This true science of living is taught in the ancient Vedic scriptures. “Veda” means knowledge. In ancient times man had the ability to comprehend much more information then he can today and all knowledge was spoken and remembered. With the degradation of society, man has developed a quick memory loss, so the Vedas were written down and still exist today and found existing from the ancient world. His Divine Grace AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada translated many books, such as, The Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, The Srimad-Bhagavatam, The Brahama-samhita, and more then 140 others into English, which are all part of the Vedas. All his translated books together constitute the essence and essentials of all Vedas.

Today popular movies like “The Matrix” and “Fight Club” touch on the ancient philosophical issues described in the ancient Vedas. In “The Matrix”, Neo’s life was not as he thought. He finds out that his world is simulated and is all part of computer intelligence that has taken over the world and enslaved humankind. Of course, our world is not part of an elaborate computer intelligence, but this is a nice analogy of our real situation.

We live in a world in which we have become part of an illusion, “the matrix” if you will. This illusion has enslaved us and we’ve begun thinking that this is reality and that what we see is truth. Truth is that which last forever and is eternally true. That which has no consciousness, no life force, is called matter. Matter is ever changing and therefore is not true. Our entanglement with material dead, non-existing, matter creates this illusion.

 

AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explains:

 

“As living spiritual souls we are all originally Krsna conscious entities, but due to our association with matter since time immemorial, our consciousness is now polluted by material atmosphere. In this polluted concept of life, we are all trying to exploit the resources of material nature, but actually we are becoming more and more entangled in our complexities. This illusion is called maya, or hard struggle for existence over the stringent laws of material nature. This illusory struggle against the material nature can at once be stopped by revival of our Krsna consciousness.”

 

To exist means to live, to have a life force, to have consciousness. We are always identifying with our body as if it were really us: “I look terrible today, I look handsome, I look beautiful, I am strong, I am weak, I am a Judge, I am a Lawyer, I am a businessman.” The Vedic scriptures call this illusion, “maya.” The body is just a casing for the life force, the real you. For instance, a dead body: the soul is gone. The life force is gone and so in time the body will rot and be gone. What is the use of a car if it has no driver? It will sit there on the curb like a dead body. But once the driver gets in the seat, he will turn the key and then the car will run. It’s the driver, the operator, which runs the car. Similarly, we operate this body like the driver operates the car. We can see by our experience that this body is changing everyday. We once had the bodies of small babies, then small children, then the body was young, then it gets older and older.

 

It is stated in the Bhagavad-gita:

dehino 'smin yatha dehe
kaumaram yauvanam jara
tatha dehantara-praptir
dhiras tatra na muhyati

"As the embodied soul continuously passes, in this body, from boyhood to youth, and then to old age, the soul similarly passes into another body at death. A sober person is not bewildered by such a change." (Bhagavad-gita 2.13)

AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments:

“Generally, people cannot understand this simple verse. Therefore, Krishna says, dhiras tatra na muhyati: "Only a sober man can understand." But what is the difficulty? How plainly Krsna has explained things! There are three stages of life. The first, kaumaram, lasts until one is fifteen years old. Then, from the sixteenth year, one begins youthful life, yauvanam. Then, after the fortieth or fiftieth year, one becomes an old man, jara. So those who are dhira--sober-headed, cool-headed--they can understand: "I have changed my body. I remember how I was playing and jumping when I was a boy. Then I became a young man, and I was enjoying my life with friends and family. Now I am an old man, and when this body dies I shall again enter a new body."

“Anyone can understand that his body has changed. So in the next life the body will also change. But we may not remember; that is another thing. In my last life, what was my body? I do not remember. So forgetfulness is our nature, but our forgetting something does not mean that it did not take place. No. In my childhood I did so many things I do not remember, but my father and mother remember. So, forgetting does not mean that things did not take place.”

“Similarly, death simply means I have forgotten what I was in my past life. That is death. Otherwise I, as spirit soul, have no death. Suppose I change my clothes. In my boyhood I wore certain clothes, in my youth I wore different clothes. Now, in my old age, as a sannyasi [a renunciant], I am wearing different clothes. The clothes may change, but that does not mean that the owner of the clothes is dead and gone. No.”

“We are all individual souls, and we are eternal, but because our body is changing we are suffering birth, death, old age, and disease. The Krsna consciousness movement is meant to get us out of this changing condition. "Since I am eternal, how can I come to the permanent position?" That should be our question. Everyone wants to live eternally; nobody wants to die. If I come before you with a revolver and say, "I am going to kill you," you will immediately cry out, because you do not want to die. This is not a very good business--to die and take birth again. It is very troublesome. This we all know subconsciously. We know that when we die we'll have to enter again into the womb of a mother--and nowadays mothers are killing the children within the womb. Then again another mother... The process of accepting another body again and again is very long and very troublesome. In our subconscious we remember all this trouble, and therefore we do not want to die.”

 

 

In “Fight Club,” Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) brings up the point that the things that you own, start to own you. This is the nature of the material world. The dead, lifeless, matter that we associate ourselves with takes all of our attention and we start to identify with it and we begin to serve this dead matter, thinking that it is serving us. This stems from attempting to gratify our senses of the body which is made of matter. This gratifying of the senses of the body is temporary and may last only a few moments and does not result in a self fulfillment, or real gratification in anyway. This is like the hand trying to feed itself, its not possible. The hand must feed the mouth in order to get nourished. Similarly, we must satisfy the origin of everything in order for us to become satisfied. Our true pleasure is the gratification we get from serving God, the origin of everything, the Supreme Person, or Krishna and knowing who we really are. We are always identifying with this body when we should really be identifying with our true self and God. If we develop a loving relationship with Him, then we can get the entire fulfillment that we are looking for. The real love!

Although “Fight Club” does not offer a solution to our problems, it does paint an accurate picture of this Material World. It is not a pleasant sight, full of miseries, anxieties, and unhappiness. Tyler thinks he is getting some sort of happiness from his Fight Club, but actually his consciousness is not developed enough to really perceive happiness.

 

AC Bhaktivedanta Swami explains:

“The happiness that we are experiencing in the material world is not real happiness. If one asks a tree, "Are you feeling happy?" the tree, if it could, might say,"Yes, I am happy, standing here all year. I'm enjoying the wind and snowfall very much, etc." This may be enjoyed by the tree, but for the human being it is a very low standard of enjoyment. There are different kinds and grades of living entities, and their conceptions and perceptions of happiness are also of all different types and grades. Although one animal may see that another animal is being slaughtered, he will go right on chewing grass, for he has no knowledge to understand that he may be next. He is thinking that he is happy, but at the next moment he may be slaughtered.”

“In this way there are different degrees of happiness. Yet of all of them, what is the highest happiness? Sri Krsna tells Arjuna:

sukham atyantikam yat tad
buddhi-grahyam atindriyam
vetti yatra na caivayam
sthitas calati tattvatah

"In that joyous state (samadhi), one is situated in boundless transcendental happiness and enjoys himself through transcendental senses. Established thus, one never departs from the truth." (Bg. 6.21)

“Buddhi means intelligence; one has to be intelligent if he wants to enjoy. Animals do not have really developed intelligence and so cannot enjoy life as a human being can. The hands, the nose, the eyes, the other sense organs and all the bodily parts may be present on a dead man, but he cannot enjoy. Why not? The enjoying energy, the spiritual spark, has left, and therefore the body has no power. If one looks further into the matter with a little intelligence, he can understand that it was not the body that was enjoying at all but the small spiritual spark that was within. Although one may think that he is enjoying by the bodily sense organs, the real enjoyer is that spiritual spark. That spark always has the potency of enjoyment, but it is not always manifest due to being covered by the material tabernacle. Although we may not be aware of it, it is not possible for the body to experience enjoyment without the presence of this spiritual spark. If a man is offered the dead body of a beautiful woman, will he accept it? No, because the spiritual spark has moved out of the body. Not only was it enjoying within the body, but it was maintaining the body. When that spark leaves, the body simply deteriorates.”

“The Matrix” can be seen as our struggle to discover our true selves. Neo has declared war on “The Matrix,” because he has found the truth (in the film plot), that he lives in a simulated world. Similarly, we live in a world in which maya (illusion) is at every corner and we start to think that these “things” bring us happiness. We are always thinking, “I, me, mine.” Actually, everything is Krishna’s because He is the creator. A man creates an invention and he thinks, “this is mine, I created it.” But who created him? The invention is not worth anything unless it is used for the creator, Krishna. Once we begin to find out who we really are: that we are eternally connected to the origin Krishna and are living to Love Him, then Maya strikes back like the bad guys in “The Matrix.” Maya is also part of Krishna’s energy. She is the energy that is pulling us away, alluring us.

AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada explains it like this:

“To pursue the transcendental path is more or less to declare war on the illusory energy. When we accept any process of self-realization, we are actually declaring war against mäyä, illusion, and mäyä is certain to place many difficulties before us. Therefore, there is a chance of failure, but one has to become very steady. Whenever a person tries to escape the clutches of the illusory energy, she tries to defeat the practitioner by various allurements. A conditioned soul is already allured by the modes of material energy, and there is every chance of being allured again, even while performing transcendental disciplines. This is called yogäc calita-mänasaù: deviation from the transcendental path. Arjuna is inquisitive to know the results of deviation from the path of self-realization.”