Spiritual Evolution (EBI*)
It’s NOT Material Evolution we go through, but Spiritual Evolution. Darwin had the right idea but the wrong application.
*EBI – this post provides Essential Background Information
So here we are – stranger in a strange land – spiritual beings in a material world. It’s a very long story. I generally like to include all of the background to whatever concept I’m writing about, but that story is too long for this post, so we’re just going to put our toe in that water, so to speak.
The first point, and necessary item, is for us to understand our position in relation to the Whole.
The Absolute Truth
What is the Whole?
The Absolute Truth.
Since an Absolute Truth is a concept that most people are taught doesn’t exist, I should first explain and defend that statement.
The reason they say that an Absolute Truth doesn’t exist is because we live in a world in which most truth is relative. I say most because the Absolute Truth does indeed exist here as well.
A relative truth is, for example, that I say strawberry ice cream is the best flavor. That’s my truth. Your truth may be that pistachio is the best. I like motor sports, and you like ball sports. One girl thinks Barbie dolls are the best, but another thinks that cuddly teddy bears are the best. You get the idea.
Relative truths are relative to each individual person. But the Absolute Truth is true for everyone in all times and places.
An example of that Absolute Truth in a relative world is that the life force in all living things is spiritual energy. Another example is that this world is pervaded and controlled by a Supreme Being – the person we call God. These truths are a fact, and are independent of what anybody believes. They can be denied as if they were relative truths, but that changes nothing.
The next point is that the Absolute Truth includes all that is. Everything.
The Absolute Truth by definition not only includes everything, but in that Truth all dualities are reconciled, dualities such as: the greatest and smallest; the one and the many; the infinite and the infinitesimal; material and spiritual; male and female, and so on.
For example, God is the greatest, the infinite, and the One. We, the jivas are the smallest, the infinitesimal, and the many. Both parts of this apparent duality are constituent parts of the Absolute Truth, which are thus reconciled.
Evolution of the Soul, Not the Body
The jiva is an interesting aspect of the Absolute Truth, in that the jiva, besides being unlimited in number, bridges the gap between the material and spiritual. The jiva has the same spiritual nature as God and thus has the birthright to live in the all-perfect spiritual world where life is eternal and free from suffering. But because the jiva is minute it has the ability to live in the material world. All of us have chosen to live here, and likewise we can choose to leave this place for the spiritual world.
A spiritual being requires a suitable material body to live in the material world. And because the material energy can be experienced in many different ways, many different types of bodies are available aspects of material existence, and thus the Lord has created 8,400,000 species of life. Life in each form is a fantastic experience because each body filters the consciousness so that the experience is complete. The same jiva evolves from body to body, and in doing so experiences the material energy in unique ways, sometimes as a fish, a tiger, a worm, etc.
Once the jiva enters the material world it goes through a process of evolution – a spiritual evolution – from one type of body to another during which its consciousness evolves as it transmigrates, or reincarnates, through 8,000,000 species, until finally being awarded with the human form of life. We learn from the Vishnu Purana:
There are 900,000 species living in the water. There are 2,000,000 non-moving living entities, such as trees and plants; 1,100,000 species of insects and reptiles; and 1,000,000 species of birds. As far as quadrupeds are concerned, there are 3,000,000 varieties, and there are 400,000 human species.
The Human Experience
With that background information we now come to the point of this post – which is the varieties of human experience.
Now the idea of 400,000 varieties of humans is a challenging concept for most people because we are accustomed to thinking of a human being in terms of form. But these varieties of human species refer to varieties of consciousness, as is the case with each species of life.
The Vedic literature provides names and descriptions of many of these species of humans:
Maruts, Adityas, Vasus, Asvinis, Ribhus, Angiras, Rudras, Visvedevas, Sadhyas, Gandharvas, Apsaras, Nagas, Kinnaras, Daityas, Raksasas, Siddhas, Caranas, Guhyakas, Kimpurusas, Vidyadharas, Yaksas, Kinnaras, Apsaras, etc.
The distinction of the human species is that it has both developed consciousness and free will, and this developed consciousness may be present even though the form may not be the normal two-armed, two-legged human form we are familiar with. Some of these, such as the Gandharvas and Siddhas, are said to have very beautiful human forms, whereas others are ugly, frightening, and disgusting. One group, for example, is called the Kimpurusas, where kim means “is it?,” and purusa means “human.” The grey E.T.s that most people are by now familiar with would be an example of a specific human species, as would the Nordics, and other E.T.’s written about in UFO literature.
It’s beyond the scope of this blog to get into much detail about the different human species, but we note here that humans live in every part of the universe, as do other life forms. Indeed, there are living beings everywhere throughout the entire material creation, as we see in our experience: there are living beings in all depths of the ocean, in the air, in the earth, and maybe you’ve also seen the microscopic things that apparently live in books and sometimes crawl across the page while we are reading. I once read of scientists finding a life form that was able to live in hot, boiling sulfuric acid and life forms that live high in the stratosphere. Human beings live in both the heavenly and hellish regions of the material world and all over the earth plane. Some are classified as divine and some as demonic.[1] A great source for detailed information on this subject is the book Alien Identities by my late colleague Richard Thompson.
An Unlimited Varieties of Personality and Behavior
It’s a gross understatement to say that every human being is uniquely different. If the jiva is of the same spiritual energy, what is it that accounts for the unlimited variety of humans? Dogs everywhere are the same, as are cats, squirrels and horses. What makes human beings so different?
Every living being besides human beings are completely controlled by their nature, but humans are given free will to act as they please. In doing so they contact the material energy in various ways and are influenced, or affected, through this contact by the guna of the thing. Everything in the material world has a subtle quality associated with it known as guna, or the mode, or quality, of material nature. Very briefly, there are three gunas, or qualities: rajas, tamas, and sattva. Tamas covers consciousness, making the person dull and foolish, sattva expands consciousness, leading to wisdom and understanding, while rajas impels it to action, acquisition and enjoyment.
Different Classes of Human Beings
As a consequence of the effect of the gunas on human consciousness, there are four categories, or classes, of human beings, identified by their capacity of understanding and the nature of the work they are capable of performing. The Sanskrit word for this classification system is varna, and the four varnas are: brahmana, ksatriya, vaishya, and sudra. My translation and use of these words are intelligentsia, administrators, organizers, and workers, respectively.[2]
This same variety of people and their qualities is found in every culture: varna referring to the material aspect of human nature that I referenced two posts earlier, ashrama referring to the spiritual aspect. As with the design and organization of ashrama, varna must similarly be designed and organized, but before we get to that, further information about the gunas is required to increase our understanding of how human consciousness is influenced by contact with the material energy. That will be the subject of the next post.
Rest assured, there is another way to live.
[1] The difference between the divine and demonic is a matter of who is agreeable to follow the Lord’s instructions and who is not, as we have previously explained.
[2] Note that my preference for explaining the nature of the varnas may be different from that of others, but is the manner in which I will refer to them in the posts of this blog.
Very well written, Dhan. I genuinely love the way you write. I look forward to reading the following posts. This was easy to understand although the concepts are deep and expansive. Great job breaking it down into Layman's terms.