Re: Consciousness in the state of moksha
From the Bhakti List Archives
• March 23, 2001
I thank all of you for your informative replies. Most people who replied to my query have answered somewhat convincingly that the liberated jIva does remember its prior births and deaths. Good arguments were put forth by Sri B.N. Suresh, and Sri Anand Karalapakkam (private note) in this regard, focussing primarily on the sarvjnatva of the jIva. Sri Anand follows up that while the jIva has the ability to recall and reenvision its conventional mothers and fathers, it has no desire to do so since it is a true jnAni. Bhagavad Ramanuja specifies that a jnAni is "bhagavat- seshataika-Atma-svarupa-vit", one who recognizes that his or her svarUpa lies solely in being sesha to Bhagavan. Therefore, the liberated jIva will only be immersed the bliss of Bhagavan overflowing into divine service. The prior parents, etc., are only recollected if Bhagavan's will so dictates. This is all convincing, but some technical questions remain, which a couple of other respondents have also brought up. The problem concerns *where* such memories are stored, if the jIva does indeed remember in such an individualistic fashion. Sri P.T. Srinivasan writes: The jiva does not remember anything about its past since the property of remeberance is attributed to perception by sense organs.... Mukti, in the correct sense of the term, is that state of the individual self in which it is totally dissociated from the vital breath, sense organs and physical body. so the question of rememberance of the previous births etc is ruled out. An individual soul connected with prana, indriyas and physical body is its embodied state (jivana). The two states - disembodied and embodied - are mutually opposed to each other. one who is embodied cannot therefore be mukta or disembodied. Therefore the theory of rememberance of the past life is the state of moksa is unsound. Sri T.G. Ramkumar has asked questions along similar lines and has succinctly and appropriately phrased the problematic issues at hand: Here is my technical thoughts/questions on the subject - My understanding is pUrva-prAkRta-SarIram of the muktA was due to karma ( == bhagavan-nigraha-sankalpam which in turn is merely a prior state [avatha] of permumAL's dharma-bhUta-gyAnam (= an ajaDa-achEtanam? ) ) So the question boils down to - "Is the past bhagavan-nigraha/anugraha-sankalpam accessible to the mukta?" Does the dharma-bhUta-jnAnam associated with the chEtanam, keep a trail of all its historical state changes ? (For instance, if an acEtanam like ghaTam (kAryam) breaks, mRt-piNDam (the kAraNam) enters a new state, "broken-pieces" and the prior state, gaTam no longer exists. Does an observing jIva (chEtanam) record these state-changes in its dharma-bhUta-jnAnam? What is the mechanics of memory access (smRti) during baddha-daSa in terms of the tattva-trayam ? Is it stored in the indriya-s but accessed thru dharma-bhUta-jnAnam by the jIvAtmA? If it is stored in sUkshmEndriya (like the manas) would it not be lost in the virajA before the jIva reaches SrI-vaikuNTham? If so, none of the pUrva-puNya-pApa-rUpa-karma will be remembered after mukti ? I await answers to these intriguing questions. I remain, aDiyEn rAmAnuja dAsan Mani -------------------------------------------------------------- - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH - To Post a message, send it to: bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/ Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
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