Material world is a jail? - What does tradition say on this topic?

I have a long dispute with one person about the nature of material world.
He says, that gaudiya siddhanta (sic!) says, that material world is a jail, and Krsna is warder, who cruelly put us here... He says, that he'd read this thought in vaisnav books.
I translated Prameya-ratnavali at Russian for him, to prove that gaudiya siddhanta does not contain such teaching. Now, he said, that this point of view is supported by Bhaktivinod Thakur (Sri Brahma Samhita, 44, purport):



And what does tradition say at the matter? Are we in a jail? Is Krsna a jailer?

One of the controversial contributions of Bhaktivinod was his theories on the origin of jiva. Most of the tradition doesn't conceive of any fanciful theories on the jiva's origin, plainly accepting that bondage is beginningless (anadi), and there has never been a first time when a jiva would have become bound for a particular reason.

Given that there was no one particular moment at which the jiva would have been imprisoned on account of crimes committed in a non-imprisoned state, the analogy of jail is inaccurate.

I started a topic long ago about this topic. My argument is very simple and true. Krishna is flawed. He is not absolutely perfect. Of course it's not written in scripture and not everything is just what is necessary! I will not go on anymore to give my argument in detail but it would be very easy to do that. I will also not state what Krishna's flaw is or why he manifests/supports maya because you have to figure that out.

Also, I find Bhaktivinode's explanation very accurate. Calling maya a prison-house is very accurate.

Isn't it marvelous when finite souls go to comprehend the infinite? I think that the word "Durga" has also been translated as "fort"(Saraswati Goswami?) which carries a slightly different connotation than "prison". The living entities are imprisoned by their own karma, not by Krishna. Krishna is not a jailer. We jail ourselves. He simply provides the cell. Krishna provides this "fort" to house and protect the living entities until they grow up to be good little troopers and surrender unto him.
I prefer to see the material cosmos as like a greenhouse of living entities. Krishna is like a great gardener who sows all the seeds of the living entities into the prakriti. Then through a subjective evolution of consciousness they grow and evolve through the species to attain human form and a chance to evolve further into wholistic spiritual beings who are then harvested and taken to the spiritual world to be enjoyed as the bounty of his crop.

The all-inclusive Absolute is complete in all respects. Some aspects you may interpret as flaws due to being conditioned to particular premises of thought. They are not flaws in the ultimate, they are merely aspects of the complete whole. The Absolute is complete and perfect as such. Our finite perceptions may attribute faults unto it, but they are not faults in the Absolute. Even your mistaken perceptions are not faults in the Absolute, of which you are an aspect.

Your argument is very simple and true; and what is your argument exactly? And what is the basis for your argument? I'm sure it would be easy to present an argument in detail. However, it is not always easy to minutely examine the accuracy of an argument. Would you also do that easily?

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Durga means hard to cross over. daivi hyeSa guNamayI mama-mAyA duratyayA. As in the Gita. It is hard to get out from. However, mAm eva ye prapadyante mAyAm etaM taranti te. As in the Gita. Those who surrender unto the source of all will easily overcome that which is generally hard to penetrate.

Bhaktivinoda's Bengali commentary does say: durga-zabde kArAgRha. Ultimately all such analogies only carry so far. Why would Krishna be the jailer? He is not involved with the day to day management of the ekapada-vibhuti.

Besides, which sane person will propose that a system which puts misfits into jail is cruel? Think of the world as a training camp if you will, a place to rehabilitate misfit jivas. Is that cruel? The purpose of a jail, a rehabilitation camp or any such institution is not to torment people, and they are not established with cruel thoughts in mind. They are established with the well-being of the entirety in mind. The entirety, to which the positive contribution of the individual adds.

I've long been under the impression that there is an evolution in conciousness of the living entitiy. Sridhar Maharaja entitled one of his books "Subjective Evolution, the Sweet Play of the Absolute". Isn't there something in the Bhagavatam about living entities evolving through 8,400,000 species of life? Doesn't the living entity evolve through the species for millions of years to eventually arrive at the human form. What about the idea that living entities that come to the human form in the mode of goodness were cows, in passion were lions or tigers and in ignorance monkeys?
If there is such a thing as an evolution of consciousness then doesn't that presume that there is a beginning? Doesn't that seem to suggest a starting point where the evolution of consciousness begins at the lowest form of life? What about living entities that are even now taking birth as one-celled organisms? Where did they come from? Is there not a point when they took their first material body?
Doesn't the idea of eternal conditioned souls deprive God of his compassion and mercy upon the living entities? Actually, isn't the idea of eternally conditioned somewhat misleading as there living entities that are attaining liberation from the material existence? If the living entities are eternally conditioned, then that means they can never attain liberation?
I doubt that the idea of liberated living entities falling down into conditioning is any original idea of Bhaktivinode Thakur. Doesn't the shastra say that even after attaining nirvishesha-mukti a living entity can fall back down into conditioned life?
Isn't it a fact that living entities can fall from the brahmajyoti into the mahat-tattva?
All this seems to substantiate the idea that there is a point at which a liberated soul falls from the brahmajyoti into the mahat-tattva.
To say that the living entitiy is eternally conditioned in the absolute sense would absolve him from any possibility of wrongdoing and place all the responsibility for our conditioned life and sinful activities on the Lord. Doesn't the shastra say that we misused our free will and fell into material existence? If we reject the idea of willful misuse of volition, then we put all the blame on our situation on God. That would make God as the faulty one and not us. Blaming God for our predicament hardly seems like the right way to approach rectifying our sinful mentality.

This "evolution of consciousness" is a cyclic evolution, just as the cycle of creation and destruction is. There was never a time when the material universes were created for the first time. On that we all agree, I believe. The same principle of eternal cyclic repetition applies for the evolution of the living entities' consciousness.

Among those 8400000 levels, which one is the rock bottom? That's an interesting question. Perhaps some single-cell organism. And what do you have to do to end up being one? Being a narrow-minded religious bigot who only sees a single path, a single guru and a single group might just do the trick.



Au contraire, delivering the living entities from eternal bondage makes Him the most merciful one. As for "eternal", the word "anadi", "beginningless" is commonly used to describe our condition.



That is certainly there in the Bhagavata, 10th canto I recall. "patanty adhah", the destiny of the vimukta-maninah who do not take shelter of His lotus feet. However, this does not mean to say that there would ever be a first occurence of this.



What do we need for making a legitimate choice? We need information. Suppose the living entity is in some sort of neutral bubble floating between the worlds in some sort of primeval shape, and he chooses to go this way or that way. Would the setup be a fair one, since the entity would have absolutely no idea of the worlds he chooses between? I don't think putting the living entity in a position of having to make an uninformed choice is any better than its being in bondage since beginningless time.



Not as far as I know. I am open for new references. Quite a bit has been cited in this regard in some earlier threads.



Are we not at the same time one with and different from Him? If there is any blame, it is certainly a shared blame. Besides, why do we have to always blame someone? There is always something one can blame God for if one so wishes. Things aren't good or bad as such, it's merely a matter of what we make out of them.

a possible reason, i think, why bvt would say something inaccurate like that is to make his writings more appealing to western judeo-christian audiences who have a tale about being cast out of heaven due to sin, or something like that. and if i remember correctly(most likely not), acbsp in his easy journey to other planets agrees with miltons paradise lost about the jiva falling from heaven perhaps also to appeal to judeo-christian audiences

i may be mistaken but i think it was acbsp who said that

is here --> http://bhagavatam.net/10/2/32

Question: What do the Acaryas and scriptures of Gaudiya Vaisnavas from Sri Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Vaishnava Sampradaya say about the position in Lord’s Creation of the nitya-siddha jivas (eternally liberated) and nitya-baddha jivas (eternally conditioned)? Do the souls fall down from the Spiritual World due to their envy of the Lord as some preachers from ISKCON say?

Answer of Srila Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaj:

The Tattva as I have heard it from senior Vaisnavas is as follows:

We just have to accept that two types of souls who are eternally part and parcel of the Lord.

The Lord is equal to all nitya-siddha jivas and nitya-badha jivas as they are tasting the fruits of their actions.

According to the different levels of exploitation or dedication of the Lords energies they will have different degrees of happiness and distress.

The Lord's energy works for everybody the same.

The jiva (soul) is eternally tatastha-sakti, up till the point that he becomes liberated, from that point he becomes svarup-sakti.

The jiva-soul in its conditioned state Nitya-badha has the tendency to become attracted by the external energy of the Lord (Bahiranga-sakti) or the internal energy of the Lord (Antaranga-sakti).

The Nitya-badha soul is called Nitya-eternal because there was never a time in history when he was not bound by illusion to some degree.

Bahiranga-sakti (Maha-maya) can never enter in the Spiritual plane of existence and works under the directions of the Supreme Lord.

The Spiritual world is free from any shortcomings like envy, lust, anger etc..

Svarup-siddhi is not Tatastha anymore. The jiva becomes from that point nitya-siddha, eternally liberated fully under the protection and guidance of the Supreme Lord without the tendency to become attracted by the illusionary energy of the Lord.

Nitya-siddha souls only come to the material world for the purpose of giving guidance to the sincere seekers who want to receive Divine Grace and shelter within the Absolute Truth.

Their position is that they are never bound by illusion.

All though sometimes they seem to be under the spell of illusion, this kind of illusion is arranged by the Lord energy in the form of Divine illusion (Yoga-maya) to manifest their pastimes in different ways according to time place and circumstances.

Maharaj, in “Jaiva Dharma” by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur we are reading the following:

(Chapter One)
“Service to Lord Krishna is the eternal duty, nitya dharma, of the jiva. Forgetting that, the jiva is possessed by maya. From then on the soul turns his face away from Krishna. Because this non-devotion to Krishna is manifest only at the time he enters the material world, there is no history of the jiva’s fall within the time of the material world. For this reason the words anadi bahirmukha (the living entity’s non-devotion to Krishna is beginningless) are used. From the time of non-devotion to Krishna and entry into maya the eternal duty of the jiva becomes per-verted.”

The Pocket Oxford Dictionary designate the meaning of the word “time” as follows: “time — noun. 1) indefinite continued progress of existence, events, etc., in the past, present, and future, regarded as a whole. 2) progress of this as affecting persons or things.”
Also, as I know, in the material world time has past, present and future aspects and beyond the material realm there is only eternal present or eternity.


Question 1:

What is the meaning of words ‘time’ when Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakur is writing (in the above quote), ‘Because this non-devotion to Krishna is manifest only at the time he enters the mate-rial world, there is no history of the jiva’s fall within the time of the material world…’? What is the difference between two kinds of ‘time’ in the above quote: 1.“at the time he enters the material world” and 2.“within the time of the material world”?

Answer of Srila Bhakti Bibudha Bodhayan Maharaj: «At the time he enters the material world» refers to the «very moment» of the marginal time-conception [‘tatastha’ between the spiritual and material time-concepts] of the entrance of the jiva in the material world.
The exact moment of the occurrence of jiva’s entrance into the material world does exist and is recorded on the time-plane, which is beyond the limiting material or worldly time-aspect.
Therefore, there is no history of the jiva’s fall within the time of the material world — mean-ing — that moment of entrance could not be recorded in the material time-concept due to it’s limitations and that is the reason why there is no time-history of jiva’s fall within the time of material world.
From the term ‘anadi-bahirmukha’— «anadi» (beginningless) has two-fold aspects (senses) of meaning or application — absolute and relative; the entire cycle of jiva’s fallings into maya is absolutely beginningless — just as eternal cycle of ‘birth-living-death’ or ‘creation-maintenance-destruction’. But, on the other hand, ‘the particular moment of an individual jiva’s participation in maya’ has a beginning (‘adi’) in the space of eternal and absolute time, even though, in a relative sense, it (‘the particular moments of individual jiva’s participation in maya’) is also called as ‘anadi’. Finally, the tattva needs to be understood through Sriman Mahaprabhu’s ‘Acintya-bheda-abheda’ (simultaneous inconceivable oneness and difference) philosophy.