That's why we're always so confounded, because we're always trying to create a self. What is my relationship now, when I go to kindergarten with all these other kids that I never met before? What about in fifth grade? How do I adapt? Should I wear jeans or corduroys, or should I wear shorts? Who should I be like? Which identity should I take on now? And throughout our lives, trying to create a persona based on the material body and mind is extremely troublesome, and what to speak of the fact that it's untenable. You can't hold it. Whatever identity you have now will be diminished. It will change. It will be lost completely at a certain point.

So, this is one of the tenets of the teachings of Jung—Jung and the Bhagavad-gītā. And finally, we have this statement: modern psychology and ancient wisdom both address this with beautiful parallels and profound differences. So, let's go into a few more of them. The problem: losing the self. This is a problem. We've lost ourselves. In the ancient Upaniṣads, this is called ātma-hā—death of the self. There is no death of the self, but we conceive that ourself has died, and we lose sense of our real self. And when we do that, we get into this trap. So, Jung says we get trapped in personas—masks. He calls them living for society's expectations. This is a sociological fact. Everyone is working very hard to put on the right mask in order to fit in. It's one of the deep needs of the human psyche: I have to fit in with everybody else. Therefore, I'll wear the appropriate mask at the appropriate time, whether it's in relationship to the family or to the greater society. One has to play a certain role and assume a certain sort of mask.

He also says, "The unconscious gets repressed, leading to alienation and neurosis." I'll read that again. Maybe it resonates: "The unconscious gets repressed, leading to alienation and neurosis."

And here's some from the Bhagavad-gītā. I'll give some summary comparison between what Jung said and what Bhagavad-gītā Kṛṣṇa says. In Bhagavad-gītā, the soul (ātmā) identifies with the temporary body and mind. This phenomenon is called māyā, which means it's a mistake, and it forgets its eternal divine nature. If you remember your eternal divine nature and you're aware of it, you don't have a problem. The problem comes when you forget it. Next, this leads to suffering and endless rebirth—this is called saṁsāra. One thing leads to another. The world is accommodating our desires, and our misguided sense of self leads us to misguided desires, which are then accommodated by this material nature, which is very mechanical, and we end up moving from one temporary situation to another. And in each one of them, we're striving for something that cannot be achieved. We cannot find permanence in a temporary world. That's our problem.

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