Bhagavatam-daily 167 – 11.10.09 – Variety of levels of consciousness is due to variety of mediums, not of sources

Thank you shloka shloka so lord krishna is continuing here to describe the relationship between the soul and the body with the example of of fire and wood in the previous text it was mentioned that the fire is the active principle underlying the wood similarly the soul is the active principle within the body the source of consciousness now in this text the emphasis goes on to how do we understand the difference between if there is the same soul that is there in different bodies then why are the bodies different and not only why are the bodies different but beyond that why is the consciousness level of different bodies of different living beings different so we see that the level of consciousness say in an amoeba is different from the level of consciousness in a bird which is different from the level of consciousness in a human being so why is different so the examples continued over here nirodha means destruction or with respect to fire it will be extinguishing of fire utpatya means creation or manifestation anu is sometimes manifestation is small and sometimes brihan it is big nanatam so like that there is variety of manifestations variety of characteristics are there of the fire that is manifest in a particular kind of wood tatkutan guna means according to the characteristic of the wood that is there antah pravishta dhata so when the fire enters into and manifests through a particular kind of wood the flame that comes out is accordingly so if the wood is wet then the fire will be very smoky and it may not burn much but when the wood is big and shine is is very flammable at that time the fire will manifest much more so antah pravishta adhata means it manifests much faster much better so it accepts evam deha gunan paraha and similarly deha gunan paraha similarly the soul acquires the qualities according to the soul or the soul’s consciousness manifests according to the body deha gunan so the qualities of the body according to the quality of the body paraha the soul is transcendental manifests its consciousness now in the judeo-christian tradition there have been some thinkers who held that actually the because the consciousness in the body because the consciousness level of different living beings is so different so the souls within them itself should be different so thus they argue that there is something Christian thinkers who argued that only humans have souls in the sense that the soul which are capable of perceiving spiritual enlightenment are only present in humans whereas animals do they have souls well there are certain biblical verses which do say that the animals have souls so then what they do is that they try to explain away these verses by saying that the animals have different kind of souls so some philosophers have thought that I say that there are there are vegetative souls and there are sentient souls and there are so the vegetables have a certain kind of souls the animals have certain kind of souls and only human beings have the kind of soul which can attain eternal life which can actually attain enlightenment so which can perceive God their conception of enlightenment of course is the capacity to perceive God in terms of how God’s grace has come through Jesus anyway rather going into Christian philosophy the point is that the characteristics of the body the differences in the characteristics of the body are ascribed here in schools of thought like this to differences characteristics of the soul so rather than considering the soul to be eternal the soul is thought of as something which is the source of life but which is not inherently eternal and the soul in the plants and animals is considered destructible which is quite a peculiar conception of the soul so what is happening Krishna talks about this also in the this kind of mentality in the 18th chapter when he says that in 18.21 that so those who see that the that or that knowledge in Jnanam which sees diversity different living beings have different kinds of bodies and therefore those who ascribe that therefore the soul must be different so they ascribe that the soul themselves must be different this is such knowledge is in the mode of passion in passion one just sticks to appearances and ascribes the essence ascribes the qualities of the appearance to the qualities of the substance the qualities of the essence so rather than going beyond the appearance to the substance one equates the appearance with the substance so now this Krishna in this section is saying that this is not knowledge real knowledge means that one understands that the same fire is there we may use the same matchstick we may use the same source of illumination but depending on the way the object is the wood is whether it is wood or whether it is wet or semi wet or fully dry or what kind of wood it is or for that matter if it’s not wood there’s some other kind of fuel how inflammable it is depending on that the fire will manifest in different ways so similarly the soul’s consciousness manifests in undeveloped or semi developed or well developed ways depending on the body through which it manifests so now where does this happen actually it is in the subtle body the gross body is made of the same earth water fire air ether for all living beings and of course they also have their bodies also have mind intelligence ego but the mind intelligence ego are developed in such a way are constituted in such a way that they are capable of enlightenment in the body in the body of humans that means just as some wood may be so wet that it does not allow the fire to blaze much or suppose we have a bulb but the bulb is put around and is put in a case which is completely the filament of the bulb is put in a case which is completely black and thick and dark then nothing filters through it and because nothing filters through it so nobody can see anything through it and in that way the person stays in illusion stays in ignorance so that way although the filament is there nobody can see that there is a luminous source because it is nearly almost completely covered similarly in some bodies the soul’s consciousness gets completely covered and is almost like in microbes very little perception of consciousness or in humans where it’s like almost it’s a largely transparent very close to transparent so there the capacity of perception is much greater so Krishna says that don’t confuse the variety of levels of consciousness with a variety of sources of consciousness the source is the same but depending on the medium through which the consciousness is manifesting the level of consciousness varies Thank you.