20240723 Śrī Caitanya Śikṣāmṛta 1.4. Living Entities—Conditioned and Liberated living entities

mūkaṁ karoti vācālaṁ paṅguṁ laṅghayate girim
yat-kṛpā tam ahaṁ vande śrī-guruṁ dīna-tāraṇam
paramānanda-mādhavam śrī caitanya īśvaram
Harihi oṁ tat sat

Śrī Caitanya-Śikṣāmṛta

The Nectar of the teachings of Śrī Caitanya

Today’s chapter is: First Stream – Fourth Shower

Living Entities—Conditioned and Liberated living entities

Svāṁśa and vibhinnāṁśa - Personal expansions and separate expansions

advaya-jñāna-tattva kṛṣṇa — svayaṁ bhagavān
‘svarūpa-śakti’ rūpe tāṅra haya avasthāna

svāṁśa-vibhinnāṁśa-rūpe hañā vistāra
ananta vaikuṇṭha-brahmāṇḍe karena vihāra

svāṁśa-vistāra — catur-vyūha, avatāra-gaṇa
vibhinnāṁśa jīva — tāṅra śaktite gaṇana

TEXT: Kṛṣṇa is the nondual Absolute Truth, the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Although He is one, He maintains different personal expansions and energies for His pastimes. Kṛṣṇa expands Himself in many forms. Some of them are personal expansions, and some are separate expansions. Thus He performs pastimes in both the spiritual and the material worlds. The spiritual worlds are the Vaikuṇṭha planets, and the material universes are the brahmāṇḍas, gigantic globes governed by Lord Brahmā. Expansions of His personal self — like the quadruple manifestations of Saṅkarṣaṇa, Pradyumna, Aniruddha and Vāsudeva — descend as incarnations from Vaikuṇṭha to this material world. The separated expansions are the living entities. Although they are expansions of Kṛṣṇa, they are counted among His different potencies.

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā, 22.7-9

The living entities [jīvas] are two types— eternally liberated, and eternally conditioned.

sei vibhinnāṁśa jīva — dui ta’ prakāra
eka — ‘nitya-mukta’, eka — ‘nitya-saṁsāra’

‘nitya-mukta’ — nitya kṛṣṇa-caraṇe unmukha
‘kṛṣṇa-pāriṣada’ nāma, bhuñje sevā-sukha

‘nitya-bandha’ — kṛṣṇa haite nitya-bahirmukha
‘nitya-saṁsāra’, bhuñje narakādi duḥkha

The living entities [jīvas] are divided into two categories. Some are eternally liberated, and others are eternally conditioned.

Jayapatākā Swami: So it says that eternally liberated or eternally conditioned. That means that even if you stay in the material world your state does not change automatically. And similarly if you are in the spiritual world you don’t have to descend. So that is why they say nitya-mukta and nitya-baddha. Eternally liberated and eternally conditioned.

* * *

TEXT: Those who are eternally liberated are always awake to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, and they render transcendental loving service at the feet of Lord Kṛṣṇa. They are to be considered eternal associates of Kṛṣṇa, and they are eternally enjoying the transcendental bliss of serving Kṛṣṇa. Apart from the ever-liberated devotees, there are the conditioned souls, who always turn away from the service of the Lord. They are perpetually conditioned in this material world and are subjected to the material tribulations brought about by different bodily forms in hellish conditions.

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā, 22.10-12:

The condition of the eternally conditioned living entities

sei doṣe māyā-piśācī daṇḍa kare tāre
ādhyātmikādi tāpa-traya tāre jāri’ māre

kāma-krodhera dāsa hañā tāra lāthi khāya
bhramite bhramite yadi sādhu-vaidya pāya

tāṅra upadeśa-mantre piśācī palāya
kṛṣṇa-bhakti pāya, tabe kṛṣṇa-nikaṭa yāya

Due to his being opposed to Kṛṣṇa consciousness, the conditioned soul is punished by the witch of the external energy, māyā. He is thus ready to suffer the threefold miseries — miseries brought about by the body and mind, the inimical behavior of other living entities and natural disturbances caused by the demigods. In this way the conditioned soul becomes the servant of lusty desires, and when these are not fulfilled, he becomes the servant of anger and continues to be kicked by the external energy, māyā. Wandering and wandering throughout the universe, he may by chance get the association of a devotee physician, whose instructions and hymns make the witch of the external energy flee. The conditioned soul thus gets into touch with devotional service to Lord Kṛṣṇa, and in this way he can approach nearer and nearer to the Lord.

Jayapatākā Swami: So I was saying yesterday how everyone who knows about Lord Caitanya should tell their relatives, friends, anyone they know about the mercy of Lord Caitanya. This is the beginning of the ten-thousand-year period when everybody will become Kṛṣṇa conscious. And now you are nitya-baddhu, but by the mercy of Lord Caitanya there is hope. So, Lord Caitanya, He wants to deliver all the conditioned souls. In the Ādi-līlā 8^th chapter, it is mentioned you get the mercy of Lord Caitanya by serving His holy name. Since there is no difference between Lord Caitanya and His holy name. So, the devotees should do service to the holy name of Lord Caitanya. If we become servants of the holy name of Lord Kṛṣṇa or Lord Caitanya, in the spiritual world there is no difference between the holy names and the person. So we can serve the holy name.

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 22.13-15:

TEXT: Living entity’s constitutional position

jīvera ‘svarūpa’ haya — kṛṣṇera ‘nitya-dāsa’
kṛṣṇera ‘taṭasthā-śakti’ ‘bhedābheda-prakāśa’

sūryāṁśa-kiraṇa, yaiche agni-jvālā-caya

It is the living entity’s constitutional position to be an eternal servant of Kṛṣṇa because he is the marginal energy of Kṛṣṇa and a manifestation simultaneously one with and different from the Lord, like a molecular particle of sunshine or fire. (Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 20.108-109)

Again, in the instruction to Rūpa Gosvāmī:

eita brahmāṇḍa bhari’ ananta jīva-gaṇa
caurāśī-lakṣa yonite karaye bhramaṇa

keśāgra-śateka-bhāga punaḥ śatāṁśa kari
tāra sama sūkṣma jīvera ‘svarūpa’ vicāri

In this universe there are limitless living entities in 8,400,000 species, and all are wandering within this universe. The length and breadth of the living entity is described as one ten-thousandth part of the tip of a hair. This is the original subtle nature of the living entity. (Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 19.138-139)

Note: Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 19.140:

keśāgra-śata-bhāgasya
śatāṁśa-sadṛśātmakaḥ
jivaḥ sūkṣma-svarūpo ’yaṁ
saṅkhyātīto hi cit-kaṇaḥ

If we divide the tip of a hair into a hundred parts and then take one of these parts and divide it again into a hundred parts, that very fine division is the size of but one of the numberless living entities. They are all cit-kaṇa, particles of spirit, not matter.

Jayapatākā Swami: We are meeting with three companies and in the past two days, we met with one. All the scientists, they don’t know anything about the spark of consciousness. Their theory is that by mixing matter you produce life. Śrīla Prabhupāda wrote a book Life Comes from Life. We are trying to present all the evidence to prove that it is not possible to produce life from matter. The conditioned souls try to satisfy their lusty desires in different species of life. And they go from one to another body like that. Actually, they get punished by adhyātmika, adhibautika and adhidaivika miseries.

‘māyādhīśa’ ‘māyā-vaśa’ — īśvare-jīve bheda
hena-jīve īśvara-saha kaha ta’ abheda

gītā-śāstre jīva-rūpa ‘śakti’ kari’ māne
hena jīve ‘bheda’ kara īśvarera sane

TEXT: The Lord is the master of the potencies, and the living entity is the servant of them. That is the difference between the Lord and the living entity. However, you declare that the Lord and the living entities are one and the same. In the Bhagavad-gītā the living entity is established as the marginal potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Yet you say that the living entity is completely different from the Lord.

Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya-līlā 20.162-163:

Jayapatākā Swami: So this is the Māyāvādī idea and they are trying to establish that the living entity and the Lord are the same. So all the sannyāsīs of the Śaṅkarites school address each other as Nārāyaṇa to be. I took some senior devotees to the campsite, and they wanted to distribute prasāda. And while they were talking with the authorities of the camp, I went around the campsite. So all the monks, they addressed me as “Oh! Buddha to be”. So the Buddhists are śūnyavādīs, and then there are Māyāvādīs. So, Lord Viṣṇu told Lord Śiva to preach Buddhism as a brāhmaṇa. So He gave the teachings of Māyāvāda. And that is why all over India there are lots of Māyāvādīs. And in the 7^th chapter of the Ādi-līlā, there is a description how Lord Caitanya preached to the Māyāvādīs. So, that is something that devotees should learn. When Śrīla Prabhupāda arrived in India from Japan, he printed this 7^th chapter of the Ādi-līlā as a booklet. He said because there are so many Māyāvādī impersonalists in India. So in this way we want to teach the people to follow Lord Caitanya.

Thank you. Kṛṣṇe matir astu!