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By Jayaram V
Much of the speculative philosophy of Hinduism is about the
nature of the 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 the 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 Non-reality 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
numerous
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 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, very much like the super classes in an
object oriented programming language. Knowledge of the tattvas
of Nature is really vital for us to understand how
the individual souls, which are free, get caught in the process of creation,
very much like the fish in a net,
and acquire physical bodies having distinct forms and shapes to
become the embodied souls. The unsuspecting individual souls are not
ensnared by Nature with one magical touch. The process is rather a long
drawn and 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 unsuspecting souls, in small steps, first by drawing
their
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 soul's attention is diverted from itself (I am) to the not-self
(me and mine), it does not remember anymore who it is. In its purest state
a
soul exists all by itself in its present moment. It does not
rely upon sticky
memory like we do. It is all knowing in the sense that it can
know anything and everything without effort by the mere exercise
of its will. While doing so it does not rely upon any external
agent such as the senses or the mind. It is pure awareness which
is without center and can be anywhere and everywhere.
In their purest form, individual souls do not accumulate knowledge. They do not
use memory like we do to remember things. They experience reality
directly in the total awareness of the moment, without the burden
of memory and authority or the distinction of the knower and the
known. In contrast as embodied souls, we experience reality
objectively in relation to the things we perceive or remember or imagine. In their
subjective state, the pure souls remain completely self-absorbed, withdrawn
and immersed in themselves. When they are drawn to Nature, they
become objective and distracted from the knowledge of their original subjective
state. This is described in the Hindu scriptures as the state of
ignorance or lack of true knowledge (avidya).
In their outgoing mode, the souls become attracted to the components of
Nature or the tattvas and develop corresponding qualities,
abilities and organs in or around themselves, which they use to
seize or repel the objects of their senses according to their
desires. The components or tattvas of Nature which become part
of their physical being 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 get into the habit of going out and
reaching out to the objects of Nature based upon their previous
experience or accumulated knowledge,
they develop desire and aversion for various things which in
turn motivate them to engage in various kinds of actions. Having
lost their spontaneity and total awareness, they become
dependent upon 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 develop physical personalities using the
components of Nature and entangle themselves with the things of Nature
out of attraction or aversion for them, they indulge in egoistic and selfish actions
according to their desires. Desire ridden actions in turn
produce their karma and lead them deeper into the causative
world (samsara), binding them to the cycle of births and deaths
and making any possible escape almost impossible. Thus over a period of a few million years, the souls
which were originally free and resplendent with the radiance of
Brahman, become so involved and entangled with the gross
matter of Nature that they
become limited in their abilities and deluded about their true nature, like birds caught in a
snare.
It is true that God intends the individual souls that have no
body, no organs of knowledge, no duality and no mind, to develop
them and become distinct and different by the alluring power of
Nature in order to be something which they are not. In reality the soul
is an indivisible one without a second. But as a part of
creation, it spreads out
so deeply into the objective world, that it comes to believe its
new existence to be real and its false self or ego as the real
self.
This identification with the false self or ego leads to its suffering and bondage.
The false self envelops the true self like a thick cloud and
blots out its true radiance.
Visualize a particle of light, possessing the DNA of the
universe, descending into the earth's atmosphere and gathering energy
and matter around itself, resulting in the formation of a
breathing and pulsating being, having a distinct form and body and the ability
to use its mind and senses to engage in motivated actions for
its survival. Precisely this is how the individual souls descemd from the heights of
their glory and pure consciousness to become embodied souls with limited freedom and awareness.
If an individual soul loses its purity and awareness by going
out and seeking things, it can regain its true state and become
free by withdrawing from things and not seeking them. If the
process of entanglement is the cause of our suffering,
detachment and disentanglement are the best answer to recover
freedom. Our scriptures
suggest that embodied souls can reverse their current plight
by engaging themselves in specific actions such as the
following.
- Withdrawing the 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 the thoughts and desires to cultivate
equanimity, detachment and dispassion.
- Performing actions without desire and offering them to
God.
- Identifying oneself as an eternal soul rather than a
physical entity.
- Seeking the guidance of an enlightened master who has
walked the path.
- Cultivating the quality of sattva or purity by engaging
in good actions and ethical living as prescribed in the
scriptures such as the Bhagavadgita.
- Seeking the help of God through devotion and surrender
- Performing acts of self-denial and self-negation to keep
the ego under check.
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 true state of its existence the importance of freeing itself. The
three chief problems of an embodied soul or jiva are anava
(egoism), pasas (attachments or bonds) and karma (binding
actions). They are responsible for its impure state and limited
potency. 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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