Evolving From The Physical To The Spiritual Stage
– by Shrila Bhakti Swarup Tirtha Maharaj
Contrary to the widespread notion based on Darwin’s theory of evolution, the Vedas reveal that all the 8,400,000 varieties of bodies always existed simultaneously without any changes in their biological structures.
Basically, the theistic Vedic philosophy propounds that the process of evolution is diametrically opposite to that of Darwin. This means, simpler life forms came into being with the help of more complex living beings endowed with uncommon abilities and extraordinary intelligence.
Thus, in Vedic view, the evolution is not the development of physical form as speculatively claimed by Charles Darwin but of the consciousness. The conditioned souls in simple unicellular forms, transmigrate to a higher level progressively until they reach the human form after many births in their evolution.
Put differently, what happens during evolution is that the spirit soul trapped in lower levels of existence is gradually elevated to higher planes, assuming increasingly complex bodily structures.
It is just like a person living in a small apartment moving gradually into more spacious and comfortable residences depending on his/her ability to purchase high-priced property increases due to his/her becoming more and more prosperous over the years. Thus, gradually freed in small measures from material illusion, the conditioned soul reaches a very advanced level of consciousness of human beings.
Thus, he acquires the intelligence for understanding his true identity and liberates himself from the control of matter and comes to reside in the eternal spiritual world of God.
All Vaishnavas, pure devotees of God Krishna/Vishnu which include Ramanuja, Madhva, Vishnuswami, Nimbarka, Six Goswamis of Vrindavana, Sant Tukaram, Namadev and many others became liberated while they existed on this planet and finally gained residence in the transcendental abode of God to continue to render loving devotional service.
The Vedic view rejects outright the current popular idea based on the flawed theory that all lifeforms in this living world manifested through evolution. The Vedic account states that, in the beginning of the Creation itself, all the 8,400,000 species – humans, beasts, birds and trees – appeared simultaneously in the cosmos and not as simpler beings that evolved into a more complex forms through millions of years.
Actually, the conscious living beings of this world constitute atomic particle (anu chit) of the Complete Consciousness (vibhu chit) or the Supreme Consciousness, the God. This is proclaimed by the Supreme Lord Krishna himself in the Gita (15/7):
mamaivamsho jiva-loke
jiva-bhutah sanatanah
manah-sasthanindriyani
prakriti-sthani karshati
The living entities in this conditioned world are My
eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they
are struggling very hard with the six senses, which
include the mind.
The knowledge portion of the Vedas, Kathopanishad (1-2-20) lends corroboration to this fact:
anor aniyan mahato mahiyan
atmasya jantor nihito guhayam
tam akratuh pashyati vita-shoko
dhatuh prasadan mahimanam atmanah
“Both the Supersoul [Paramatma] and the atomic soul
[jivatma] are situated on the same tree of the body
within the same heart of the living being, and only one
who has become free from all material desires as well
as lamentations can, by the grace of the Supreme,
understand the glories of the soul.”
Therefore, the Vedic explanation of the origin of species is different. It maintains that at first, the transcendental Supreme Conscious personality of Lord Vishnu created Lord Brahma, the first conscious entity to appear in the cosmos. The Lord Brahma then created the subsequent varieties of living forms.
Thus, this secondary and subordinate creator endowed with amazing ability for creation brought forth various species of life. His initial descendants are known as ‘Prajapatis’, ancestors who possess super-human qualities. In turn, they produced living beings with different types of bodies.
Thus, it is Lord Brahma, the common ancestor, from whom all the living beings descend and it is the Prajapatis who reproduce living beings with modification. Darwin’s theory opposed this true explanation and continued to remain merely a hypothesis born of his self-confessed addiction to speculation and certainly not a proven fact. Most modern scientists have also rejected Darwin’s theory on different grounds.
Since everything is a unit of consciousness, everything is basically considered a person. Hence, in the Vedic tradition the Earth is represented as a female goddess, Bhumi devi, the Moon as male god Soma deva, and the Sun, as male god Vivasvan. According to Shrimad Bhagavatam, a famous Vedic scripture, in the distant past, the mountains had wings and they could move from one place to another.
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the knowledge portion o f the Vedas, describes the size of the soul as:
balagra-shata-bhagasya
shatadha kalpitasya cha
bhago jivah vijneyah
sa chanantyaya kalpate
“When the upper point of a hair is divided into one
hundred parts and again each of these parts is further
divided into one hundred parts, each such part is the
measurement of the dimension of the spirit soul.”
This has been revealed by the liberated saints who had a true vision of the reality. Saintly persons such as Vyasa deva, Shuka deva, Narada and others say jiva, the soul, is like a spark of a blazing fire of Shri Krishna or Vishnu. The individual living entities are like innumerable molecular particles of a ray of the Sun. Objective inquirers and empiric researchers cannot understand this. The nature of the conscious soul is described in the Gita (2/24) as:
acchedyo ‘yam adahyo ‘yam
akledyo ‘shosya eva cha
nityah sarva-gatah sthanur
achalo ‘yam sanatanah
This individual soul is unbreakable and insoluble, and
can be neither burned nor dried. It is eternal; present
everywhere, unchangeable, immovable and eternally
the same.
This means that the features of the soul are totally opposite to those of matter. The matter can be cut with a weapon, burnt by fire, moistened by water and dried by air. Matter is perishable and does not endure while the conscious spirit soul is eternal and imperishable.
Consciousness is the quality of the spirit soul that is located in the heart of a living being. Although it is located in the heart, the consciousness is perceived throughout the body just like a lamp may be placed in a corner but its light spreads throughout the room.
The impersonal school of philosophy headed by Adi Shankaracharya maintains that the ultimate reality is merely consciousness because it cannot be denied. Denying consciousness itself requires consciousness. Therefore, he propounded a philosophy that Brahman, the consciousness, is satya, the truth and jagat, the physical world, is mithya, an illusion.
On the contrary, the Vaishnava school, insists that first of all, the consciousness requires an object that it is conscious of. This means that the objective world is real. Moreover, it requires a conscious entity that is also conscious of the object.
For example, a table must really exist for a person to be conscious of its existence. So, the table is real. Similarly, a living person is a must to realise the existence of the table. Hence, both the seen (table) and the seer (the conscious person) are real.
Therefore, the objective world (the created) and the Supreme Conscious entity, Shri Krishna (the creator) are real. Thus, the Vaishnava philosophers claim that the ultimate reality is a conscious person. The Supreme Lord Krishna declares He is that Supreme Person, Purushottama in the Gita (15/18).
yasmat ksharam atito ‘ham
aksharad api chottamah
ato ‘smi loke vede cha
prathitah purushottamah
Because I am transcendental, beyond both the fallible
and the infallible, and because I am the greatest, I am
celebrated both in the world and in the Vedas as that
Supreme Person.
Moreover the Gita tells us that the Lord possesses two main categories of energy:
bhumir apo ‘nalo vayuh
kham mano buddhir eva cha
ahankara itiyam me
bhinna prakritir ashtadha
Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false
ego – all together these eight constitute My separated
material energies (BG 7/4)
apareyam itas tv anyam
prakritim viddhi me param
jiva-bhutam maha-baho
yayedam dharyate jagat
Besides these, O Mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another,
superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living
entities who are exploiting the resources of this material,
inferior nature (BG 7/5).
These energies are: apara, inferior material energy which is insentient; and para, the superior Spiritual potency which is conscious.
The Gita gives further insight that the living beings of this world are the Lord’s fragmental parts and that they partake of his spiritual nature (BG 15/7).
mamaivamsho jiva-loke
jiva-bhutah sanatanah
manah-sasthanindriyani
prakirti-sthani karshati
The living entities in this conditioned world are My
eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they
are struggling very hard with the six senses, which
include the mind.
Hence, all living entities are also eternally conscious. So the ultimate reality, Krishna is the Supreme Conscious Person and all the infinitesimal individual conscious entities emerge from Him. The verse from Dasha Mula Shiksha by Shrila Bhakti Vinod Thakur, the pioneer of Krishna Consciousness movement during the postmodern era of Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, helps us to understand this point:
sphullinga riddhagneriva chidanavo jiva nichaya
hareh suryasyaiva prithagapi tu tad bheda vishayah
vashe maya yasya prakriti-patireveshvara iha
sa jivo mukto api prakriti vasha-yogyah sva gunatah
Just as sparks are to a blazing fire and molecular
particles of rays are to the sun, the innumerable living
entities, which are atomic spirit particles, are to the
Supreme Lord Sri Hari, the Supreme Spiritual Entity,
eternally remaining separated from Him, though
inseparable from Him at the same time. The difference
between the Supreme Lord and the living entity is that
Maya or ‘the illusory energy’ is eternally a servant of
the Lord, He being her controller by nature, whereas
the jiva, soul is liable to subjugation by her, it being
marginal by nature although being transcendental at
the same time.
Whatever exists must do or cause something. A man can produce many objects. He even performs the act of begetting children and thus becomes a creator in a limited way. Trees and plants produce fruits and flowers. A fish cleanses the water of a pond by consuming accumulated dirt.
Thus, the Supreme Person Krishna creates this world through material nature. So the Gaudiya Vaishnava saints uphold that the Supreme Brahman, Krishna, is the truth and the world that he creates is also truth. Anything that emanates from truth has to be truth.
On further reflection, the Gaudiya Vaishnava scholars like the Goswamis, Sanatana, Rupa, Jiva and Shrila Baladeva Vidyabhushana and others affirm that the Supreme Brahman, or the God, exists because it is unity of love, in love with Himself. This includes the world and the jivas, the atomic individual entities because they constitute expressions of this love.
To conclude, love is the essence of the Supreme Brahman, the God’s existence. No wonder all religions glorify ‘the love of God’.
The love of God is present in a dormant state in every soul of a physical body. In the human form, it emerges from the comparative dormancy of other species. The affection for our body and its connections is the basic barrier to realise this love. We have natural affection for our bodily relations like the parents, brothers, sisters, husband, wife, children and others.
This attraction only reinforces the idea that we are the body. But using intelligence, if we can somehow develop the conviction that actually we are the spirit soul, then we can awaken our love for our eternal connection to the Supreme Spirit, Shri Krishna.
Every living being can achieve total fulfilment only when it starts the loving exchange with the Supreme Lord, Krishna. Until you reach this stage, all other loving actions will only result in gloom and misery no matter how intimate such relations may be. Throughout our lives, at different stages, we develop loving relationship with one person or the other and temporarily feel happy.
But, in the final analysis we perceive some deficiency in each relationship that leaves us disappointed because love actually belongs to the spiritual platform. The highest object of love is Shri Krishna, the Supreme Spirit soul and we can become happy only in His reciprocation to our devotional services to Him. Service is the symptom of true love.
The pure love, which we are hankering for, can only be realised and experienced when we discard our misconception over many lives that the inert body is the real self and experience our ultimate state as conscious entity.