So much of the crazy things that people do in this material world are due simply to a wrong understanding of the soul. Because they misunderstand the soul, they identify with the body; they think they are their body, when actually the body is just a vehicle, an instrument, a covering like a suit of clothes. Therefore Kṛṣṇa begins His spiritual instructions to Arjuna by explaining the nature of the soul.
na tv evaham jatu nasam
na tvam neme janadhipah
na caiva na bhavisyamah
sarve vayam atah param“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.12]
This is a very important sloka. The materialistic scientists and philosophers say that after finishing this body, we no longer exist, and everything is finished. That is nothing new. That is also Buddhist philosophy, and in Vedic times there were atheists like Carvaka Muni.
Carvaka Muni said: bhasmi-bhutasya dehasya kutah punar agamano bhavet: “Why you are worrying about next life? As soon as this body is burned into ashes, everything is finished.” There are three ends of the body: to become earth, or to become stool, or to become ashes. For those who are buried, like the Christians and Mohammedans do, the body becomes earth. And those who throw the body to be eaten by jackals and crows, the body becomes stool. According to the Vedic tradition, the body is burned.
But any way we dispose of the body, it eventually becomes dust. Everything material has come up from the earth, and in the end it returns to its source. The Bible says, “From dust thou come, to dust thou goest.” This beautiful body, very nice body, will become dust. This is the end of the material body. We are taking so much care of this body, but the ultimate end of this body is either stool, earth or ashes. Dust.
The material body exists only for a short time. But the soul is eternal, both in the past and the future. Therefore the soul is much more valuable and important than the material body.
But foolish persons who are in the bodily concept of life are thinking, “After all, this body will be finished someday. So as long the body is there, and our senses are healthy, let us enjoy. Why should there be so many restrictions: no illicit sex, no meat eating, no intoxication, no gambling? These are all nonsense. Let us enjoy life.” This is atheistic life; foolish life. They do not know that the body is not all there is to life.
This is the first lesson of spiritual life, real spiritual knowledge. But the materialistic rascals do not know. Therefore Kṛṣṇa first of all chastised Arjuna:
asocyan anvasocas tvam
prajna-vadams ca bhasase
gatasun agatasums ca
nanusocanti panditah“While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.” [Bhagavad-gita 2.11]
Kṛṣṇa says, “You do not know the real facts of life, but you are talking like a very learned man. Just try to understand the actual truth.” Then He says, na tv evaham jatu nasam: “Never was there a time when I did not exist;” na tvam neme janadhipah: “nor you, nor all these kings.”
The first thing to understand about spiritual life is that there is no such thing as nasam, nonexistence. We never die, and Kṛṣṇa will explain later on more clearly, how we do not die. Jatu nasam: no death at any time. Kṛṣṇa’s statement is unconditional. It is not that sometimes we die and sometimes don’t, or that our continued existence is dependent on something else. No, jatu nasam: not at any time.
We may question: “Kṛṣṇa, You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, so You may not die. But we ordinary living entities die.” So Kṛṣṇa says, na tv evaham jatu nasam na tvam: “Neither you nor I ever die.”
Then we may doubt, “You are Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna is Your friend. Therefore the others will die.” No. Neme janadhipah: “Also all these people, all these soldiers and kings who have assembled here, will not die. There is no end to their existence. They’ll never die.”
Finally we may suspect, “But all those present before You on the battlefield were liberated by seeing You and hearing You speak Bhagavad-gita. So, they may have attained immortality, but we still will die. So Kṛṣṇa assures us further that na caiva na bhavisyamah, it is not true that we shall ever cease to exist in the future. And finally, sarve vayam atah param: everyone, sarve vayam, forever after, atah param.
This means we shall continue to exist as individuals, eternally. All of us; Kṛṣṇa does not say that “Because I am God, and you are My friend, we will exist forever, and all others will be finished.” No, Kṛṣṇa specifically states that eternal existence applies to everyone. This is the first item of real spiritual knowledge.
Other spiritual traditions say that only the soul who is favored by God will attain immortality; or that the soul will merge in God and lose his identity and individuality; or that at the end of this life, everything is finished. As we have analyzed above, Kṛṣṇa specifically denies all these possibilities in His very first teaching to Arjuna. This is confirmed in the Vedas:
nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam
eko bahunam yo vidadhati kaman“The Supreme Personality of Godhead is the prime eternal among all eternals. He is the supreme conscious living entity of all conscious living entities, and He alone is maintaining all of them.” [Katha Upanisad 2.2.13]
Nityanam means ever existing. Nitya means ever, always. So both Kṛṣṇa and every one of us are ever-existing, because we are part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa. As Kṛṣṇa’s separated parts and parcels, if Kṛṣṇa is ever-existing, then we are also ever-existing. A particle of gold is also qualitatively identical with the gold in the gold mine. The quantitative values of the gold mine and the gold particle are different. A particle of gold may be worth, say, a penny; but a gold mine contains hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of gold. Both of them are gold, but the quantity is different.
Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Spirit, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is all-pervading, omnipresent. He is so expansive, He is present everywhere. We are also all-pervading, but only within our body. Kṛṣṇa is all-pervading throughout the whole creation, and we are also all-pervading, but only in this body. The quality is similar but the scale, the quantity, is vastly different.
I know the pains and pleasures of my body; you know the pains and pleasures of your body. So our quality of all-pervasiveness is limited to this body. If I pinch myself, I’ll feel pain, but you won’t feel it. Therefore, you and I are not all-pervading outside our present body. But Kṛṣṇa is all-pervading. When I feel pain, Kṛṣṇa knows it.
vedaham samatitani
vartamanani carjuna
bhavisyani ca bhutani
mam tu veda na kascana“O Arjuna, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, I know everything that has happened in the past, all that is happening in the present, and all things that are yet to come. I also know all living entities; but Me no one knows.” [Bhagavad-gita 7.26]
Vedaham samatitani: “I know everything.” That is Kṛṣṇa. Try to understand the distinction between Kṛṣṇa and us. He’s all-pervading, and He’s nitya, ever-existing. We are also ever-existing. Nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam [Katha Upanisad 2.2.13]: we have knowledge, and Kṛṣṇa has knowledge. We have limited knowledge, but Kṛṣṇa has unlimited knowledge. That is the difference. We are conscious and Kṛṣṇa is also conscious, but He’s unlimitedly conscious: nityo nityanam cetanas cetananam. Kṛṣṇa is the chief eternal being among many, many eternal beings, and He is the unlimited conscious entity among many, many limited conscious entities.
kesagra-sata-bhagasya
satamsa-sadrsatmakah
jivah suksma-svarupo ’yam
sankhyatito hi cit-kanah“If we divide the tip of a hair into a hundred parts and then take one of these parts and divide it again into a hundred parts, that very fine division is the size of but one of the numberless living entities. They are all cit-kana, particles of spirit, not matter.” [Caitanya-caritamrta, Madhya-lila 19.140]
This sloka describes the dimension of the jiva. This tiny particle of consciousness, smaller than an atom, is the living entity, the jiva. And there is no limit to the number of living entities. Living entities are everywhere. Scientists are finding living entities in ice, in hot vents in the ocean, even in the clouds. Similarly, within the earth, in the air, even within the fire, there are living entities.
The materialistic rascals do not know this. Because nitya means ever-existing, existing everywhere. So the living entities do not die in the fire. You can kill the body, but not the atomic spirit soul. They are everywhere, in everything. You cannot kill the soul.
For example, in abortion, the body is killed. But the soul is not killed. That does not justify abortion, because the soul has a right to that particular body. If you create some inconvenience to the soul who has taken shelter in the womb by killing the body, then he’ll have to search out another body to accept his karma.
Therefore, killing is sinful because you create inconvenience for that particular soul. He was taking shelter, according to his karma:
sri-bhagavan uvaca
karmana daiva-netrena
jantur dehopapattaye
striyah pravista udaram
pumso retah-kanasrayah“The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body.” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 3.31.1]
By his karma, by the law of God, he was given shelter in the womb to develop a body, and if you kill that body, you go against the order of the Supreme, karmana daiva-netrena. Suppose you rent a room in some house, and somebody does not allow you to occupy that room, that is criminal. It is unlawful, even in the secular state.
Similarly, if a living entity is developing a body, and you kill it, you immediately become a criminal, punishable by the laws of karma. And the living entity who is stopped from developing the body and put into inconvenience, he’s also sinful. It may be that simply he’s wandering from one womb to another, to another, because he committed the sinful activity of abortion. Now the man who causes his abortion, he also being punished, “You’ll never see the light of day. You’ll simply have to move from one womb to another, to another, for as many times as you have committed abortion.” Nature’s punishment, karma, is like that: an eye for an eye.
But foolish materialistic people do not know, because they are ignorant of the science of the soul. So they have created an entire civilization based on killing animals and killing each other. As long as we keep killing, we do not deserve real spiritual knowledge; the karmic reaction of killing will always take it away. Before we can have real spiritual knowledge, we have to resign from the materialistic killing civilization, and join the Vedic civilization, which is based on consciousness and spiritual knowledge, through the gate of the Esoteric Teaching.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
