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Monday, July 27, 2015

Modes of Nature



Bhagavad-Gītā Chapter 14

The 14th chapter of the Bhagavad-Gita deals with the way in which the qualities of material nature hold the soul in a kind of  hypnotic state which corresponds to the imagined reality of the material world. He explains to Arjuna that this system of wisdom is the highest form of subjective education by which even the great sages attain supreme perfection. One who realizes this becomes godlike in the sense that his innate spiritual perfection is revealed. Such a divine realized soul is neither born at the time of creation, nor dies at the universal annihilation. This is real education.

Kṛṣṇa says: 

मम योनिर् महद्-ब्रह्म
तस्मिन् गर्भं दधाम्य् अहम्
सम्भवः सर्व-भूतानां
ततो भवति भारत

mama yonir mahad-brahma
tasmin garbhaṃ dadhāmy aham
sambhavaḥ sarva-bhūtānāṃ
 tato bhavati bhārata
BG 14.3

“The mahat-brahma or “trimodal material nature in its entirety undivided by space and time” is the womb of reality impregnated by me with the seeds of consciousness, unborn souls bent on exploitation. In that region all beings headed by the creator Himself are generated.”


Here, Kṛṣṇa uses the metaphor of seeds. The Supreme Absolute disseminates the seeds of consciousness into this world. Living beings gradually evolve into different situations according to their particular levels of consciousness. They grow and adapt, surviving in different living conditions, species, and biological frameworks according to their individual levels of consciousness.


As consciousness evolves or devolves it generates adequate apparatus in the form of the variety of living species over milennia. Living consciousness is compared here to a seed. The Supreme Consciousness impregnates the universe with living energy. Just as seeds grow and flourish, the living entities within a universe activate the  genetic structures necessary for development and exploitation within the perceived world.


All souls are emanations from the Supreme Reality, just as light is an emanation from the sun. Through the agency of the three qualities of material nature each individual soul is held in a hypnotic state in which she is convinced that she is the subject.

And so it is that we feel that we are the subjects, the center of the universe; we feel that everything else is merely an object meant for our exploitation. The qualities of material nature enforce the illusion that we are exploiters and that the entire environment is for our exploitation. This is the foundation of misconception.


In reality, we are not the Subject, the center of the universe. The cause is in the higher world. Krishna is the Supreme Absolute Truth.

Here, in the 14th chapter, Krishna explains how the world of experience springs up from the divine will.

The Supersubjective generates the subjective universe of objective space and time. We are not describing a so-called “special creation,” but a gradual generation, development and evolution through millennia involving consciousness and its dazzling interplay with the objective world.

Consciousness is everywhere. Nature abhors a vacuum. We are engaged in a holographic space-time continuum constructed of subjective reality. It is as if the Absolute were the magician: he can show one thing to you something entirely different to me.


In the previous chapter we learned about the subject and the super subject. In reality, where I am not the subject nor are you. I am not the center of this universe, and neither are you. There is a Super subject: in a sense, we are all his Object. But by his mercy we are given the illusion of being subjects within the objective material world.

The Super Subject, the Universal Subject has such power.


This is the essential message of the 14th chapter of Bhagavad-Gītā as I understand it.

In the 14th chapter of Bhagavad-Gita, Kṛṣṇa explains the origin of the universe. According to this understanding, it is not that from time eternal the fossils are developing into this world of experience. In fact it is quite the opposite. When we conceive of this world on the basis of fossils, we merely dive deep into an intense ocean of ignorance.

In Subjective Evolution of Consciousness, Shridhar Maharaja comments,

“Everything comes from above. What we experience at present is like the outcome of hypnosis. In the process of hypnosis, the hypnotist can make us withdraw our consciousness from anything at any moment and show us another way to view reality.

 In the same way God it is free, and whatever he wills becomes reality. Whatever he imagines becomes reality. He can force us to see something, and when he does so we cannot see it in any other way. 

If you can understand this principle you can understand how everything is possible in divinity. Then you can have some faith in what is Godhead. In a sense Godhead means this: the origin of creation. And yet this creation is only an insignificant part of his divine nature. He has infinite qualities and activities.





This world in which we live is only a negligible part of the cosmic manifestation. The whole basis of everything is there in hand. It comes from up to down and not from downed up. To the idea that everything is developing from downward up we must say no matter does not create spirit to say that from a fossil intelligence is coming is a fool's conception.

Consciousness, spirit, is all pervading. It is present even in the trees, stones, Earth, ether, air – everywhere. And to know the truth, we must connect to the conscious principle of the infinite.


What is the infinite? He is Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, all sympathetic, all loving.

Our real aspiration must be to have a direct connection with him, leaving aside the charm of his created substance. We should want to negotiate how we can have a connection with the Creator himself.

And his position is not simply that of creator. This world is a creation of a lower order. But a higher creation also exists in the plane of reality which is infinitely higher than this world of experience.

We should inquire whether it is possible for us to have a life and that soil. We should try to understand what are the layers of reality in that realm of consciousness, and how we can go higher and higher in that plane.



We should inquire about that and find out how we can enter there. We must try to understand what is the key to the entrance into that transcendental abode. This should be the basis for search for truth. We should inquire into how to become free from both the plane of renunciation and the plane of exploitation.”

Bhaktivedanta Swami comments:

This is an explanation of the world: everything that takes place is due to the combination of kṣetra and kṣetrajṇa, the body and the spirit soul. This combination of material nature and the living entity is made possible by the Supreme God Himself. The mahat-tattva is the total cause of the total cosmic manifestation, and because in the total substance of the material cause there are three modes of nature, it is sometimes called Brahman. 

The Supreme Personality impregnates that total substance, and thus innumerable universes become possible. This total material sub­ stance, the mahat-tattva, is described as Brahman in the Vedic literature: tasmād etad brahma nāma-rūpam annaṃ ca jayate.  Into that Brahman the seeds of the living entities are impregnated by the Supreme Person.  The scorpion lays its eggs in piles of rice, and sometimes it is said that the scorpion is born out of rice. But the rice is not the cause of the scor­ pion. Actually, the eggs were laid by the mother. Similarly, material nature is not the cause of the birth of the living entities. The seed is given by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and they only seem to come out as products of material nature. Thus every living entity, according to his past activities, has a different body, created by this material nature, and the entity can enjoy or suffer according to his past deeds. The Lord is the cause of all the manifestations of living entities in this material world.



Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Purush and Prakriti: Masculine and Feminine, god and goddess.

नारायणं नमस्कृत्य नरं चैव नरोत्तमम्

 देवीं सरस्वतीं चैव ततो जयम् उदीरयेत्






महाभारत
Mahābhārata
As retold by

Michael Dolan, B.V. Mahāyog

Bhagavad-Gītā Chapter 13 continued


When Arjuna asks Kṛṣṇa about prakṛti  and puruṣa  he is asking profound philosophical questions that get at the heart of reality.

Puruṣa and Prakṛti:

Subject and Object


We looked at the word Puruṣa  in Sanskrit from the point of view of  “subject,” where Puruṣa   means “subject” and prakṛti   means “object,”  and concluded with Śrīdhara Mahārāja’s argument that subject determines object, that is that the subjective world, or “consciousness” is responsible for the existence of the objective or perceived world. Without perception by the subject the so-called “objective” world has no real existence.


This is the basic concept of idealism. But Śrīdhara Mahārāja, and indeed Kṛṣṇa Himself takes the argument a step further. Without perception on the part of the Supersubject, the so-called “objective” world has no reality. The world is real then, but it is real because it is perceived as such by God Himself in the form of the Super Subject, or Paramātmā. Śrīdhara Mahārāja refers to this as Ideal Realism. He finds some common ground between the views of Vedāntic philosophy and the reasoning of Berkeley and Hegel.


Is the world in the mind or is the mind in the world?


The idea that the world is unreal is seen in opposing Vedantic commentators. The followers of Śankarācārya are known as “Mayāvādīs” because they support the view that while Brahman or spirit is real, the world is unreal, being only an illusion. (brahma satyam, jagan mithya).

Is perception reality?

Since they argue for oneness, the evident duality of existence is hard to explain.  If all is one, how is it possible that matter exists alongside spirit? Their theory of “illusion” is supposed to reconcile this. But it’s hard to explain how the reality of the spiritual absolute becomes perverted into the unreality of the “illusory” material world.


Is the material world "maya," or unreal? Or temporary but real as a part of a higher reality? 

 The followers of Śrī Caitanya consider this analysis inexact.  The world is real.  Its reality is temporal. Duality exists. We are not “one” with the absolute. We share certain qualities: just as a sun-ray shares the ultraviolet qualities of the radiant sun, so the individual soul or jiva  shares the qualities of sat cit  and ananda  with the Supreme Consciousness.  But there is a great difference in degree: Katha Upanishad says, nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam eko bahunam yo vidadhati kaman: “Among eternal conscious beings, there is a a prime eternal among all eternals. He is the supreme living entity of all living entities, and He alone is maintaining all life.” The distinction between the physical and metaphysical worlds is real but inconceivable. (acintya-bheda-abheda tattva) It is beyond our cognitive capacity. 

This is to say that both duality and nonduality are real and coexist, but beyond the capacity of reason. The German philosopher Kant established the limits of reason, and yet he believed that there is transcendental experience beyond reason. 

If you stare at the below optical illusion you will see movement where there is no movement. Cognitively you know that there is no movement, but your eyes tell you the circles move. 






So the nature of  puruṣa and prakṛtī  as well as the distinction between the two is real but inconceivable. Divine Reality is approachable only by faith. Faith, as an instrument beyond cognition, can guide us in realizing the true nature of consciousness and our relationship with the absolute.

Faith can guide us...

Words like “subject” and “object” have a dry philosophical tone. The conception of  puruṣa and prakṛtī  may be more readily understood if we consider of  puruṣa to mean “predominator” and prakṛtī  to mean “predominated.” 

The "Goddess Principle"

In fact, Śrīdhara Maharāja’s translator has titled the 13th Chapter  “The Predominated and the Predominator, ” the Sanskrit, prakṛti-puruṣa-viveka-yoga प्रकृति-पुरुष-बिबेक य़ोग The title of this chapter means that the real point under discussion is the nature of puruṣa and prakṛtī.  Leaving aside “Subject” and “Object,” or “Spirit and “Matter” as possibly vague, the words puruṣa and prakṛtī  can also be defined as “Enjoyer and Enjoyed,” “Predominator and Predominated.”

In the higher scheme of reality, God Himself is Puruṣa, the Supreme Person, the Enjoyer. Reality is By Himself and For Himself and exists only for His pleasure. Prakṛti then is what is “enjoyed” by Him. Sexually speaking Prakṛtī is feminine, where Puruṣa is masculine.  The positive and negative aspects of divinity imply both god and godesss.As such, Lakshmi may be considered as the Prakriti of Vishnu, for example.

Vishnu and Lakshmi: Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine


 Another example of the god-goddess principle is Shiva-Parvati, where Shiva represents the collective spiritual energetic and Parvati the material receptive energy whose combination gives rise to the evolution of materialistic existence.


Shiva and Parvati

The Shiva-Lingam is the representation of their combined progenerative aspects: where male productive spiritual power meets female receptive material energy.

Shiva Lingam, Angkor Wat.


The Divine Feminine Energy complements the Divine Masculine Energetic as Predominating and Predominated Moieties of the Same Absolute Truth, according the the Chaitanya Saraswata school of Vaishnavism, as seen in the Deity of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa.



Kṛṣṇa, left with Rādhā, right.

When the living entity misidentifies himself as the “Enjoyer” material nature acts as “Enjoyed.”  All living entities are really the “objects” or prakṛti of the original Supreme Person (Puruṣa), the Super Subject. When an individual soul misappropriates the role of puruṣa,  through false ego, she tries to enjoy the misconceived material nature called prakṛti.  

When this situation is corrected through self-realization, the individual soul called jiva  returns to her constitutional position of prakṛti. In a strict philosophical sense, the jīva souls are considered as feminine, predominated in nature, as counterposed to the masculine predominating nature of the Supreme Absolute. 

As a way of getting around the sexual aspects of positive and negative conception with the use of the words puruṣa and prakṛtī m where masculine is positive and feminine is negative, another terminology is used here, that of kṣetra  and kṣetrajna. 



Field Theory


Kṣetra  means “field.”  Here Bhagavad-Gītā takes up the question of “field theory.” The macro-cosmic “field” is the space-time continuum, of vast but finite dimensions, universe whose elliptical orbit describes an egg or  aṇḍa.

The knower of the field is called kṣetrajña.  This term refers to both the subjective knower, the infinitesimal quantum of consciousness known as jiva,  as well as the supersubjective knower, the infinite Paramātmā.


In his explanation of the "field theory" of consciousness established in the 13th Chapter of Bhagavad-Gītā, Bhaktivedānta Swāmī comments, 

"Arjuna was inquisitive about prakrti, or nature, puruṣa, the enjoyer, kṣetra, the field, kṣetrajña, its knower, and of knowledge and the object of knowledge. When he inquired about all these, Kṛṣṇa said that this body is called the field and that one who knows this body is called the knower of the field. This body is the field of activity for the conditioned soul. The conditioned soul is entrapped in material existence, and he attempts to lord over material nature. 




And so, according to his capacity to dominate material nature, he gets a field of activity. That field of activity is the body. 

And what is the body? The body is made of senses. The conditioned soul wants to enjoy sense gratification, and, according to his capacity to enjoy sense gratification, he is offered a body, or field of activity. Therefore the body is called kṣetra, or the field of activity for the conditioned soul. Now, the person who identifies himself with the body is called kṣetrajña, the knower of the field. It is not very difficult to understand the difference between the field and its knower, the body and the knower of the body. 

Any person can consider that from childhood to old age he undergoes so many changes of body and yet is still one person, remaining. Thus there is a difference between the knower of the field of activities and the actual field of activities. A living conditioned soul can thus understand that he is different from the body. It is described in the beginning--that the living entity is within the body and that the body is changing from childhood to boyhood and from boyhood to youth and from youth to old age, and the person who owns the body knows that the body is changing. 

The owner is distinctly kṣetrajna. Sometimes we understand that I am happy, I am mad, I am a woman, I am a dog, I am a cat: these are the knowers. The knower is different from the field. Although we use many articles-our clothes, etc.-we know that we are different from the things used. Similarly, we also understand by a little contemplation that we are different from the body."

In the first six chapters of Bhagavad-Gītā, the knower of the body, the living entity, and the position by which he can understand the Supreme Lord are described. In the middle six chapters of the Gītā, the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the relationship between the individual soul and the Supersoul in regard to devotional service are described.

 The superior position of the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the subordinate position of the individual soul are definitely defined in these chapters. The living entities are subordinate under all circumstances, but in their forgetfulness they are suffering. When enlightened by pious activities, they approach the Supreme Lord in different capacities-as the distressed, those in want of money, the inquisitive, and those in search of knowledge. That is also described. 

Now, starting with the Thirteenth Chapter, how the living entity comes into contact with material nature, how he is delivered by the Supreme Lord through the different methods of fruitive activities, cultivation of knowledge, and the discharge of devotional service are explained. Although the living entity is completely different from the material body, he somehow becomes related."