like “a passenger in a mechanical vehicle. The soul undoubtedly is alive, and irrevocably so, but in his ignorance that inner life is covered and forgotten. In its place, the automaton of the external mind and body carries out the dictates of the modes of nature, which force one to act in a way altogether irrelevant to the dormant needs of the soul.”