More on Souls (aka Aatmas)

We saw in last post that we are ever-present, constant souls, who get transformed into various bodies.

How does this happen? A disclaimer before I go further: What I am humbly about to present is strictly Vishishtadvaitic interpretation of Vedas. As we go on it will become clearer as to what is this "Vishishtadvatic" philosophy all about and why this interpretation scores.

So, now that I am not my body, what are my characteristics innate to me that I can leverage on apart from this body?

Vedas say that a soul or aatma is ever-constant, unchangeable, has knowledge as its inseparable attribute and is infinitesimally small in nature. There's more, but we'll see it later.

A vedic passage which is quoted by scholars often expresses how small a soul is. It says if you want to find out how small you are, cut the tip of one hair of a cow's tail. Cut that tip into 100 pieces. Take one piece out of that and cut it into 100 more pieces. Go on like this until you can do it physically and then mentally. If you reach a stage where you can't cut it further, then that is the size of a soul or aatma.

The concept is that a soul or aatma is the smallest thing. There is nothing which is smaller than that. Can't believe it? There is a very sound logic behind this whole thing. We saw earlier that a mosquito, a dog or a human - all are essentially souls in different bodies.

If a same constant soul has to take different bodily forms, then it has to be the smallest being so that it can take any form from smallest to largest.

Also, a soul can't be destroyed simply because it is the smallest being. To destroy something, you need something smaller and sharper than that object. When you kill an insect with a stone, the force with which you hit the insect, which is sharper than the insect, is what kills the insect. The same way you can't cut a photon particle with a knife, you can't cut a soul as well with anything.

All this sounds fine in concept, but proof? We see that there are living and non-living things around us. We understand that a mosquito lives a life of its own like we do. Why that, there is world's smallest human being and tallest human being. All of us equal as living beings. How? Only if the ever-constant I, the soul is the same kind for all of us.

We, the ever-constant, ever-present souls are like self illuminated light particles - we are self-illuminated with knowledge (what knowledge? we'll see that later).

But, then how and why is it that one soul is a mosquito and myself a human being? Who decides that and how? What are my boundaries?

The Concept of Souls

Vedas say one thing emphatically - that we, the living beings are all souls of the same kind. Only the bodies that we have are different.

Proof? We know it intuitively, except that we don't pay attention to it. I am able to think of my body, my mind, my thoughts, my feelings everything separately from me. But me as an entity is always a constant, regardless of all the changes that my body, mind and feelings go through.

But is it so important that I am a soul? so what if I am or am not? Because it creates a fundamental shift in our thinking of life. All the man-made miseries in life are mostly because of our wrong perception of ourself. We think ourselves to be things we are not and direct our energies in the wrong direction. If I think I am the body, my efforts will be focussed on maintaining it well. But most realize after a while, no matter how you maintain it, this body finally falls. No matter how pleasuring a pleasure is, it ends.

If I think of myself as a soul, then I would start thinking, so what's important for me, the soul? Now I see body as a tool I have to use. So, how do I use the tool? to do what? why?

Like science says about energy, we are like tiny-bits of ever-present energy, neither created nor destroyed, but get transformed always. Who does this transformation? why?

Vishishtadvaita as a philosophy answers all these fundamental questions and more, culled out of the Vedas of course.

Let's Deep Dive!

From here on, let's take a slightly different path in our journey to understand basics of Srivaishnavism and its philosophy. The idea is to make it a tad easier and more interesting. So that we get the practical relevance of the basic concepts and their meaning clearly.

In summary, we have seen what vedas are, their unifying and timeless appeal. We also saw some myth busters about certain perceptions regarding vedas. We saw that we are souls and not our bodies. We saw the three realities - chit (soul), achit (non-living stuff) and Iiswara (God). We saw that we have a limited freedom and are bound by our own karmic balance to be born repeatedly in this world. It was also mentioned that there is a way out of this birth-death vicious cycle.

From a layman's standpoint, all this should be a little overwhelming. And there are bound to be questions. As we move on, let's try and understand these clearly, deeply, one at a time, with answers to as many layman's doubts and questions.

Watch out for the next post!

Few Basics – My Boundaries

So, we are all Jeevathmas and not our ever changing and most certain to die bodies.

How about other stuff in this universe – what are they? According to Vishishtadvaita philosophy, there are three “thathvaas” or realities – Chit, Achit and Iisvara.

Chit refers to any soul. In another way, Chit is all entities with knowledge as their attribute. So, we humans, animals, trees are all “Chit”, since all of us are basically aathmas in different bodies. 

Achit is all things which don’t have any knowledge in them – basically, inanimate objects without knowledge. Tables, Chairs, buildings, stones etc., are all “Achit”.

Iiswara is the Lord who controls the Chit as well as the Achit. Iiswara is the loving creator, master, controller and protector of the universe.

Understanding this triad of “chit-achit-Iiswara” helps us in understanding about the real “us”, this world, our boundaries and ultimately our life.

Do we have boundaries? What are they? Aren’t we supposed to be “free” individuals?

I remember a meeting long back in my old company which was addressed by a HR Manager. One of the participants asked the HR Manager – “How much freedom do we have in our work?”

The HR Manager responded – “Good Question. But think for a moment. Do you think India is a free country? Do you think we are free to take whatever decision we want to?” He proceeded to answer himself - “Even the most powerful nation in the world is not completely free to take any decision that it wants to take. There are various constraints, various stakeholders and various considerations that the country’s government has to take note of before taking any decision. No entity has complete freedom in the world. Absolute freedom only leads to anarchy.”

He proceeded as we listened in rapt attention - “Freedom is always within a context. Within the context of the roles that you play as defined in the organization, you do have freedom”.

How true of the whole universe! In this sense, we are like cows tied to a pole using a rope. The freedom that cows have is limited by the length of the rope they are tied with.

Our evergreen account-of-Karmas are the rope that ties us and determines our boundaries in this world.

Until there is balance in this account, we need to be cows tied to this world. But isn’t it bad that we’ll keep going through this cycle of birth-life-death in this world with all its constraints? Yes, it is.

Do we have a way out? Is there a better option? Yes, we have.