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By Jayaram V
Much of the speculative philosophy of Hinduism is about the
nature of individual souls, how they came into existence, nature
of Brahman or the Universal Self, how He manifested creation and
nature of the relationship between the two. Most of the
Upanishads, including the Bhagavadgita, try to
explain these aspects of Hindu theology with convincing
arguments using various pramanas or proofs. Another important
subject which forms part of this complex speculation is
Nature or Prakriti and its status and role in the order of
things. Without going into details of how various schools of
Hindu philosophy view these broader aspects of our existence and
reality, we will try to present below some of the speculations
that are common to most of them on how the blissful and
free souls get involved with Nature and become the seeking and
suffering Jivas or embodied
souls.
The Vedas, which are considered by almost all the schools of
Hinduism (darshanas) as the standard of Truth in verbal form (shabda
pramanam), confirm that in the beginning there was nothing.
There was neither light nor darkness, neither the sun nor the
moon, nor the earth, but one undivided nothingness. This
nothingness is described in the Hindu scriptures as the unknown
Brahman or indeterminate (avyakta) Brahman. it is also described
as asat or Non-existence (asat).
This nothingness was believed to be the original state of things. The Puranas dramatize
this condition as the resting phase of Brahman (the Night of
God) which according to Hindu astronomical calculations
stretches
over billions of years in earth time.
In the next stage, out of this nothingness, we do not know after how long,
appeared the Triad, the three entities, namely:
- Saguna Brahman or the Awakened Universal Lord.
- Jivatmas or numerous individuals souls and
- Prakriti or Nature.
Many people are not aware that these three entities together constitute the original Trinity
of Hinduism. The Puranas
later identified Brahma, Vishnu and Siva respectively as the
Trinity. In some ways these three gods personify the original Trinity in their
functions as the three dimensions of the One Absolute
Truth, mentioned in the Upanishads as "Tat" (That). Saguna
Brahman or the Universal Lord is the Creator who manifests the
worlds through His inviolable will. The Puranas ascribe this
function to Brahma Prajapathi the Creator of all beings. The individual souls,
described as Purushas,
perpetuate the process of creation by in association with
Prakriti. The Puranas describe the individual souls as the body
of Vishnu. The souls are drawn to Him like the Gopis of
Brindavan. Nature engages the souls in the process of creation
through a degenerative involution and a regenerative evolution.
Siva as the destroyer performs an identical role.
We are not going to discuss how the souls and Nature came into
existence because there is no unanimity on this subject among
the various schools of Hindu philosophy. Equally controversial
is the question of whether Nature or Prakriti is dependent or
independent of the Awakened Brahman. According to some schools
Prakriti is God's dynamic energy, created by Him to execute His
will. According to others, Prakriti is independent of God and
not created by Him. Whatever may be the truth, these three are
the basic components of the manifest reality, which is described
as sat or Truth by the Hindu scriptures.
In the next stage, the individual souls, who are the same as
Brahman in their essence, get involved with Nature and become
embodied souls or jivas. Hindu scriptures describe this process
in considerable detail. They depict Nature not as
a single entity but a collection of diverse components or tattvas.
These are not physical entities but abstract principles having
the ability to manifest in different forms and shapes according
to the needs of Nautre. This information regarding the tattvas
of Nature is vital for our understanding of how
the individual free souls get caught in the process of creation
and acquire physical bodies having distinct forms and shapes to
become embodied souls. The unsuspecting individual souls are not
ensnared by Nature with one magical touch. It is rather a long
drawn process very
similar metaphorically to the way little babies are enticed by their mothers to fall
asleep. Nature quietly spins its web of deception and illusion
around the souls, in small steps, first by drawing heir
attention and then by distracting them to the extent they forget
who they are. By the time they
realize what happened, they find themselves deeply embedded in
matter, attached to things and attracted to things, from which any possible escape seems almost impossible.
In the Upanishads we find descriptions of how the individual
souls are drawn to Nature and develop various parts of their
bodies, such as the sense organs, the mind, intelligence,
qualities and so on. This transformation from the state of
"being" to the state of "becoming" is
described as soul's expansion or going forth. In other words a
soul that is immersed in itself and inward looking becomes
distracted and outward looking. A subjective soul becomes
objective by coming into contact with the things of Nature. The
moment the souls attention is diverted from itself to the not
self, it no more remembers who it is. In their purest state the
souls exists in the present moment. They do not have sticky
memory like us. They do not accumulate knowledge. They do not
use minds like us to remember things. They experience reality
directly in the total awareness of the moment without the burden
of memory and authority where as we as embodied souls experience
life in relation to the things we remember or imagine. In their
subjective state they remain completely self-absorbed, withdrawn
and immersed in themselves. When they are drawn to Nature, they
become objective and the knowledge of their original subjective
state. This is described in the Hindu scriptures as the state of
ignorance or lack of true knowledge.
In their outgoing mode, the souls become attracted to the components of
Nature or the tattvas and develop corresponding qualities,
abilities and organs to experience them or seize them and hold
them for repetitive use. These components are buddhi (intelligence),
manas (mind), the three gunas (sattva, rajas and tamas),
jnanedriays (organs of intellect), karmendriyas (organs of
action) and annam (gross organic and inorganic matter) which is made up of pancha bhutas
or the five elements, namely fire, water, air, earth and
ether. When the souls reach out to the objects of Nature,
they develop desire and aversion for them. In their attempt to
seek them or repel them, they engage in various kinds of
actions. They accomplish these two tasks by acquiring and using
respectively the five organs of knowledge (jnanedriyas) namely,
the eyes, the nose, the skin, ears and the tongue, and the five
organs of actions (karmendriyas), namely, speech, grasping,
movement, eliminating and procreating.
As the souls entangle themselves with the things of Nature
and develop distinct physical personalities made up of various
components of Nature, they indulge in egoistic and selfish actions
to preserve themselves or their things. Their actions produce
karma, which in turn binds
them to the cycle of births and deaths and keep them enslaved to
the force of Nature. Thus over a period of a few million years, the souls
which were originally free and resplendent filled with the bliss of
Brahman, become so involved with Nature and become entangled
with its component things that they lose their freedom and
become deluded about their true nature, like birds caught in a
snare.
Thus the individual souls that have no body, no organs of
knowledge or actions, no intelligence and no mind, develop all
these and become distinct and different, in a moment of
forgetfulness, induced by the distracting and alluring power of
Nature. In reality the soul is none of these, but it spreads out
so deeply into these that it comes to believe them to be itself.
This identification with the false self or Ego is responsible
for much of its suffering and bondage. In truth there is no
physical demarcation or barrier between the true self and the
false self. It would be perhaps wrong to say that the true self
is false self. And equally wrong it would be again if we say it
is not. It may be appropriate to say that the false self is a
projection of the true self which the latter assumes as its own.
Visualize a particle of light, possessing the DNA of the
universe, descend into the earth's atmosphere and gather energy
and matter around itself, resulting in the formation of a being
with a distinct form and body and with the ability
to use intelligence, perceive things, engage in motivated actions and
lives for itself. This is precisely
the journey of the soul from the heights of its freedom and
blissful state of pure consciousness to its
state as an embodied soul with limited freedom and awareness.
If in its outward movement the soul becomes engaged
with Nature and attached to it, its inward
movement and withdrawal form Nature is
the only way it can reverse its outward movement and
return to its original state. Our scriptures
suggest that embodied souls can reverse their current plight
gradually by doing some or all of the following not necessarily
in the same order.
- Withdrawing their senses from the things of the world
- Acquiring the right knowledge about the self
through the study of scriptures with the help of a teacher.
- Controlling their thoughts and desires to cultivate
equanimity, detachment and dispassion.
- Performing actions without desire and offering them to
God.
- Identifying themselves as eternal souls, not as physical
entities..
- Seeking the guidance of an enlightened master who is
already free.
- Cultivating sattva or purity and virtues to become
egoless.
- Seeking the help of God through devotion and surrender
- Performing acts of self-denial and self-negation to
weaken theit egos.
The most distinguishing difference between a soul and an
embodied soul is that the latter has a distinct individuality
and form while the former has none. Once a soul is caught in the
whirlpool of life, it passes through many cycles of births and
deaths before it realizes the importance of freeing itself. The
three chief problems of an embodied soul or jva are anava
(egoism), pasas (attachments or bonds) and karma (binding
actions). They are responsible for their impure state. From the
heights of Brahmalok the souls descend deep into the depths of
Nature and partake some of its components. It would be millenniums before
they realize their folly and
make a sincere effort to return to their original home and be
themselves again.
Suggested Further Reading
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