​Where is the soul present in plants?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

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Where is the soul present? Is soul present in grains or where is soul present in plants? I have not read any specific statement about where the soul is present. But there is that statement of Chandogya Upanishad, which Prabhupada quotes in the 13th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, that the soul when it falls from the spiritual world, it comes through rains.
And in the rains, when it falls on the ground, then they grow as grains. And the grains are eaten by human beings. And the human beings, that soul enters through semen and then it goes into another body.
And that’s how the soul gets a body on earth. That is one way it can happen. That’s not the only way it can happen.
That’s one way it is happening. So, it seems that in that case, grains are talked about as containing the souls. So, broadly speaking, how do we understand the presence of the soul? We may say it’s by consciousness.
But then how do we know whether something is conscious or not? So, actually speaking, that which is having life, is matter which does not have life and matter which has life. Matter is never living. When I’m talking about has life means matter which has soul in it.
And matter which has soul, not just as an abstract presence, but as an active principle. It means that that matter comprises a body for that soul in some way. So, when we talk about the embodied soul, otherwise we talk about the ensouled matter.
Ensouled matter is matter in which soul is present. So, when there is ensouled matter, that undergoes the six transformations. There is creation, there is growth, maintenance, reproduction and there is destruction.
Maintenance is there. Creation, there is creation, growth, maintenance, reproduction, deterioration and destruction. Now, when we talk about the matter which has no soul in it, that basically goes only through three phases.
It’s created, it deteriorates and it is destroyed. If my hand is cut, then it will clot and it will try to maintain itself. Now, if this bar is cut, that bar will not try to heal and join itself.
So, that tendency to maintain itself, that tendency to reproduce, that tendency to grow, that indicates the presence of life, which indicates the presence of consciousness. So, in that sense, the seeds which grow, there is soul present in them, without which growth would not have happened. They grow, they reproduce, they maintain themselves.
All that things are there. Now, at what stage the soul comes in that seed, that is something which is difficult to say. I have not seen any shastic praman.
So, it could well be that the souls are looking for bodies and whenever there is a suitable biochemical medium, the souls enter over there. That means, it’s not necessary that all grains have souls. But when the grains are placed in a situation where they can grow, where they can grow into, either we have to talk about seeds which grow into plants or grains which grow into further grains, then maybe it is at that time the soul enters.
So, I have not seen any specific praman about that. That’s why I cannot say. But the broad principle you can see, wherever there is growth, maintenance, reproduction happening, it has to be soul present over there.
Because some grains do definitely go through this, so the soul enters. And exactly when it enters, that is something which is not necessarily always in the same mechanism. Sometimes we say that it is the consciousness of the soul or consciousness of the husband and the wife which determines the kind of child that is born.
Now that is true, but then it is also said that actually there are so many, when a man and a woman unite, there are actually so many sperms through the semen, and there are so many sperms that enter into it. So, is it pumsa? It takes shelter of a sperm. So, is it that all the sperms contain the souls? Or is it that only the sperm that contains the soul that enters the womb, that ignites with the egg and that’s how a child is produced? Or is it that actually there are many sperms that contain souls? Not necessarily all, but many sperms that contain souls.
And depending on the consciousness at that time, the soul who has the appropriate consciousness, that soul unites with the egg at that time. So, this is all subtle. Gahana Karma Mohavati as we say.
So, this is not really within human perception. And then scripture doesn’t tell us anything specifically as far as I have seen, I have not read it. So, we really can’t know about it.
But what we understand is that there are subtle mechanisms by which the souls are transmigrated from one body to another and then they are given appropriate bodily expression. So, seeds that grow definitely contain the soul. At what stage they get it? That may vary according to various factors, timely circumstances or whatever else.