Re : Consciousness in the state of moksha

[Guest guest]

Dear Mani vardarajan,

You wrote :-

Dear Friends,

I have a doubt regarding Sri Ramanuja's opinion on an

aspect of moksha. The question is as follows. In the

state of moksha,the jIva is said to regain its true

nature as a monadic centre of infinite consciousness.

All identification with the body ceases and the jIva

is hereon blessed with the blissful vision of

the paramAtman which overflows into divine service.

However, does the jIva retain its memory of all its

past births and its countless individual identities?

Or does the jIva lose all idea of this

identity and solely know itself as sesha of the

paramAtman,without reference to any past karmas?

 

Mani,the question is nice,i thought about it and as

you have said,even i could not recall Bhagavad

Ramanuja commenting about the question anywhere in his

works.But,as i see it the answer is logical and

straight and can be constructed easily from the

philosophy of Ramanuja.I will also take the help of

Bhagavad gita Bhashya for answering this.

 

Bondage according to visista advaita philosophy is the

contraction of the attributive consciousness of the

jiva due to forces of karma.The symptoms of the

disease of bondage are ignorance,poor memory(due to

the prakriti guna tamas)etc.

Release or Liberation of a jiva is of a nature quite

opposite to that of the nature of bondage i.e perfect

knowledge and perfect memory.

 

Now,i draw your attention to the chapter 4,verse 1

through verse 5. In the verse 5 of the gita,Lord

Krishna answers to arjuna's doubt of krishna having

taught the karma yoga to vivasvan who lived much

before krishna and not a contemprary of the same.I

feel this answer answers your doubt.

Krishna says"Many births of yours and mine have

passed.I remember all i.e mine and yours,but you do

not remember them".

Now,the above statements prove the state of

krishna,who is yogiswara,gunaathitha i.e transcended

the gunas of prakriti,having perfect knowledge and

memory and on the other hand the state of a typical

jiva identifying itself with the series of identities

from bondage to release in such a way that there is

complete loss of memory of the previous identity(To be

more precise i see a problem of memory in a single

birth itself i.e most people can't recall completley

their own childhood or even events that might have

happened a few years or days back.When such is the

symptom of bondage in one single birth,it is no wonder

that we easily forget our previous births).

Observe that Lord Krishna is able to recall all his

avataras and all our births because he "already has

perfect memory,as his state is such that he has

transcended the gunas of prakriti" unlike us who

suffer loss of memory due bondage in gunas of

prakriti.

The above analysis proves that only an entity whose

consciousness is infinite like Sri krishna's can

recall all its previous births i.e identities,because

in and through all these infinite identities the

perfect entity can still differentiate between its

true nature i.e identity and the passing identities

resulting due to misapprehension of the body as the

soul with an added perfection of not succumbing to the

effect of Tamas,the guna of prakriti causing loss of

memory.This means only nitya sooris and muktha

atmas,who are at a similar state of Sri krishna can

recall their avataras that they have taken.The

attainment of this state is asserted by sri krishna in

his gita in chapter 13,verse 19 and chapter 14th,verse

1 and 2.

In short,a jiva in bondage cannot recall "all" his

previous births.In Release or Liberation,the jiva

attains its true nature and in this state it can

"recall all its previous avataras taken in the state

of its true nature as it is now free from tamas making

way for perfect memory and not all the births taken in

the state of bondage unless it is blessed by Lord

Krishna,who has powers,which even a jiva in its true

state cannot comprehend".

 

I hope the above analysis satisfies your doubt.All

errors(if any) above are mine and correction of the

same is welcomed.

 

Sri krishnaarpanamasthu

Suresh B.N.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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