Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai
Austin, Texas, U.S.A. August 20, 1994
(Originally in English)

 Now you have learned a lot of things about science; you have learned about people who can collect a human being's DNA and make another human being. Apart from being stopped and hindered by the government, they have nearly made one. For example, suppose you have one baby already and you want to have one more exactly like her, in case she dies or something. And you can spare some DNA from her and store it somewhere.

 Later, they can make a copy of that DNA, exactly the same. Have you heard about this? (Audience: Yes!) They do the same thing that is naturally done in the case of twins or quintuplets. There is only one egg and one embryo, and then it splits itself into two or three or five or four or six.

 So now, ask yourselves: How many souls are in there? There's supposed to be only one soul, one person; then because of some mistake, it splits itself into six. And now tell me six souls came inside, right? Is that correct? Actually, none! The Almighty power, the soul of the universe, takes hold of any instrument that is available and then makes use of it. And that is what we call an individual person.

 The same thing is probably true now: Suppose you have one baby and you want another intelligent person like her, in case your only child dies. And you put the DNA somewhere, in a machine where some chemical reaction takes place. Then you have another baby, exactly the same as the one who died. So normally there should be one person; now there is one more, exactly like the one who died. But actually, there is only one.

 The soul is apart from the body, apart from the mind, and apart from whatever we collect every day. We're just a witness to what's going on in this instrument. So don't be stupid, thinking that you are bound, that you are this and that and the other person. You are always free. You have never existed. By that I mean you've never come into existence inside any body, or inside any instrument. We just witness. We just stand around and watch the person called Pamela or Ching Hai do things. And then we identify ourselves with that person; we think we are that person.

 I understand clearly that you and I are one. There is no "You" and no "I", just different instruments that we are watching. But I cannot explain it to you, so I have tried just now. Did you understand something of it? [Audience: Yes!) Okay. Similarly, in the case of the twins, there is supposed to be only one person. And then we say it's one soul. Then where does the other soul, or the other person come from? Just because another instrument is there, we say another person is born; another soul is born. There isn't any such thing!

 We, you and I, are connected with the whole. And the whole is watching each of the instruments working. Perhaps the whole is working a little bit through each instrument, perhaps not. Only the brain is functioning. The soul doesn't need to do anything.

 Electricity is one current. But it has different shapes and different levels of brightness. This is because of the instrument. Otherwise, the current is only one. There is no need to envy each other, saying, "Your electricity and my electricity are different." Even if it's dim or if it's bright, it is the same current. There must be a soul because it's necessary to have different functions, so there is more variety.

 The electricity should not worry at all if a bulb goes out, if this one is no more. That doesn't mean the electricity is dead. It's just the bulb that is dead; it's damaged, it's kaput. The electricity doesn't worry. It probably will find another bulb and then shine again. But that's the problem with us. We always worry that we will die, that we will be unsuccessful, that we will be hungry or that we will be this, that and the other. And then we drag each other into the play, into the same ignorance and suffering together.