16 Dec 2020
An online spiritual discussion was conducted on November 21, 2020, in which several devotees participated. Some of the questions of devotees answered by Swāmi are given below.
[Śrī Veena Datta asked: Swami, You have said that awareness is a specific work form of inert energy. When we observe the case of the birth of a baby, the inert energy in that baby comes from the mother’s womb. In case of a person’s death, the inert energy is lost and so, the awareness, which is a product of the inert energy must also get destroyed there itself. Then how it is said that the soul is transferred to a different body after death and that it will take a new birth?
Śrī Phani asked: What is the difference between life-energy and inert energy. Is life energy the same as soul? Or is life-energy the same as inert energy. While in deep sleep, life-energy exists, but when we wake up, awareness also rises, right?]
Swāmi replied: Soul actually means inert energy existing in the brain and nervous system and the individual soul is awareness. The inert energy itself gets transformed into awareness, which is just a work-form of the same inert energy. The individual soul means a bundle of thoughts. When these thoughts disappear in meditation, pure awareness or self-awareness alone remains, in which only the single thought of the self exists. Such pure awareness resembles the inert energy, which is its cause, to a great extent. Hence, the soul can be considered to be this pure awareness or its cause, which is the inert energy in the nervous system. In fact, the inert energy that is produced by the digestion of food and its subsequent oxidation in the mitochondria of cells, itself becomes awareness in the specific system, which is the functioning brain and nervous system. Inert energy is like a lump of gold and awareness is like a golden chain. Inert energy is the material from which awareness is produced. It is just as gold is the material from which the golden chain is produced. In the chain, apart from the gold, the design or the form exists as an additional item. This extra item is called the effect and the basic material, which is gold, is called the material-cause. This extra effect-form (awareness) is the result of the unimaginable power of the unimaginable God. This extra effect is the grasping power, called awareness, which is the ability to sense or observe. Hence, the term soul can stand for the inert energy as well as for the pure awareness.
At the time of birth, the concentrated spot of awareness called the individual soul or jīva enters the womb of the mother through the sperm of the father. This jīva is a bundle of thoughts and these thoughts were from the previous birth. This same jīva escapes the gross body during death. Hence, in both birth and death, the moving entity is only the jīva, which is awareness with the bundle of thoughts. The awareness produced through food is general and it helps the jīva to function. The jīva is like the lamp and the general awareness produced from inert energy obtained from food is like the light spreading from the lamp. During death, this general awareness disappears due to stopped supply of inert energy from food. The individual soul or jīva then leaves the gross body. This jīva is also awareness alone existing as a bundle of thoughts. But with the stopped supply of the general awareness, this jīva does not get destroyed. Life-energy is only the inert energy supplied through the process of respiration that helps in the oxidation of food. Life-energy is not awareness. The inert energy generated by respiration exists even in plants and it is called life-energy. But awareness only exists in zoological living beings.
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