CHAPTER-NINE
BONDAGE AND EMANCIPATION
In this Chapter, we shall deal with knowledge, ignorance, bondage and emancipation.
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The first phase of nescience is to behave in the transient world as if it is eternal; to have a feeling of immortality about the mortal body, to hold beliefs that the created universe which we experience everyday has been going on since eternity and will not perish.
The second phase of nescience is to regard as pure, the things which are impure, for example, the body of the opposite sex, or falsehood, theft et cetra.
The third phase is to regard as pleasure-giving, the things which are painful, for example, sensual indulgence.
The fourth phase is to regard as spiritual, the things which are un-spiritual.
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Knowledge consists in knowing a thing as it is in its true nature. Ne-science is that which does not give the right notion of an object.
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holy actions, holy-devotion and pure knowledge are conductive to emancipation and unholy actions such as falsehood, unholy devotion such as idol-worship and wrong knowledge lead to bondage.
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the only means of attaining salvation is to perform virtuous actions, for example, truth-speaking and avoiding vicious action, for example, lying.
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Question- The soul is free from vice or virtue and is the more spectator. Heat and cold etc., are the functions of the body. The self is alloy-less.
Answer-The body and the internal organ are inanimate. They cannot feel or experience heat and cold.
Heat and cold can be experienced only by a living entity – man or animal, who tries to touch them. Vital airs are also inanimate; they cannot feel hunger or thirst; hunger or thirst is felt by him who is the possessor of these vital airs. Mind is also inanimate; it cannot feel joys or sorrows; joys and sorrows are felt by the soul through the mind. The soul is happy or sorrowful by perceiving pleasant and unpleasant shapes, sounds, odours, tastes, hardness et cetra, through the external senses, eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin; similarly, through the fourfold internal organ-the faculties of feeling, knowing, willing and egoing, the same soul receives the internal experiences of ideation, determination, memory, egotism, et cetra, and is honoured or disgraced. Just as the man who commits murder with the sword, is punished and not the sword. Similarly, the soul which does good or bad deeds by means of the body, the senses, the internal organs and the vital airs gets pleasure or pain as the fruit of those deeds. The soul is not the spectator of the deeds, but their doer, and enjoyer of their fruits. The seer of the deeds is only God who has none second to Himself. The soul that does the deeds is engrossed in them and not God, the seer.
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Only a bodied (corporeal) object casts reflection in another bodied object of separate existence.
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God’s reflection is meaningless for two reasons. First that He is formless and secondly, He is all pervading.
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Question-What is emancipation?
Answer-Emancipation means release.
Question-Release from what?
Answer-That from which all souls wish to be released.
Question-From which do they wish to be released?
Answer-That which they need to be released from.
Question-What do they need to be released from?
Answer-From pain.
Question-After being released from pain, what do they get and where do they live?
Answer-They get happiness and live in God.
Question-What causes emancipation and what bondage?
Answer-Emancipation is the result of the following:
(i) Obedience to the order of God.
(ii) Avoidance of vices, ignorance, bad company, ill associations, and evil habits.
(iii) Truthfulness, benefaction, education, impartial- justice, promotion of righteousness.
(iv) God’s worship (appreciation, prayer and realization) according to the methods dealt with above, practice of yoga, study, increase of knowledge by legitimate efforts.
(v) Utilization of the most excellent means.
(vi) Doing everything that is to be done in an impartial, just and righteous manner et cetra, et cetra.
A conduct contrary to that delineated above and disobedience to God’s orders contribute towards bondage.
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Just as in bondage it (soul) seeks the support of the physical body and physical sense-organs, similarly in emancipation, the soul enjoys bliss through its own innate powers.
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Had the soul undergone a dissolution on emancipation, who would have been left to enjoy the happiness there? Those, who think that the annihilation of the soul is its emancipation are the most foolish. The emancipation of the soul consists in its release from pain and happy dwelling in blissful, all-pervading and infinite God.
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Emancipated soul strolls, realizing its desires through divine sight and pure mind. Learned sages, who are the attainers of salvation, enjoy the bliss of rectitude by being established in the world of God, that is, in His divine effulgence and by worshiping Him who is within all. Thereby they have access to all worlds and all desires. It means that whatever world and whatever thing they desire, they get by mere contemplation. These emancipated souls quit their gross bodies and by means of thought-bodies stroll in space in God. The bodied souls cannot be exempt from worldly sufferings.
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bondage and emancipation are not everlasting.
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If there be no coming back from emancipation, the place of emancipation will be too crowded. There will be importation without exportation and the population would multiply ad-infinitum.
One more point, no enjoyment of happiness is possible without its contrast with the experience of pain. No sweetness without bitterness and no bitterness without sweetness. Both are discriminated by contrast. A man does not enjoy a sweet object as much by constant and ever-continuing taste of it, as by experiencing all sorts of taste and comparing it with others.
If God were to give infinite rewards for finite actions. His justice would be tampered with.
It is the way of the wise that they put only so much burdens on anybody as he can bear. If you put ten maund, your action becomes condemnable.
Similarly, it will not be proper for God to put infinite load of happiness on the soul whose powers are limited.
Words of translator-Eternality of God, eternality of soul and cyclic eternality of universe are the three main pillars of the Vedic philosophy and these three are so interlocked that one cannot stand without another. Non-eternality of emancipation is a necessary corollary to the above.
“What begins must end” is the truth admitted by all philosophies and this dictum when applied to emancipation proves beyond doubt that the duration of emancipation period is limited at both extremities.)
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When death takes place, all say, “Now, this very soul is the energizer, sustainer, seer, doer and enjoyer. He is ignorant who says that the soul is not the doer and the enjoyer. If there be no soul, then the inanimate objects without the soul can neither enjoy anything nor do anything.
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The fourth means is eagerness for emancipation. Just as a hungry man loves nothing but food and thirsty man loves nothing but water, similarly there should be a yearning (or burning desire) for emancipation.
When a man is equipped with these four means, then and then alone he is a deserving candidate for emancipation.
Words of translator-From hearing up to intuition, there are four steps of attaining knowledge of anything. We begin with senses. First our ears hear. Then our mind sifts. Then judging faculty assimilates. And, in the last, the self realizes. By mentioning this in connection with emancipation Swami Dayanand means to warn against the superstition that the recitation of certain formula or hearing of lectures is by itself a means of salvation.
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There are five afflictions which should be done away with, by means of yoga in order to realise God and enjoy the happiness of emancipation:
- Nescience which has already been mentioned.
- Confounding our intellect with our self.
- Attachment of pleasure.
- Dislike for pain.
- Terror of death and desire to cling to the body and never to forsake it.
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As to the atheists and others who say that the dissolution of the body into various original elements after death is the only emancipation (and there is no life after death), well, such emancipation is by itself attained by dogs, asses et cetra, these are not emancipations but bondage.
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(Words of translator-Coming of soul into body means birth and going of soul out of body means death. There is no such thing as annihilation of the soul.)
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If you are asked what you were doing twelve years ago, in the fifth month of the thirteenth year, 9th day at 10 o’clock in what position and in what direction were your mouth, hands, ears, eyes and body and what ideas were there in your mind, you will not be able to answer. When in this very body, this oblivion takes place, then your objection on the ground of non-remembrance of the previous life is simply puerile. It is a matter of consolation that a man does not remember his past life; otherwise the painful memory of past sorrows would have put an end to his life. If a man wants to know his past or future life, he cannot, because the knowledge and nature of the soul are finite. This thing is knowable to God and not to the soul.
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From fever or other ailment, even a lay man can infer at least so much that he must have done some irregularity on account of which the ailment has come about. Similarly, we discover in the world a peculiar difference in pain and pleasure. Why do you not infer previous life from this difference? If you deny previous life, you would impute partiality or injustice to God. Why has He given poverty and other sorrows without any previous sins and why has He given rulership, riches et cetra, without the previous earnings of virtuous deeds?
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If the souls were to get pleasure and pain irrespective of their good and bad deeds, God would be guilty.
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After death, He might send anyone, He likes to Heaven and anyone to Hell. Why should, the, people attempt virtue? They will all be evildoers. The fruit of righteous actions would be uncertain, when everything is in the hands of God and He is to do anything He likes at His sweet will, nobody would fear sins, evil will prosper and virtue will go down. Therefore, it is clear that the present life is the result of good and bad actions of the past life and future life would be in accordance with the present as well as past lives.
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When vices wax and virtues wane, the soul of a man assumes a body of lower animals. When virtues pre-dominate over vices, the soul takes up a noble body, that is, of a learned man. When vice and virtue is equal, the soul is born as an ordinary man. Even in human lives, there are gradations, high grade, intermediate grade and low grade, according to the nature of actions. When the punishment for excessive sins has been suffered in animal lives, the soul comes back to the life of an average man.
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This cycle of births and deaths continues on and on until the soul secures its emancipation by dint of good deeds, devotion and growth of knowledge.
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Question-In salvation, does the soul become one with God or does it remain distinct?
Answer-It remains distinct. If it were to become one, who would enjoy the happiness of salvation? Then, all the efforts done to achieve emancipation will go useless. That will not be a release, but the annihilation of the soul. The soul gets emancipation only when it obeys the injunctions of God, does virtuous action, keeps good company and practices Yog.
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Just as worldly pleasures are enjoyed through physical body, similarly the happiness of emancipation is enjoyed through God. That emancipated soul moves about freely in the boundless divine spirit, sees the whole universe through the purity of its knowledge, associates with other emancipated souls, looks into the order of things in creation, goes to visible and invisible worlds and intuits all things which present themselves to it. Swarg (commonly known as heaven) is the name of this superb happiness.
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‘The man who does with his body evil deeds such as theft, adultery, murder of good men, is born in the stationary bodies of trees et cetra. He, who does evil deeds through tongue gets the bodies of birds, deer etc. He who does evil deeds through mind, gets the body of low human beings.’
-Manusmriti 7//9
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‘When there is cheerfulness in heart, peace in mind and transparency of intellect, we should know that sattwaguna is predominant and rajas and tamas are suppressed.’
-Manusmriti 7//27
‘When there is a feeling of pain and mind is agitated and though it runs at this or at that, it does not find rest, it should be noted that rajas is predominant and sat and tamas are suppressed.’
-Manusmriti 7//28
‘When one is engrossed in worldly pleasures, when the power of discrimination fails, when sensuality gets an upper hand, when intellect gets blunt, when nothing is discernible, we should conclude that tamas is predominant and sat and rajas are suppressed.’
-Manusmriti 7//29
LIGHT OF TRUTH: CHAPTER – ONE | CHAPTER – TWO | CHAPTER – THREE | CHAPTER – FOUR | CHAPTER – FIVE | CHAPTER –SIX | CHAPTER –SEVEN | CHAPTER – EIGHT | CHAPTER – NINE | CHAPTER – TEN
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