Eternal Servitors

Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that all jiva's are eternal servitors of Krsna by their original constitutional position. All jivas serve Lord Krsna as an eternal servant in one of the 5 Rasa's - Passive, Active, Friend, Parent or Conjugal Lover.

We have also seen that Lord Krsna promises in BG that his pure devotees who reach him never return back to this material world.

If both of these statements are true then how do you reconcile the fact that the jiva had a fall down from the spiritual abode serving Krsna? If the answer is that the Jiva misued his independence then does it mean that Krsna's promise in BG is not 100% true but is subject to the power of the jiva's minute indepndence?

Can any one please clarify this for me.

[madanbhakta]

I don't know much, and I have no guru shastra behind my back on this one, but in my understanding, all individual souls began to dwell in jiva-shakti, not in antaranga-shakti, where the abode of Krishna is. We actually serve Krishna in the marginal potency, or tatastha-shakti/jiva-shakti, and then become attracted to the material world (maya-shakti or bahiranga-shakti). From my neophyte understanding, it was our false-ego and to serve it rather than to serve God that brought us down.

When we 'fall' onto the material world, we can be in the realm of the demigods, in a hellish existence on Earth, or go directly to Krishna-dhama (via vaidhi-bhakti [loving devotional service through Scriptural orthopraxy], which develops ragaatmika [spontaneous love] and mukti [liberation]), enveloped by His antaranga-shakti (internal potency, or spiritual energy).


1. Antaranga-shakti (internal potency / spiritual energy, also called Krishnaloka, the Kingdom of God)

2. Tatastha-shakti (marginal potency / marginal energy, also called jiva-shakti, because it is the realm of servant souls of Krishna; it dwells between the upper antaranga-shakti and the lower bahiranga-shakti)

3. bahiranga-shakti (external potency / material energy, the realm of material existence)


A diagram of Krishna's shaktis would help a lot. And if anyone has any guru-shastras to help with this and remove my mayic understanding, that would be great!

[madanbhakta]

Anyway, this is what Srila Sridhar Maharaj has to say about it:

How does the soul first appear in this world? From what stage of spiritual existence does he fall into the material world? This is a broad question, which requires some background information.
There are two classes of souls, jivas, who come into this world. One class comes from the spiritual Vaikuntha planets by the necessity of nitya-lila, the eternal pastimes of Krsna. Another comes by constitutional necessity.


The brahmajyoti, the nondifferentiated marginal plane, is the source of infinite jiva souls, atomic spiritual partices of nondifferentiated character. The rays of the Lord's transcendental body are known as the brahmajyoti, and a pencil of a ray of the brahmajyoti is the jiva. The jiva soul is an atom in that effulgence, and the brahmajyoti is a product of an infinite number of jiva atoms.

Generally, souls emanate from the brahmajyoti which is living and growing. Within the brahmajyoti, their equilibrium is somehow disturbed and movement begins. From nondifferentiation, differentiation begins. From a plain sheet of uniform consciousness, individual conscious units grow. And because the jiva is conscious it is endowed with free will. So, from the marginal position they choose either the side of exploitation or the side of dedication.

http://www.vtweb.com/gosai/chaitanya...jiva/jiva.html

http://www.vtweb.com/gosai/chaitanya...rigin_ssm.html