An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra - 4.1.-Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, March 05, 2022. 06:00. 

Chapter - 4. The Origin of Bondage  -1.

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The Brahma Sutra is a Moksha Sastra, dealing with the subject of the salvation of the soul. How did you get into bondage and how will you retrace your steps to the original liberated condition – that is the main subject of this wonderful scripture, the Brahma Sutra. How do you get into bondage? This subject is dealt with in the Chhandogya Upanishad and the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad under the chapter called the Panchagni Vidya.

When a child is born, it enters into bondage. Also, how does the child get into the womb of the mother? How does

it become necessary for the child to enter the womb of the mother? 

How does it know who is the suitable parent? There is an endless number of parents in the world. Why does it choose only one particular set of parents?

When this subject is discussed, we must first of all know what we mean by the soul that takes birth. 

What is soul? 

What is it made of? 

We have a wrong notion of the word, generally speaking. People imagine that the soul is a kind of substance – a little ball, mercury-like – moving inside the body. All sorts of funny ideas everybody has about the Jiva, Atma, soul, and all that. It is nothing of this kind, really.

Jiva or soul, for the purpose of our subject, is a concentrated point of desire. The soul that we are discussing about here is not the Universal Soul; it is rather the bound soul and no one can be bound unless there is a concentration of desire at a spatio-temporal point.

It is desire that is born, not a child. The human being is a shape taken by a mass of desires. Every cell of our body is made up of desires. It vibrates with desires – any number of desires. But since any number of desires cannot be fulfilled through a single body, a certain set of desires is chosen intelligently for the purpose of fulfilling them through a single incarnation.

The desire of a person is infinite in its nature. It would like to swallow the whole world, if it is possible. That it is unable to do so is a different matter; but if it could be possible, it would do it. It would swallow the whole sky also! Such is the rapacious, insatiable nature of desire.

What is desire? It is a concentration of consciousness at a finite point. Just as we can centralise into a point of concentration sunlight by allowing the rays of the sun to pass through a lens, and make it appear that the sun is totally concentrated through the lens, in a similar manner, as it were, the Universal Consciousness arranges itself into a point of concentration and finitises itself. When it finitises itself, originally, it is said in the Upanishads, that it looked like a spark of fire. As from a huge conflagration several sparks may jet forth in all directions, so from this great conflagration of 'Brahma Fire', many little sparks shot out which are the individuals. So far so good. But creation did not end with that only.

To be continued .....

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