Vedantic Conception of Life, Its Meaning and Purpose
Life is a mystery. The best minds in the fields of natural sciences and philosophy have been trying to understand life from the dawn of civilization. However, they have been unable to come up with any clear definition and understanding of life. Even after three centuries of tremendous success which scientists have experienced in their scientific investigation, they still can’t identify on exactly what it is that which separates a living organism from other types of physical objects.
The Vedanta speaks of fivefold tattvas, truths or realities. These are, (1) Isvara or God; (2) Life, Jiva or Soul; (3) Prakrti or Matter; (4) Kala or Time; and (5) Karma or Action. The author will try to briefly focus on the difference between life and matter. Vedantic thesis, in a nutshell, is as follows:
Life and Matter: Vedanta proclaims that life and matter are two distinct categories of reality. Besides the physical bodies shaped by genome, there is a spiritual particle of life or soul or spiriton in every living being. Our conscious experience or consciousness and free will are the properties of spiriton. Matter, however complex it maybe, can never be conscious. Life and matter can interact under the influence of time resulting in what we call embodied or biological life. God, is the origin of both. Matter is the insentient energy whereas life is the sentient or conscious energy of God. He is beyond the perception of the material senses.
Evolution of Consciousness: There are 8.4 x 106 varieties of life (microorganisms, plants, aquatics, birds, reptiles, animals, humanoids and human beings) and conscious self (or soul or spiriton) passes from a form of less conscious state to a form of a higher conscious state according to the subtle laws of karma (cause and effect), until it reaches the human form. In human form of life, consciousness is fully developed and one can inquire about the higher meaning and purpose of life.
What is life?
As indicated earlier, life according to Vedanta can be described in the following representation: Living Being = Genome + Mind, Intelligence & False Ego + Spiriton
(This means a living being or organism consists of physical matter, subtle matter and the spiritual life particle.)
According to Vedanta, the topmost scientific and philosophi- cal treatise of Indian spiritual and cultural heritage, all living beings are animated by the presence of a non-chemical or non-molecular fundamental spiritual particle—“spiriton” (called atman in Vedantic terminology).
In Vedanta there are two aspects of reality—the spiritual nature and the material nature. It should be noted that the activities of the living beings are not simply physical. Many scientists face great difficulty explaining human behavior only in mechanical or material terms and feel such limitations intuitively. James Watson, the codiscover of double helix model of DNA structure, says, “There are still very major problems to solve on how information is stored and retrieved and used in the brain. It’s a bigger problem than DNA, and more a difficult one. . . . we still don’t know how the brain works. . . .” Recently, Stephen Hawking also expressed in a lecture, “As Dirac remarked, Maxwell’s equations of light, and the relativistic wave equation . . . govern most of physics, and all of chemistry and biology. So in principle, we ought to be able to predict human behavior, though I can’t say I have had much success myself. The trouble is that the human brain contains far too many particles, for us to be able to solve the equations.”
According to Vedanta, the brain in developed living beings is an important organ of the body machinery in which the symptom of consciousness is transmitted. The conscious energy is transmitted from the spiritual soul or ‘spiriton’.
In biology textbooks, life or living beings are generally defined as having potential to grow, reproduce, move, respond to such stimuli as light, heat and sound and are sustained
by the processes of nutrition, respiration and excretion. But what makes these living systems grow? Biologically, we explain that growth is due to multiplication of cells through various types of divisions like mitosis or meiosis. But why does any cell start dividing in the first place?
Why does a fertilized egg (after the sperm cell unites with egg cell) undergo divisions which result in the formation of the whole body? Vedanta describes that it is due to the presence of ‘spiriton’ that the body is animated and active and undergoes six types of transformations. It takes birth, lives for some time, grows, produces some offspring, gradually dwindles, and at last vanishes into oblivion.
It is just like the analogy of a car and the driver inside. When the driver goes away, the car cannot move. Similarly, when the spirit soul, spiriton, goes away or what we call death, the body can no longer be animated in spite of the fact that all the molecular machineries that make up the body are still intact. Srimad Bhagavad-Gita mentions about ‘spiriton’ being different from matter as follows:
bhumir apo 'nalo vayuh kham mano buddhir eva ca
ahankara itiyam me bhinna prakrtir astadha
apareyam itas tv anyam prakrtim viddhi me param
jiva-bhutam maha-baho yayedam dharyate jagat
Translation: “Earth, water, fire, air, ether, mind, intelligence and false ego—all together these eight constitute My (Lord Krishna’s) separated material energies. Besides these, O mighty-armed Arjuna, there is another, superior energy of Mine, which comprises the living entities (spiritons) who are exploiting the resources of this material, inferior nature.”
According to Vedanta, the science of the soul or spiriton (atman) is the sublime essence of spirituality. The Bhagavad-Gita refers to this science as—raja-vidya raja-guhyam pavitram idam uttamam pratyaksavagamam dharmyam su-sukham kartum avyayam, meaning, “This knowledge is the king of education, the most secret of all secrets. It is purest knowledge, and because it gives direct perception of the self by realization, it is the perfection of religion. It is everlasting, and it is joyfully performed.” According to Vedanta,the ultimate purpose of human life is to find our real spiritual identity and our relationship with the Supreme. Thus, Vedanta strictly deals with life from a spiritual perspective and gives it preeminence over non-sentient matter.
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