26 Mar 2014
Pravrutti is the subject related to your behavior, duties and actions towards the creation of God. Nivrutti is the subject related to your personal relationship with the Creator of this creation. Both subjects are equally important and are deeply inter-related.
To understand the above concept, let us take an example in which you are supposed to be an employee in a factory. Pravrutti is the code of conduct involving discipline of your job explaining the rules and regulations of your day to day work. If you are perfect in Pravrutti helping the smooth running of good administration in the factory, the owner of the factory is personally impressed with you and offers some favours to you even without your request. This personal appreciation and good looks of the owner constitute Nivrutti. Therefore, Nivrutti can be achieved through Pravrutti only. If you are not doing your job in proper way, you will not be favoured by the owner in spite of your hectic efforts to impress upon the owner. The primary aim of the owner is that the factory should run on proper rules and any disturbance in this area cannot please the owner. The third upper world is Heaven, which is awarded as a favour for your good Pravrutti. The seventh upper world is the Abode of God, which is the fruit of Nivrutti. How can you obtain the seventh upper world without reaching the third upper world? The owner gives opportunity to a good and disciplined employee only for a meeting in his residence. An undisciplined employee ready for dismissal cannot get such personal opportunity. Therefore, you should never think that this world and its works are not divine. The entire world is the property of God and is fully divine. All your worldly actions are perfectly divine and are related to the impression of God. Hence, you should do your job and household duties with perfect care and attention. If everybody does like this, the entire world runs well with perfect peace. Any violation gives head-ache to God resulting in anger. You should work sincerely for the progress of your family, your city, your district, your nation and your entire world of humanity. Progress should be motive of your work, but it should not be at the cost of justice and established discipline of the society. Corruption of money (Artha) and illegal sexual contacts (Kama) should be perfectly controlled according to ethical scripture (Dharma) given by God to this world. If Artha and Kama are controlled by Dharma, the Moksha (Salvation) is spontaneous. The first three come under Pravrutti and the fourth comes under Nivrutti. It is said that if the first two are controlled by the third, Pravrutti is successful (Apyarthakaamau Tasyaastaam Dharmaayaiva Maneeshinah– Raghuvamsha). The injustice always resides in the first two and tries to oppose the third. You should always vote for Dharma against Adharma (injustice). Progress should never be at the cost of justice. If you violate the rules in your job for the sake of progress of the factory, the owner will not appreciate it since more severe disturbance will take place. Therefore, you should not violate the justice even for the sake of the welfare of the society. If the owner himself comes to you and asks to violate a rule, you should violate it for the sake of the owner because it is a test for your loyalty to the master. Except on this one occasion, you should never violate the Pravrutti in the name of the progress. Pravrutti is of top most importance and the Divine Scriptures like the Bible, the Quran, the Dammapadam etc., concentrate only on Pravrutti. Even in the Gita, the Lord said that He incarnates again and again to establish Pravrutti only (Dharma Samsthaapanaarthaaya…). He also said that you have to leave the Pravrutti of Justice only in the context of its competition with the Lord (Sarvadharmaan… Gita) since the Gita deals both Pravrutti and Nivrutti.
People often find fault with the Creator through a false argument that the individual soul is destined by God in every action. The individual soul is given full freedom in the selection of an action in this world as said in the Gita (Nakartrutvam na karmaani). This is the only field in which the individual soul enjoys full freedom. Hence, you are fully responsible of your entire fate since the fruits of your own actions destine your fate. Leaving this aspect, the individual souls do not have full freedom in any other aspect. The individual soul cannot control the damage of any system and cannot rectify the damage present in its own body. The individual soul is said to be generated from the food (Annatpurushah). This does not mean that the individual soul is a direct product of the food like a wave arising from water (Vivarta). In this way, the inert energy is generated from the food because there is no addition of some other visible factor like the milk becoming curd after the addition of little butter milk (Parinaama). In fact, even the Vivarta is affected by Parinama in least scale due to association of some external factor, which is invisible. This means that the water itself is not becoming water wave. When the water is associated with invisible kinetic energy, the wave appears. Otherwise, the static water can generate only static water. Since the external factor in Vivarta is invisible, we are assuming the absence of any external factor. You can treat the generation of inert energy from the matter as Vivarta since the closely associated particles in the matter in the atomic and sub-atomic states become energy. The particle-nature of the energy is accepted. Here also, when the particles move apart, additional space is added and thus, there is addition of new invisible factor. This inert energy enters the nervous system and its specific work form in such specific system is the awareness or individual soul. Therefore, new properties join the product in the generation through Vivarta or Parinama. The form of water wave and different taste of the curd are the added new properties of the product. Hence, the individual soul generated from the inert food develops the new property, which is little freedom. The objection here is that the external factors like nervous system etc., are also inert only and the appearance of freedom becomes impossible. The absence of freedom is the characteristic of inertia. In spite of absence of such little freedom, God has given little or full freedom to the individual soul and has given full freedom in selection of the action. This full freedom cannot be extended to other places by the individual soul and the inherent absence of freedom is exhibited as in the case of receiving the results of selected actions. This means that the individual soul has full freedom to do any action but once the action is selected, the individual soul has no trace of freedom to receive its destined results. The freedom represents the newly added property and the absence of trace of freedom represents the inherent property derived from the cause. The freedom of the individual soul comes from the will of God because God alone has the freedom. Therefore, you need not doubt about the possibility of freedom coming from any factor or item of the world since the entire world is totally inert being completely controlled by God. The will of God brings the freedom from God since freedom is available in God only. Therefore, the individual soul is the best item of the creation as an inert item blessed by God with freedom.
God is compared with several great items in this creation. The comparison is always indicated by simile. But, when comparison is more stressed, the simile becomes metaphor. In simile, we say that he is like a lion. In metaphor we say that he is the lion. This does not mean that he is actually the lion, which is a wild animal. You may also say that the same person is the tiger. If he is actually the lion, he cannot be the tiger again. God is said to be the space (Akasha) in the sense that God is everywhere like the space. By this, people thought that actually the space is God. God is again said to be the life-air (Prana) in the sense God is important for this world like life for the body. People thought that the air of respiration is actually the God and propagated that you should concentrate on the respirating air i.e., Dhyana on Swaasa. God is compared with fire in the sense that God destroys everything in the final stage. One religion propagates that the fire is actually God. In the Brahma Sutras, we get several contexts (Adhikaranams) in which God is compared with several important items of the creation to stress on the various aspects of importance of God. One of such context is the individual soul, which is blessed with freedom by God. This does not mean that the individual soul is the actual God. This is one type of illusion. The other type of illusion is to treat God as the individual soul when He comes as the human incarnation. The human beings always have the reverse vision! You have seen a rope and mistook it as a serpent. Your preacher advised you that the serpent you see is actually the rope. This statement of the Preacher can be interpreted in two ways. The correct way is that the serpent you see does not exist at all and only the rope really exists. The second way of misinterpretation is that the serpent is the rope and hence, you can catch any serpent and use it as a rope. In the first correct way, there is existence of rope and non-existence of serpent. In the second false way, there is existence of rope and also simultaneous equal existence of serpent. Therefore, you must understand Shankara in the first context in which He said that the individual soul is God. Here, both absolute existence of God and non-absolute existence (relative existence) of the world including the individual soul are mentioned. You have taken this context as the second context in which the individual soul and God are simultaneously existent and now you say that the individual soul is God.
Before understanding the concept, the proper context must be decided. In the first context, God is existent and individual soul is non-existent. Here, when you say that individual soul is God, it means that individual soul does not exist and only God exists. Here, rope is existent and snake is non-existent. In the second context, God enters the world as human being and identifies Himself with that human being. This human incarnation or God exists simultaneously with the ordinary human being. Here, God as individual soul and the outer individual soul simultaneously exist like rope and serpent. The absolute existence of God is viewed as the relative existence of the human being taken as medium by God since God identifies with that human being. Due to this, God enters the field of relative existence of the world and is taken as any other human being as far as the existence is concerned. Hence, we can treat that the human incarnation taken as a human being and the outer human being co-exist equally in the same plane of existence. Here, you should not say that individual soul is God or snake is rope because both are equally existent and no two items of equal existence can become one. If you take the human incarnation as the internal unimaginable absolute God, the first context appears in which the absolute God is absolutely existent and the outer human being or even the own human medium along with all the world becomes absolutely non-existent (or relatively existent) and now the human being is God, which means that God alone is truth and everything other than God is unreal.
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