Do non-living things have covered consciousness – why?
Non-believing things also have covered consciousness what is it and what is the use of that? when we talk about non-believing things life and consciousness, the two are intrinsically related so is it that everything is conscious? no, there is Thavar and there is Jada there is Jada and there is Chetana Jada being that it is not conscious so there is Mike now if I ask you do you exist? what kind of question is this? obviously I exist but if I ask this Mike, do you exist? not only the Mike can't reply I exist, the Mike doesn't even have the awareness to know its existence so it is not that everything has consciousness what is possible is that there may be souls, the Mike is not conscious but there can be souls with different degrees of coverings to their consciousness so in some cases some souls may be in forms which exhibit extremely diminished consciousness so for example if you consider a blade of grass now the same soul which can delight in eternal loving reciprocation with Krishna, when that soul goes into the body of a grass then practically speaking its entire conception of existence and its purpose gets reduced to I want to grow taller I want to grow maybe 1mm taller maybe 2mm taller, 5mm taller it doesn't even know mm but it is just that it has no other consumption apart from just growing a little taller, no matter how tall it grows, it is not going to become astonishingly tall so according to our circumstances according to the kind of body the soul has sometimes the consciousness is very reduced and sometimes the consciousness is very developed so non-living things don't have consciousness but sometimes the consciousness in some bodies may be so reduced that it is extremely diminished and it is very less visible now why does this diminution occur what is the purpose of itself this diminution, the Kshetra Kshetra Prakriti means material nature in general Kshetra refers to that portion of material nature over which a soul has been given control that means in my body my brain, that is my present Kshetra of course in future I may get some disease and I may not be able to function with my body also but right now this is my Kshetra your body is your Kshetra now some people have brilliant brains where they can just remember anything, they can analyze anything, they can process anything other people may have some mediocre brains so why is the difference there that is by one's karma whatever karma one has done in the past based on that we have different Kshetras and we have different capacity to process the Kshetra we have different degree of control over the Kshetra, all of us have similar throat but somebody moves that throat and beautiful music comes out and somebody else moves that throat and it sounds like a donkey's brain why is that? we don't have that control over the Kshetra, that is by our karma so just as even in human bodies different people may have different degrees of control over Kshetra like that some souls who have done some bad karma their extent of Kshetra gets significantly reduced so if the soul lives in a microbes body then its Kshetra becomes very limited its area of influence may become very limited and that is simply a means by which the soul gets a karmic reaction for what it has done in the past and once that karmic reaction gets exhausted the soul moves on to a next body after that.