Guest guest Posted April 23, 2007 Report Share Posted April 23, 2007 SAI RAM Dear Brothers and Sisters, A mail has been recievd by this humble self addressed to my personal mail Id requesting for a greater elaboration of the term'conditioned consciouness' and 'conditioned soul'. and also the relation between 'jiva' and 'Isvara'. Let me attempt an explanation this way:- When the Pure Self is not recognised, the ego , which is a kind of deep-seated ignorance, rises in man and it not only veils his divine nature from himself, but also projects on the Reality a positive misconception. The 'egocentric idea' that he is 'conditioned' by his own body, mind and intellect, is the true seed of one`s delusory attachments with his own relations etc. To rediscover ourselves to be really something higher than our own ego is to end all the imaginary sorrows that have come to us through false identification. The eternal Spirit in man, asserting its false relationships with his body, comes to feel bound or 'conditioned' by a thousand relationships with the world of things and beings among the outer objects. The same Pure Self or Consciousness, playing on the field of mind, comes to experience the imperfections of the emotional world as its own. The Divine spark of life, assuming a false identity with the intellect, comes to suffer for its hopes and desires, its ambitions and ideologies, which are the charecteristic pre-occupations of the intellect. The Self thus getting reflected in the intellect, body and mind is the 'ego' which is the victim of the world of objects, feelings and ideas. To this ego belongs all the sad destinies of life and the fleeting thrills of acquisition and possession. The one Golden rule that is to be kept in mind is that misapprehension of Reality can take place only when it is preceded by non-apprehension of Reality. At every level of our personality we view life and come to our own conclusions over things. Thus we have a physical estimate of the world outside from our body level, apart and quite distinct from our emotional picture of the life from our mental level; and also an intellectual concept of life from the level of our intellect, which differs from both the above estimates. That which gives us despondency and dejection at the physical, mental and intellectual levels can yield a thrilling inspiration ,if we perceive it from the spiritual level, with the right spiritual understanding. It is men of true wisdom who never fell miserable and never moan for things. They understand that outer world of objects is essentially finite and, therefore, things in it must perish and be also born again. Continuity of change is the nature of finitude and it is this change that we understand as death. Death is certain as much as birth for a 'conditioned soul'. The Pure soul being infinite, eternal and immortal, without beginning or without end has neither birth nor death. The conditioned soul or jiva is not able to visualise or experience his real identity and feels a sense of incompleteness. Now , who is a jiva? " The reflection ( as it were) of Brahman (in Sukshma Sarira) or the subtle body which identifies itself with gross body is called Jiva. Atma or awareness conditioned by the Upadhi viz., avidya(ignorance) is called jiva " by Bagawan Sankaracharya. Thus the self identifying with the body is called Jiva or conditioned consciousness. Jiva possesses both gross and subtle body. The subtle body reflects consciouness. Insentient objects do not possess subtle body and therefore they do not reflect consciouness. Jiva is conditioned by individual ignorance also known as Maya-Avidya. (to be continued) With Loving SAI RAMs, G.Balasubramanian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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