Chapter 3: Lord Kapila explains our relationship with this material world
Although the pastime of Jaya and Vijaya offers us some foundations, the teachings of Lord Kapila are the first passage where our “fall” into this material world is thoroughly explained.
« The ‘Fall’ of the Jīva, as Explained by Śrīla Prabhupāda
Chapter 3: Lord Kapila explains our relationship with this material world
The question asked by Maharaja Parīkṣit in the Second Canto about the relationship of the eternal souls with matter is answered more thoroughly by Śukadeva Gosvāmī at the end of the Third Canto, in the teachings of Lord Kapila.
In her questions, Devahūti mentions: jijñāsayāham prakṛteḥ pūruṣasya. In other words, she asks about the relationship between prakṛti and puruṣa. Prakṛti means the external energy of the Lord, which is dependent on Him and can produce the material manifestations only when activated by His glance, and puruṣa means both the Supreme Lord and the individual souls who, under illusion, try to become false enjoyers in this material world. This propensity to enjoy material nature is the cause of the miseries of the soul, and the process of eradicating these miseries and connecting us with our original sat-cit-ānanda nature is the process of devotional service, described in detail by Lord Kapila in his teachings.
As Prabhupāda explains:
“Sānkhya philosophy, as is well known, deals with prakṛti and puruṣa. Puruṣa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead or anyone who imitates the Supreme Personality of Godhead as an enjoyer, and prakṛti means “nature.” In this material world, material nature is being exploited by the puruṣas, or the living entities. The intricacies in the material world of the relationship of the prakṛti and puruṣa, or the enjoyed and the enjoyer, is called samsāra, or material entanglement. Devahūti wanted to cut the tree of material entanglement, and she found the suitable weapon in Kapila Muni.”
Although the pastime of Jaya and Vijaya offers us some foundations, the teachings of Lord Kapila are the first passage of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam where our “fall” into this material world is thoroughly explained. Lord Kapila explains this difficult topic from one side, and later passages explain it from other sides. When all the sides are properly understood, we can properly understand the conclusions Śrīla Prabhupāda gives at the end of the Fourth Canto and other passages.
Most of us know the book Teachings of Lord Kapila. What we may not realize is that this book is actually just a summary, based on a series of lectures on chapter 3.25 by Śrīla Prabhupāda. This is just the first of the eight chapters where his teachings are discussed. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the teachings of Lord Kapila continue up to chapter 3.32, and Prabhupāda goes much deeper in explaining his philosophy.
Understanding the elements and material creation
When a man is drowning in the water, the most intelligent course of action is not to try to understand the nature of water and marine life, or how he fell there, but how to get out. It’s the same for us concerning our struggle in the material ocean. On the other hand, it may be difficult for us to develop faith in the spiritual process if we don’t properly understand the nature of this world, our relationship with it, and the difficulties involved in staying here. In his teachings, Lord Kapila gives us the philosophical foundation we need to understand these topics, explaining how the temporary material world appears from the eternal, transcendental, and unchanging Supreme Brahman. How does He become present here without abandoning His transcendental position? How does our consciousness become entrapped here, and what are the forces that prevent us from breaking free?
First, what exactly is the material nature, and how can we become entangled in it? Lord Kapila explains:
“Divided into varieties by her threefold modes, material nature creates the forms of the living entities, and the living entities, seeing this, are illusioned by the knowledge-covering feature of the illusory energy. Because of his forgetfulness, the transcendental living entity accepts the influence of material energy as his field of activities, and thus actuated, he wrongly applies the activities to himself. Material consciousness is the cause of one’s conditional life, in which conditions are enforced upon the living entity by the material energy. Although the spirit soul does not do anything and is transcendental to such activities, he is thus affected by conditional life.” (SB 3.26.5-7)
The soul is transcendental, just like the Lord is, but because we are very small, we can fall under the control of material energy, while the Lord never falls into illusion. Even though it may be difficult to understand how the transcendental soul falls into illusion, and how the spiritual soul can become related to matter, it is still a fact that we are here.
Material nature is originally undifferentiated, as pradhāna, but after being agitated by the time energy, it manifests three qualities: the modes of goodness, passion, and ignorance. When the three modes become manifested, pradhāna becomes the mahat-tattva. By the combination of these three modes with time and the energy of the mahat-tattva, everything else is created, including the false ego, sense objects, material elements, etc.
Material nature thus manifests in many temporary manifestations that attract the conditioned souls. We thus accept many layers of material coverings to try to enjoy these creations, starting with the false ego, mind, and intelligence, going all the way to the material body and senses. Due to these coverings, we forget our real nature and identify with the body, accepting the body and the environment around us as our kṣetra, or field of activities.
Originally, we are free to go anywhere in the creation, but by becoming attached to a particular body and certain objects of the senses, we become restricted to a certain space, where we live under very strict conditions, just like in a prison. That’s what we call conditioned life. However, under the influence of illusion, we consider ourselves happy and have no desire to leave this position. When Indra was cursed to become a hog on our planet, he was initially very afraid, but when he finally came, he became so attached to his hog’s life that he didn’t want to go back to his position as the king of the heavens. Such is the power of the illusory potency of the Lord. It creates a prison without walls, where even the prisoners in the most abominable conditions have no desire to leave.
In reality, the soul has no relationship with the body and performs no material activities, but under the influence of illusion, we erroneously accept the activities of the body as our own, and due to this illusion, we become affected by conditioned life, sharing the pains and pleasures of the body. One example that can be offered is that there are many cars parked all over the city. If one sees a truck crashing into some random car, he will not think much about it, but if he sees the same truck crashing into his own car, the reaction will be very different. The situation is the same, but because he is attached to this particular car, he feels pain and anxiety when it is damaged, although the damage to the car doesn’t directly affect him as a human being. Similarly, the soul has nothing to do with the body or the objects related to the body, but due to attachment to it, we become affected.
The nature of material attachment is such that it always ends in pain and frustration because everything in the material creation is temporary. Being the soul eternal, we always hanker for a permanent situation, where we don’t have to part from whatever we have. However, this is impossible in the material world. We thus become attached to different people and objects and lament when they wither and are taken away. The final loss is the body itself. One may lose a son, a spouse, or a limb, but death means losing all of this simultaneously.
In this way, as long as we are not ready to return to our original position of service to Kṛṣṇa, we live engrossed in anxiety and lamentation, accepting one temporary situation after another in the material ocean.
The material body we receive is created by material nature, following our previous actions and desires. However, the body itself is not the source of happiness or suffering. What causes suffering and elation is our identification with the body. This is something we bring upon ourselves. As Lord Kapila explains:
“The cause of the conditioned soul’s material body and senses, and the senses’ presiding deities, the demigods, is the material nature. This is understood by learned men. The feelings of happiness and distress of the soul, who is transcendental by nature, are caused by the spirit soul himself.” (SB 3.26.8)
We come to this material world due to our free will, and at every step, we can choose between continuing our existence here, moving up or down, or starting our way back. Although the soul is part of the spiritual potency of Kṛṣṇa, it is called the marginal potency due to the presence of free will. This free will is an intrinsic characteristic of the soul, the very thing that makes us different from inanimate matter. Free will implies that we are free to make the wrong choices, decisions that even Kṛṣṇa respects. However, when we desire to return to our original, eternal position, Kṛṣṇa helps us in every way.
As Prabhupāda explains in his purport: “The living entity is the cause of his own suffering, but he can also be the cause of his eternal happiness. When he wants to engage in Kṛṣṇa Consciousness, a suitable body is offered to him by the internal potency, the spiritual energy of the Lord, and when he wants to satisfy his senses, a material body is offered. Thus it is his free choice to accept a spiritual body or a material body, but once the body is accepted he has to enjoy or suffer the consequences.”
How does the material creation come to be?
Originally, the material nature appears in the form of pradhāna, the subtle, undifferentiated sum total of all material elements, just like milk contains many different components, such as proteins, fat, sugars, etc., in a dissolved form. When pradhāna is touched by time, the three modes of material nature become apparent (just as cream comes to the top when we put milk to rest overnight) and by the further interaction of the three modes, time and the total material energy, all material elements become apparent (just as we may separate milk into butter, cream, milk powder, etc., and then create different preparations by mixing these different ingredients in different ways and in different proportions). When the material modes as well as the material elements become apparent, the result is called prakṛti, or mahat-tattva.
In this way, we have:
1) Brahman: The pure, transcendental manifestation, beyond the three modes of material nature.
2) Jīva: The souls, who can choose between being part of the eternal spiritual manifestation or joining the material creation.
3) Kalā (time): The eternal energy of the Lord that puts the material energy in motion.
4) Pradhāna: The subtle, undifferentiated form of the material nature.
5) Prakṛti: The stage of material nature when the material elements become apparent.
The material elements can be counted in different ways, as Kṛṣṇa Himself explains in the Eleventh Canto. However, in the Sānkhya system of Lord Kapila, the material elements are counted as 24, plus time:
a) The five material elements (earth, water, fire, air, and ether).
b) The qualities of these elements (odor, taste, form, touch, and sound).
c) The five senses for acquiring knowledge (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch).
d) The five senses of action (the tongue, hands, legs, genital, and excretory system).
e) The four internal senses (mind, intelligence, material ego, and material consciousness).
f) Time, which is counted as the 25th element.
When we come to the four internal senses (mind, intelligence, material ego, and material consciousness), we can say that consciousness is a symptom of the soul. We can’t see the soul, but we can understand that the soul is present by the manifestation of consciousness. Originally, the consciousness of the soul is completely spiritual. However, when the soul comes in contact with matter, this consciousness is manifested in a perverted way, just as the light of the sun may appear to be red or blue when reflected in a blue or red object, or the moon may appear to be trembling when reflected in the waters of a lake agitated by the wind.
The first layer that covers the original consciousness of the soul is the false ego, which leads one to identify with both the subtle and gross material bodies. The subtle material body includes the material mind and intelligence. The mind creates different material desires, and material intelligence makes plans on how to satisfy them. In order to experience the world, we receive a gross body, which includes senses. Due to the false ego, the soul identifies with this combination of mind, intelligence, senses, and gross body and tries to enjoy the material world through it. We then see ourselves as men or women, members of certain families, countries, or groups, and so on. These false identifications that form our material identity are called ahankāra.
There are many separate details in the explanation of the material elements given by Lord Kapila, but one essential point to understand is that all energies are part of Kṛṣṇa or the Supreme Brahman. Everything that exists is part of Kṛṣṇa; there is nothing separated or independent from Him. At the same time, however, He has multiple potencies, and they have different characteristics and distinctions. As souls, we are parts and parcels of Kṛṣṇa, but at the same time, we are separate individuals. All these apparent contradictions were harmonized by Sri Caitanya Mahāprabhu in his acintya-bhedābheda-tattva philosophy, or the inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference.
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