The tendency of the conditioned living entity is to come down from the heights where everything can be seen in perspective. God, however, does not have this tendency. The Supreme Lord is not subject to fall down into illusion (māyā) any more than the sun is subject to fall beneath the clouds. Because the Supreme Lord is not subject to illusion, He is unconditioned; because we, as finite living entities, are prone to fall into illusion, we are called conditioned. Impersonalist philosophers (Māyāvādīs) maintain that both the living entity and God Himself are under the control of māyā when they come into this material world. This may be true of the living entity, but it is not true of God, for in all instances the material energy is working under His direction. Those who consider the Supreme Lord to be subject to material conditioning are called fools by Kṛṣṇa Himself in Bhagavad-gītā.
Unconditioned (Books)
Expressions researched:
"no conditioning"
|"not actually conditioned"
|"not become conditioned"
|"not conditioned"
|"not to be conditioned"
|"unconditioned"
|"without condition"
Srimad-Bhagavatam
SB Canto 1
The successful living beings who are eligible to enter into the realm of the Absolute are called the jñānīs, the yogīs and the bhaktas. The jñānīs and yogīs enter into the impersonal rays of the Supreme, but the bhaktas enter into the spiritual planets known as the Vaikuṇṭhas. In these spiritual planets the Supreme Lord as Nārāyaṇa predominates, and the healthy, unconditioned living beings live there by rendering loving service to the Lord in the capacity of servant, friend, parents and fiancee. There the unconditioned living beings enjoy life in full freedom with the Lord, whereas the impersonalist jñānīs and yogīs enter into the impersonal glowing effulgence of the Vaikuṇṭha planets. The Vaikuṇṭha planets are all self-illuminating like the sun, and the rays of the Vaikuṇṭha planets are called the brahmajyoti. The brahmajyoti is spread unlimitedly, and the material world is but a covered portion of an insignificant part of the same brahmajyoti. This covering is temporary, and therefore it is a sort of illusion.
Bhīṣmadeva, as a pure devotee of the Lord, entered the spiritual realm in one of the Vaikuṇṭha planets where the Lord in His eternal form of Pārtha-sārathi predominates over the unconditioned living beings who are constantly engaged in the service of the Lord. The love and affection which bind the Lord and devotee are exhibited in the case of Bhīṣmadeva. Bhīṣmadeva never forgot the Lord in His transcendental feature as the Pārtha-sārathi, and the Lord was present personally before Bhīṣmadeva while he was passing to the transcendental world. That is the highest perfection of life.
This is because the Lord is all-perfect ātmārāma, or self-sufficient. He does not require anyone's extraneous help for His personal satisfaction. Therefore, the queens could not satisfy the Lord by their feminine attractiveness, but they satisfied Him by their sincere affection and service. Only by unalloyed transcendental loving service could they satisfy the Lord, and the Lord was pleased to treat them as wives in reciprocation. Thus being satisfied by their unalloyed service only, the Lord reciprocated the service just like a devout husband. Otherwise He had no business becoming the husband of so many wives. He is the husband of everyone, but to one who accepts Him as such, He reciprocates. This unalloyed affection for the Lord is never to be compared to mundane lust. It is purely transcendental. And the grave dealings, which the queens displayed in natural feminine ways, were also transcendental because the feelings were expressed out of transcendental ecstasy. It is already explained in the previous verse that the Lord appeared like a mundane husband, but factually His relation with His wives was transcendental, pure and unconditioned by the modes of material nature.
A conditioned living being is endowed with four principles of malpractice, namely errors, insanity, inability and cheating. These are signs of imperfection, and out of the four the propensity to cheat others is most prominent. And this cheating practice is there in the conditioned souls because the conditioned souls are primarily in the material world imbued with an unnatural desire to lord it over the material world. A living being in his pure state is not conditioned by the laws because in his pure state he is conscious that a living being is eternally subservient to the Supreme Being, and thus it is always good for him to remain subservient, instead of falsely trying to lord it over the property of the Supreme Lord.
SB Canto 2
The living entities are His marginal energies, and some of them, in the confidence of the Lord, are entrusted with the work of creation also, as are Brahmā, Marīci, etc., and the acts of creation are inspired by the Lord unto them (tene brahma hṛdā). The external energy (māyā) is also impregnated with the jīvas, or conditioned souls. The unconditioned marginal potency acts in the spiritual kingdom, and the Lord, by His different plenary expansions, maintains them in different transcendental relations displayed in the spiritual sky. So the one Supreme Personality of Godhead manifests Himself in many (bahu syām), and thus all diversities are in Him, and He is in all diversities, although He is nevertheless different from all of them. That is the inconceivable mystic power of the Lord, and as such everything is simultaneously one with and different from Him by His inconceivable potencies (acintya-bhedābheda-tattva).
Please also explain how, merged in the body of the Lord, living beings are created, and how the infidels appear in the world. Also please explain how the unconditioned living entities exist.
The progressive devotee of the Lord must inquire from the bona fide spiritual master how living entities merged in the body of the Lord again come back at the time of creation. There are two kinds of living entities. There are the ever-liberated, unconditioned living beings as well as the ever-conditioned living beings.
A conditioned soul is instrumental in the hands of the external energy, guṇa-mayī māyā, or the illusory energy of the Lord, and in the liberated stage the living entity is instrumental to the will of the Personality of Godhead directly. To be instrumental to the direct will of the Lord is the natural constitutional position of the living entity, whereas to be an instrument in the hands of the illusory energy of the Lord is material bondage for the living entity. In that conditioned state, the living entity speculates on the Absolute Truth and His different activities. But in the unconditioned stage the living entity directly receives knowledge from the Lord, and such a liberated soul acts flawlessly, without any speculative habit.
SB Canto 3
Śrī Maitreya said: Certain conditioned souls put forward the theory that the Supreme Brahman, or the Personality of Godhead, is overcome by illusion, or māyā, and at the same time they maintain that He is unconditioned. This is against all logic.
Sometimes it appears that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is one hundred percent spiritual, cannot be the cause of the illusory potency which covers the knowledge of the individual soul. But factually there is no doubt that the illusory, external energy is also part and parcel of the Supreme Lord. When Vyāsadeva realized the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he saw the Lord along with His external potency, which covers the pure knowledge of the individual living entities.
The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: One can get liberation by seriously discharging devotional service unto Me and thereby hearing for a long time about Me or from Me. By thus executing one's prescribed duties, there will be no reaction, and one will be freed from the contamination of matter.
Śrīdhara Svāmī comments in this connection that by association with material nature alone one does not become conditioned. Conditional life begins only after one is infected by the modes of material nature. If someone is in contact with the police department, that does not mean that he is a criminal. As long as one does not commit criminal acts, even though there is a police department, he is not punished. Similarly, the liberated soul is not affected, although he is in the material nature.
It is explained in the Brahma-saṁhitā that each limb of the Lord has the potency of every other limb; because everything is spiritual, His parts are not conditioned. The Lord can see with His ears. The material ear can hear but cannot see, but we understand from the Brahma-saṁhitā that the Lord can also see with His ears and hear with His eyes. Any organ of His transcendental body can function as any other organ. His abdomen is the foundation of all the planetary systems. Brahmā holds the post of the creator of all planetary systems, but his engineering energy is generated from the abdomen of the Lord. Any creative function in the universe always has a direct connecting link with the Lord.
SB Canto 4
By endeavoring to dominate material nature, the living entity simply struggles hard for existence. Indeed, he struggles so hard to enjoy himself that he cannot even enjoy the material resources. Thus he is sometimes called prakṛti, or jīva, for he is situated in the marginal potency. When the living entity is covered with the three modes of material nature, he is called jīva-saṁjñita. There are two kinds of living entities: one is called kṣara, and the other is akṣara. Kṣara refers to those who have fallen down and become conditioned, and akṣara refers to those who are not conditioned. The vast majority of living entities live in the spiritual world and are called akṣara. They are in the position of Brahman, pure spiritual existence. They are different from those who have been conditioned by the three modes of material nature.
The living entity becomes conditioned, but the Supreme Personality of Godhead is different because He does not become conditioned at any point. In the Vedas it is stated: ātmā tathā pṛthag draṣṭā bhagavān brahma-saṁjñitaḥ. Ātmā is the individual soul as well as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is the seer of everything. Although both are spirit, there is always a difference. In the smṛti it is also said: yathāgneḥ kṣudrā visphuliṅgā vyuccaranti. Just as sparks manifest in a large fire, similarly the small individual souls are present in the big spiritual flame. In Bhagavad-gītā (9.4) Lord Kṛṣṇa says, mat-sthāni sarva-bhūtāni na cāhaṁ teṣv avasthitaḥ: "All beings are in Me, but I am not in them." Although all living beings are resting in Him, as small fiery sparks rest on a large flame, both are differently situated.
Other Books by Srila Prabhupada
Teachings of Lord Caitanya
Light of the Bhagavata
There are two kinds of living entities, namely the conditioned and the pure. It is for the conditioned living entities that the material nature is created, and the conditioned souls are put into it to become pure, unconditioned souls. Those who become unconditioned by devotional service enter into the eternal kingdom of God, and those who lose the chance rot in dormant material conditions, sometimes manifested and sometimes unmanifested. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa descends to reclaim the conditioned souls.
The Lord says that in the Vedas it is mentioned that there are two kinds of living beings, called the fallible and the infallible. Those living beings who are materially encaged are all fallible, whereas those who are not conditioned and who are eternally situated in the spiritual realm are called akṣara, or infallible.
| Page Title: | Unconditioned (Books) |
| Compiler: | Labangalatika, Matea |
| Created: | 01 of Aug, 2009 |
| Totals by Section: | BG=0, SB=12, CC=0, OB=3, Lec=0, Con=0, Let=0 |
| No. of Quotes: | 15 |