There are three references that anyone who has a curiosity about how the soul comes to the material world should get familiar with. The first one is the letter Srila Prabhupada wrote in 1972 to Madhudvisa Prabhu, answering questions from Australian devotees about the origin of the soul. The second is a class Prabhupada gave in Tokyo on April 23, 1972, and the third is a series of purports on the fourth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, chapter 28, where is narrated how King Purañjana became a woman in his next life.
Most of the time, Prabhupada avoided touching this subject, arguing that it’s not important to understand how one fell into the ocean, the important is to find how to get out of it. However, if one is curious, these are the three references where Prabhupada directly tries to explain this topic.
A point that is interesting to notice is that Prabhupada gives a consistent explanation in all three references, one of which being a letter, one a lecture, and the third part of his purports on the Srimad Bhagavatam. This defeats the theory that Prabhupada was giving different explanations according to the time and audience.
In Western culture people in general have a great aversion to the idea of hell, perhaps due to Christianity having been abusing this idea for centuries. Even people who are religious usually prefer to believe that people just go to heaven, or that we immediately reincarnate, without passing through any form of judgment. Even one and a half century ago, when Srila Bhaktivinoda was preaching in India he encountered resistance to the idea of hell, which led him to minimize the idea and instead focus on more important issues.
However, the Puranas describe in detail the activities of Yamaraja and his servants, as well as the hellish words they use to punish the sinful. According to the Puranas, with the exception of devotees, who are escorted to their next body by the Vishnudutas (as described in the Brhad Bhagavatamrta), everyone has to pass through the judgment of Yamaraja before receiving his next body.
The best way to avoid that is of course by becoming a sincere devotee of Krsna and chanting His Holy Names. As Srila Haridasa Thakura explains, even chanting on the stage of Namabhasa is capable of destroying one’s sins and bringing a person to the liberated platform, where there is no question of meeting the Yamadutas. The history of Ajamila, narrated in the 6th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam is a graphical illustration of how one can be saved from hell even by chanting at the last moment.
Because Ajamila was so sinful, the Vishnudutas were prepared to bring him to hell, but at the moment they started snatching the soul from the body using their subtle ropes, the Vishnudutas appeared carrying weapons and ordered them to release Ajamila, or else. It happened that Ajamila destroyed all his karma by desperately chanting the name of Narayana at the last moment. Even though he chanted to call his son, not directly addressing Lord Narayana, because he chanted in full concentration it was sufficient to free him from all his past sinful activities. By the time the Yamadutas started taking the soul out of the body, he was indeed an innocent man, and thus the Vishnudutas immediately appeared to protect him.
What about the souls who are not so fortunate? How the severity of the punishment one will receive in hell is determined?
Many of us face difficulties in controlling our mental and physical urges. For some it may be sexual libido, for others, it may be attraction to different types of substances, for others, it may be junk food, or spending too much time on social networks or watching useless content. We may also have difficulties in keeping the mind focussed when we are chanting, and doing other things we understand are positive but that requires some self-control we unfortunately seem to lack.
All of these problems have the same origin: the mind desires different things and we struggle to control these urges.
Srila Prabhupada explains that any physical or mental urge goes away if we tolerate it long enough. According to him, even hunger can be controlled by this process, what to say about other things. It may sound simplistic at first, but this approach is something that has beem used quite effectively in modern psychology to treat addictions
In the Srimad Bhagavatam, we read about the mysterious history of Jaya and Vijaya, and how these two powerful associates of the Lord in Vaikunta ended up coming to the material world to play the role of demons for three lives, becoming at first Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha, then Ravana and Kumbhakarna, and finally Sisupala and Dantavakra, after which they were finally reinstated in their original positions after being killed by Krsna.
For the ones’ who observed Sisupala being killed by Krsna at the sacrifice of Maharaja Yudhistira, it appeared that Sisupala merged in the Lord’s bodily effulgence, attaining the impersonal Brahmajoti, but in his purports (7.1.20) Prabhupada explains: “Śiśupāla and Dantavakra were formerly Jaya and Vijaya, the doorkeepers of Vaikuṇṭha. Merging into the body of Kṛṣṇa was not their final destination. For some time they remained merged, and later they received the liberations of sārūpya and sālokya, living on the same planet as the Lord in the same bodily form.”
Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha appeared about 400 million years ago, during the reign of Caksusa Manu (the 6th Manu in the sequence, immediately before the current one). Chronologically speaking, this is after the rebirth of Daksa. The history is that the first birth of Daksa happened at the beginning of the current day of Brahma, during the reign of Svayambhuva Manu. In this birth, he offended Lord Shiva and ended up being killed by Virabhadra, and was later revived with the head of a goat. Although he used this body to conclude the sacrifice he was making, he later left this body due to shame (it’s probably not easy to live with the head of a goat). Other pastimes described in the Srimad Bhagavatam, such as the appearance of Lord Kapila and the pastime of Dhruva Maharaja also happened around this time, during the reign of Svayambhuva Manu.
The next birth of Daksa happened only much later, during the reign of Caksusa Manu. During this birth, Daksa married Pāncajanī and begot 10,000 sons with the purpose of increasing the population of the universe. All these sons, however, decided to take Sannyasi after being instructed by Narada Muni. Daksa then begot 1,000 more sons, just for the same thing to happen again. Frustrated, he cursed Narada Muni and begot sixty daughters who were married to great sages and became the mothers of most of the population of the universe.
Seventeen of these daughters were married to Kasyapa Muni, including Diti, who became the mother of Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu.
Here are a few more details about this pastime that you may find interesting:
Days ago I received an interesting question: Do souls ever come back to Earth after attaining liberation? It’s actually a little harder than it may seem at first.
In the Bhagavad-Gita (8.21) Krsna says, “That supreme abode is called unmanifested and infallible, and it is the supreme destination. When one goes there, he never comes back.”
When the soul attains his original position as an eternal servant of Krsna in one of the spiritual planets, there is no coming back. However, there are many other possibilities that can distract us, and when we go for any of those, we return. There are different types of liberation, but only one results in a permanent situation from which we never have to come back.
Most of us are not yet pure devotees, therefore we need good association to progress in our spiritual life. If we live in the middle of a congested city with the closest devotees living more than an hour away, the opportunities for us to associate will be limited. As a result, we will spend most of our time associating with materialistic people and as a consequence, our spiritual progress may not be as swift as desired. This is an even more serious problem for the ones who have children since children need friends to play with. Devotee communities are therefore very important for our spiritual progress.
However, anyone who ever tried will attest that building successful communities is not easy. Devotees may work well together when they see each other only on the Sunday festivals, but as soon as people come closer the problems increase exponentially.
We may think that this is a problem specific to devotees, but the truth is that nowadays most people can’t be part of any type of community. Big cities are very impersonal spaces, where everyone tries his best to isolate themselves from others. Physically people live very close, but in reality, they are very distant. People can live in a building without ever talking to any of the neighbors. Unexpectedly, such environments can be very unfavorable for our spiritual practice.
How to deal with it? How to grow in spiritual lives even while living far away from other devotees and spending most of our time working in unhealthy environments and associating with materialistic people, without any realistic possibility of getting out of it?
We all go through ups and downs in life. Often we feel we are fine, and that the material world is not such a bad place, but at other times we can suffer quite a lot. When suffering becomes too acute one can even go into depression or simply lose his will to live. In such cases, the deterioration in mental health can lead also to a deterioration in physical health, creating yet another cascading set of problems. How to escape this cycle?
One thing that I learned is that often the best way to help ourselves is to help others because when we help others our attention becomes fixed on them instead of on our own problems. The more we concentrate on our difficulties, the more these difficulties feel real and, interesting enough, the less we concentrate on them, the smaller they become.
All kinds of material suffering are described in the scriptures as illusory. There are two reasons for it to be described like that. The first reason is that they are temporary, coming and going just like the seasons of the year. Now we may be suffering, and a little later we may be enjoying just to suffer again later on. This is an unavoidable cycle as long as we are in this material world. Everyone here spends so much energy trying to reach a comfortable situation, but we all know it’s not easy, if at all possible, and, even if we reach such a situation, it doesn’t last very long.
Everything that exists in this material world was created at a certain date and everything will be destroyed at a certain date. Everything is temporary. This happens because we are under the influence of the material time.
On SB 3.26.15, time is counted as one of the material elements, just as earth, water, fire, etc. Time is described as a “mixing element” or as an “agitating element” because it puts the universe in motion, activating the innumerable transformations that lead to the creation and destruction of everything that exists inside the universe, including the universe itself. Because of the influence of time, everything that is material has a beginning and an end.
This is further corroborated in SB 7.1.11, where it’s described: “King, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the controller of the material and spiritual energies, who is certainly the creator of the entire cosmos, creates the time factor to allow the material energy and the living entity to act within the limits of time. Thus the Supreme Personality is never under the time factor nor under the material energy.”
All conditioned souls are put under the influence of time from the moment they take part in the material creation, but the Lord remains outside of it, in His transcendental position. He may act under time when He comes in His different incarnations, appearing inside the material universes and executing His pastimes here, but He is never under time’s control. As Srila Prabhupada mentions in the purport of the same verse: “One should not think that the Lord is dependent on the time factor. He actually creates the situation by which material nature acts and by which the conditioned soul is placed under material nature. Both the conditioned soul and the material nature act within the time factor, but the Lord is not subject to the actions and reactions of time, for time has been created by Him.”
As he further explains in his purport to SB 3.26.17: “Material nature appears to the material scientist to act and react in a wonderful manner, but in reality, it cannot act without the agitator, time, who is the representation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When time agitates the neutral state of material nature, material nature begins to produce varieties of manifestations. Ultimately it is said that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the cause of creation. As a woman cannot produce children unless impregnated by a man, material nature cannot produce or manifest anything unless it is impregnated by the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the form of the time factor.”
This time that puts matter into motion is a representative of the power of God, as Prabhupada mentions in his purport to SB 3.26.16: “The fear of death is the action of the kāla, or the time factor, which represents the influence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In other words, time is destructive. Whatever is created is subject to destruction and dissolution, which is the action of time. Time is a representation of the Lord, and it reminds us also that we must surrender unto the Lord.”
The beginning and end of time can’t be calculated from the material perspective, because everything (material) that exists exists inside the boundaries of time. From the material perspective, thus, time is eternal. Prabhupada refers to the material time as “eternal time” in a few purports, using the expression as a translation of the Sanskrit word “Kala”. However, there is another reality that is outside, the spiritual reality.
In the 6th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, we find the story of how Diti tried to manipulate her husband Kasyapa Muni with the goal of killing Indra, whom she blamed for the death of her sons Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu. By serving her husband on all his needs and artificially behaving in an attractive way, with exaggerated feminine movements and so on, she got him under control. When Kasyapa Muni, feeling obliged, promised to give her a benediction, she immediately asked for a son who could kill Indra. On hearing such a request, he understood that he had been played upon and lamented:
“Alas, I have now become too attached to material enjoyment. Taking advantage of this, my mind has been attracted by the illusory energy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the form of a woman [my wife]. Therefore I am surely a wretched person who will glide down toward hell. This woman, my wife, has adopted a means that follows her nature, and therefore she is not to be blamed. But I am a man. Therefore, all condemnation upon me! I am not at all conversant with what is good for me, since I could not control my senses. A woman’s face is as attractive and beautiful as a blossoming lotus flower during autumn. Her words are very sweet, and they give pleasure to the ear, but if we study a woman’s heart, we can understand it to be extremely sharp, like the blade of a razor. In these circumstances, who could understand the dealings of a woman? To satisfy their own interests, women deal with men as if the men were most dear to them, but no one is actually dear to them. Women are supposed to be very saintly, but for their own interests they can kill even their husbands, sons or brothers, or cause them to be killed by others.” (SB 6.18.40)
Both the verses and the purports of this passage contain some quite heavy words about the negative qualities of women. It’s said that women are self-interested by nature, that their natural instinct is to enjoy the material world, and so on. It’s also described that they can become real traps for men, by using their attractive features to seduce and use them for their own purposes, just like Diti did with Kasyapa Muni.
Of course, the opposite could also be described, since men also exploit women and use them for their own devices. This is unfortunately the nature of this material world: people exploiting and being exploited by others.
In his purports, however, Srila Prabhupada gives a higher perspective. As in other passages of Srimad Bhagavatam, this story is used to convey a higher message.
Most of us have quite challenging lives in terms of the demands of work, family, and so on.
In the past, middle-class people used to be able to sustain their families with just an 8/5 job. They would go out in the morning, return in the afternoon, and be free on weekends. The wives would generally not have to work and thus would have time to care for the children and the house. One could maintain a family and still have time to collect his thoughts.
Nowadays, however, things are much harder. Most well-paid jobs are quite demanding, and often both the husband and wife must work to maintain a family. This leads to a very chaotic situation, where they have to run around continuously trying to somehow balance the demands of work, caring for the children, maintaining their relationship, practicing spiritual life, maintaining their health, and so on. Due to pressure, usually one or more of these factors end up being neglected, often with disastrous results.
This is a cycle that is very difficult to avoid since modern life creates insurmountable demands, which force us to work like hamsters on the wheel just to maintain the status quo. Modern life makes us unhappy, and then offers the solution in the form of more products and services. To obtain these things, however, we need more money, which in turn forces us to work more, making us even more miserable, which in turn forces us to find quick fixes in the form of more products and services.
Srila Prabhupada was able to masterfully identify this propensity more than 50 years ago when society was still much earlier in this cycle. He also proposed a solution, that although radical is still the only one that seems to really, work: simple living high thinking.
