A new book, explaining the 'fall' of the jīva

If you ever questioned how we came to this material world, you are not alone. A question that appears simple at first, becomes more and more complex the more we dive in. There is a reason for that.

If you ever questioned how we came to this material world, you are not alone. A question that appears simple at first, becomes more and more complex the more we dive in. There is a reason for that.

There is a great difference between how things work in the spiritual world and how they work here, in the material world. Some details about life in the spiritual world, such as Krsna being the center of all activities, are relatively easy to understand. Still, other details are extremely complicated, such as the differences in the concept of time. How to understand a place where there is no beginning and no end, where all sorts of activities are performed, yet nothing changes? It’s very different from the familiar concept of past, present, and future we get accustomed to here.

It becomes even more complicated when the concept requires understanding something in the eternal time of the spiritual world, in connection with material time, where everything can be ordered and put into a timeline. If something exists eternally, how can it become temporary, and if it becomes temporary, does it stop being eternal? Being temporary now, how can we also simultaneously have an eternal identity, and having an eternal identity, how could we fall into a temporary position?

The “fall” of the jīva is one of such questions, and that’s why it has been baffling both devotees and philosophers for centuries. The more we try to answer this question using our limited material intelligence, the more we are propense to come to the wrong answer, since our material intelligence can’t operate outside of the confines of the material modes and material time.

Ultimately, only a liberated soul, who has experience of both the eternal reality of the spiritual world and the temporary, illusory reality of the material world, can answer this question, and that’s what Srila Prabhupada does in his commentary on the Srimad Bhagavatam.

Although these conclusions are clear enough when properly supported, they can be fully understood only when we carefully study the text, something not many of us have the time to do.

In this book, we focus on the passages that are directly connected with this topic, creating a short and sequential study that is easier to follow. By becoming familiar with the way Prabhupāda explains, we can understand this difficult topic without falling into all the useless and damaging mental speculation and pedantic arguments Prabhupāda warns us about.

The conclusion is not just true but also uplifting, nourishing our desire to leave this temporary material world and return to the association of our eternal friend, who follows us even in our conditioned state, guiding us from inside the heart.

Starting from today, we will be publishing this new book, one topic at a time. If you are interested, you can subscribe (if you haven’t done so) to receive the posts by e-mail and receive the new topics as they are posted. We will be posting the topics about the ‘fall’ of the jīva from Monday to Friday, and continue sending the topics of the commentary on the Govinda-bhāsya on the weekends.

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The “Fall” of the Jīva, as Explained by Śrīla Prabhupāda