The journey of a soul through the Universe (The Intriguing Vedic Universe, ch.16)
This chapter is dedicated to describing the journey of a soul through the Universe. This is our story: how we came to the place we are now, and where we can go from here.
'The Intriguing Vedic Universe' was my first book on Vedic cosmology, explaining the mysterious universe described in the Srimad Bhagavatam. It describes not just the physical aspects, in a level of detail that rivals modern science, but also the metaphysical aspects, the missing aspect that is missing in the modern perspective.
Chapter 16: The journey of a soul through the Universe
In the previous chapters, we studied the structure of the Universe, as well as the concept of space and time according to the Vedas.
This chapter is dedicated to describing the journey of a soul through the Universe. This is our story: how we came to the place we are now, and where we can go from here.
The model of the universe described in the Puranas is focused on describing the different planetary systems, giving us a map of the different realms of the cosmos and the standard of consciousness one has to develop to access each of them. Although described as disks, these different planetary systems are more like different levels of consciousness that one has access to according to his purity and advancement in spiritual knowledge.
In other words, the Vedas give us a map that helps us to understand where we are, and what is the path to reach the desired destination. The material universe is incredibly big and complex, and a soul can follow innumerable different paths, transmigrating from one body to the next in the wheel of samsara. By understanding this process, we can chalk a brighter path for ourselves, and help others. The secret to understanding this explanation is to not try to match these different locations with different stars and galaxies, but to try to understand the different levels of consciousness of the inhabitants there.
We understand that we are not the body, nor the mind, but a spiritual particle of pure consciousness, who is independent of the body. Just as one may change his clothes, abandoning the previous ones that are old or damaged, a soul changes to another body when it becomes too old or damaged. When a soul abandons one particular body, we call it “death”, and when he accepts a new body, we call it “birth”. This is a cycle that has been going on for a very long time.
The Vedas explain that there are 8,400,000 forms of life in this universe, amongst which there are 400,000 species of intelligent life, spread through different planets. Different from the modern scientific definition, which classifies species according to their capacity to generate viable offspring, the species described in the Vedas describe different levels of consciousness. A dog living on a different planet may have a different type of body, and thus not be able to mate with a she-dog from the Earth, but still, they are considered one species according to the Vedas, since they have the same level of consciousness.
The souls transmigrate through these different species of life according to their consciousness, actions, and desires in the cycle of samsara. But when did this start? When is it going to end? How does the spiritual soul enter into this material universe, and how can he leave?
It’s explained that every soul has an eternal relationship with Krsna, a spiritual identity that is eternal and unbreakable. This identity is the true ego or the real identity of the soul. How the soul can go from this position of eternal bliss to the perpetual struggle in the material world is a mystery. However, when this happens, the journey of the soul inside the material realm starts in the Karana Ocean, on the border between the spiritual plane and the material energy. Just like to enter a country one has to pass through its border, similarly, the Karana ocean is a border between the two words, a borderline position between the spiritual and the material.
Goloka chart
The Karana ocean contains the sum of the material energy but at an unmanifested state. One way to see it is as an ocean as it is described in poetic language. Another is as a cloud, an unmanifested mass that covers part of the spiritual sky, and yet another way to see it is as a river, that acts as a frontier between the spiritual and material worlds. The same thing is described in these three different ways in the scriptures, according to the idea being emphasized.
To create the material universes, Krsna expands Himself as Maha-Vishnu, Who lays down in the Karana ocean, creating the material universes and impregnating the material energy with the innumerable souls who desire to take part in the material creation.
In the Karana ocean, the soul is still in an almost pure state and enjoys a degree of spiritual bliss. However, desiring variety the soul assumes the covering of the false ego, which brings him to material designations. False ego means to accept an identity that is not one's original spiritual position. Under the influence of the false ego, the soul accepts the identity of human beings, demigods, animals, and other species.
The false ego leads to the other coverings of the soul: intelligence and mind (that form the subtle body), the senses, and finally the gross body.
The Karana Ocean is the ultimate destination for followers of the sunyavada doctrine (Buddhists), who call it Nirvana. This is a place where one is free from material duality but doesn't have access to the varieties of the spiritual kingdom. Souls can stay for a long time there, in perfect peace, but the desire for variety makes them eventually fall into the material universes.
Descending from an almost pure state, the soul takes his first birth in Satyaloka (or Brahmaloka), the most elevated planet inside this material universe. There he lives a very long life, full of knowledge and free of miseries. In fact, it’s described that the only suffering the inhabitants living there experience is compassion for the inhabitants of the lower planets, who don't enjoy the same standard of living. Due to this, some of these inhabitants take birth on the lower planets, as philosophers and spiritual teachers to share their knowledge and thus help others to progress on the spiritual path.
The point is that although very long, the life of the inhabitants of Brahmaloka is limited. Time ticks for them the same way it ticks for us. When the time comes, they need to move out. The problem is that being Brahmaloka the most elevated planet in the universe, there are only two possibilities: To get out, and go back to the spiritual realm, or to go down, to some of the lower planets.
The souls who become further entangled with matter go down on the second path and take birth in one of the upper planetary systems situated directly below Brahmaloka: Tapoloka, Janaloka, or Maharloka. These are subtle planetary systems where highly pious souls live. The ones that are very pure and attracted to meditation live in the first two, while the ones that are attracted to discipline and pious deeds live in the third.
Again, the soul has the choice of going up or down. The ones that are serious about self-realization may attain liberation and go back to the spiritual planets, or even take another birth in Brahmaloka, but others that become yet more entangled with matter go down, taking birth in Swargaloka, the celestial planets.
Pious souls live on these planets in great delight, having the opportunity to satisfy their sensual desires. The women there are called apsaras, and are just like angels, with exquisite beauty and irresistible feminine charms, while the men are extremely strong, intelligent, and handsome. Being pious, people are good-natured and innocent, there is very little anger or envy there. This planetary system matches very well the descriptions of paradise we have in other religious scriptures.
A common characteristic of all the upper planets, down to Swargaloka, is that the inhabitants there live a completely natural lifestyle, in harmony with nature. They have mystic perfections that allow them to manipulate matter at will, and thus they don’t require machines.
Each of the celestial planets in swargaloka is presided by a particular demigod, who apart from taking part in the maintenance of the Universe, maintains the inhabitants of his own planet.
The problem with Swargaloka is that because of the practically unlimited opportunity for sense gratification, most souls use their time there to simply enjoy heavenly delights instead of pursuing the path of self-realization. Therefore, after a long life there (10,000 celestial years, or 3,600,000 years of our time) the soul falls again.
The ones who have a little bit of pious credit left, take a last birth in heavenly conditions in one of the earthly kingdoms of Bhu-mandala. The inhabitants there have lower standards of body, but they still enjoy a comfortable living, not as good as the inhabitants of Swargaloka but still quite comfortable.
These celestial locations are just like vacation resorts where the ones that are falling from higher realms, or who performed pious deeds in the past are allowed to stay for some time to enjoy their remaining good karma. Instead of dollars or euros, the stay there is paid for by one’s pious deeds. However, just as one has to leave a resort when his money finishes, one has to leave these heavenly locations when his past merits are exhausted.
Having exhausted his pious credits, the soul takes his next birth on this earthly planet. It’s described that the souls fall to this realm with the rain. They get thus transferred to different plants that grow grains. Taking shelter in these grains, the soul is transferred to the semen of a man, and finally to a fetus when there is conception. This is the place we are now.
Planet Earth or Bharatha Varsa is one of the planets in the intermediary system. This is a place where the inhabitants experience a mixture of conditions from higher and lower planets. There is heat, but there is also cold. There is happiness, but there is also suffering. There is goodness, but also cruelty. There is love, and there is hate. There is peace, but there is also war. This is a world of extremes, where we have contact with both good and bad. A place of duality.
The soul is originally pure, but as one goes downwards inside the material universe he becomes progressively more involved with lower qualities, like lust, anger, and greed. This degrades one's consciousness and makes one go progressively deep in the sequence of different planetary systems. This continues to a certain point, where he again comes in contact with spiritual knowledge, be it through a book, a friend, or a spiritual teacher, and decides to start his way back, this time progressing back to higher levels of consciousness.
Our planet is described in the Vedas as Karma-ksetra, a place where souls who exhaust their past karma go to execute different activities and thus create a new baggage of Karma which will determine their next destination. In other words, this planet is a kind of cosmic crossroads, and the decisions we make here are going to have long-lasting implications.
Being a place where we have a difficult life, and where we need to work very hard for any small amount of material success, this planet is considered an ideal place to cultivate spiritual knowledge and follow the path of self-realization.
Different from the heavenly planets, where there is too much distraction, from the Earth a soul can go to any other material planet (from the heavenly Swargaloka all the way to Brahmaloka, the topmost planet of the material universe), or attain liberation, going back home, and re-attaining his original position in the spiritual planets.
However, there is also a great danger: the ones that misuse the opportunity become more and more materialistic. They continue the way down, going thus to the lower planets, where people are just after material comforts and there is little opportunity for self-realization. This part of the Universe is described in the Srimad Bhagavatam as a dark hole because once one enters there, it’s difficult to come out.
The lower planets are subterraneous realms where the natural light of the sun doesn’t enter. The inhabitants live underground on a perpetual night, depending on different arrangements of artificial lights. Materialists who are very pious have the opportunity to take birth in the Bila-Svarga, heavenly lower planets, where the inhabitants live in comfort, surrounded by material facilities, in cities created by the great architect Maya Danava. In terms of standard of living, the inhabitants of these planets don’t live much differently from the inhabitants of Swargaloka. The main difference is that in Swargaloka the inhabitants are God-conscious and thus have the opportunity of progressing to higher realms, be it directly or after a stop on Earth. The inhabitants of the lower heavenly planets, however, are atheists. The law of Karma doesn’t discriminate between the two classes, and thus the demons can enjoy a similar standard of living compared to the demigods, as long as they remain pious. The problem is that without good association, they tend to gradually lose their piety, and thus sink into the lower levels.
Materialists who are less pious take birth at the lower levels. These are technologically advanced realms and, different from the Bila-Svarga, there is a lot of anxiety in these places, with lots of pressure and competition. Not all have the same opportunities and everyone struggles to be on top (a standard of living that is similar to the way people live in most big cities nowadays). In these realms, the inhabitants live completely artificial lives, disconnected from nature. On some of these planets, people are very much addicted to sex, and the ones that fall there are exploited for this purpose. Not exactly a good place to go, despite the material facilities.
Materialists who are impious, and too much affected by lower qualities take birth on the lowest planets. Here’s where things start to become quite dark. These planets offer progressively poorer living standards, more anxiety, and less peace of mind. The mentality of the inhabitants is progressively lower, and more lust, anger, and violence are present. The lowest of these planets are dark places, where gigantic intelligent snakes live in holes. Envious and violent, they live disturbed lives, where the weaker serpents fear the stronger and they all fear Garuda who regularly devours them.
Finally, there are the hellish planets, places where people who commit serious crimes go specifically to pay for the violence they committed against other living beings. Souls who arrive there listen while all their wrongdoings are described by Chandragupta, the secretary of Yamaraja, and are sentenced to different levels of punishment according to the severity of their crimes.
It’s described that one who lives by killing animals, for example, has his body pierced by the horns and teeth of the same animals he killed, and the ones who had lives centered around promiscuous sexual relationships have to embrace red-hot metal forms of the opposite sex. Persons who imprison and torture animals have to live in caves where they are tortured by hellish beings. It’s not a place one would like to go.
The hellish planets are at the bottom of the universe. From there, there is no further way down. A soul who reaches this level has, after paying for his crimes, the opportunity to again take birth on this Earth or another intermediary planet, usually as a plant or animal, and from there slowly progress in the karmic evolutive process until he again can take birth as a human being, a position where he again has the choice of going up or going down.
To take birth as a human being on Earth is considered very fortunate, because here one has the chance of meeting spiritual teachers who propagate transcendental knowledge, and thus start his way up, back to the spiritual realm.
However, it’s easier to make the wrong choices and follow the path of materialism and sense indulgence, instead of taking the path of self-realization, which demands discipline. That’s why most souls end up staying in the material sphere for a very long time, going up and down in the cycle of samsara.
It’s like investing money. One who has a certain capital, may invest his money and multiply it by making the right choices. This is going to bring him yet more money, which will multiply his investment opportunities, up to the point he may become a billionaire. However, one who just spends his money on a decadent life will eventually spend everything. He may then keep his artificial living standard for some more time by making debts, but eventually, his credit will dry out and he will not have other alternatives apart from doing hard work to pay his debts, and from there start again from the bottom.
Similarly, in our current life, we have the choice of cultivating spiritual knowledge and self-control and thus creating a brilliant path for ourselves by following the spiritual path, which will allow us to take birth on the higher planets or to attain liberation, or we may surrender to carnal desires and abuse the opportunity, creating a path that may not be so pleasant. That’s the beauty, and the danger, of human life.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, it is mentioned that “That which in the beginning may be just like poison but at the end is just like nectar and which awakens one to self-realization is said to be happiness in the mode of goodness.”
The material path involves instant gratification of one’s senses, thus it is a path that is pleasurable in the beginning, but painful in the long run. The path of progress on the other hand involves discipline and restraint. One who is studying to pass a test and enter a good university has to renounce many things he would otherwise want to do, and instead spend days and nights immersed in his studies. However, this allows him to achieve a much better position in the future. Similarly, the path of self-realization involves working on our bad habits, vices, and lower qualities, therefore it is a path that may present certain challenges in the beginning, but will bring us to the most sublime results in the end.