WHAT IS LIFE?

In Sanātana Dharma (eternal order or righteousness), the idea of birth and death is associated with the ātman's (inner self, inner spirit, or soul) transmigration or rebirth. Every being possesses an immortal inner self, also known as the ātman, which is beyond birth and death. Liberation, or moksha, is the fundamental right of every being. Birth and death are associated with the transmigration of the soul, or ātman, along with accumulated samskāras (sacred or sanctifying) through karmas (activities). In this context, life processes are to be discerned. There are stages in life, such as birth and death. The self, the ātman, is the essence of the life process. Every being's ātman, not the things outside, is his own self.

Life is anything that is living, sentient, conscious, and cognitive. It manifests in various stages in terms of growth, cognition, sustenance, reproduction, and multiplication through the application of energy. Life is samsāra, or that which follows birth and death. It follows a trajectory of birth, growth, decay, and death.

A living being is more than just a combination and permutation of the structures and processes of muscles, bones, fluids, chemicals, tendons, cells, molecules, bones, tissues, and so forth, arranged in different ways. Rather, the entire edifice is based on the foundations of sentience, consciousness, and cognition. They give grounding to the framework of life. Insentience cannot become sentience on its own unless there is an involvement of the latter in the former. The basic premise is that life comes from life.

The manifestation of life occurs when the subject, or consciousness, is involved with the object, or matter. This is in contrast to the assertion in some quarters of objective evolution, whether material or chemical.

1. Outline

Ātman (soul, inner self, or spirit), as part of Paramātmā (the Supreme Self), is eternal; it is neither born nor does it ever die, nor, having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed. This has been aphoristically declared by the Srimad Bhagavad Gita.

Ātman stimulates consciousness as life processes through a material body to enliven it with consciousness and cognition. Eventually, in the growth process of the material body, consciousness and cognition get bound by the natural gunas (modes or qualities) of Prakriti, or matter, of sattva (mode of goodness), rājas (mode of passion), and tāmas (mode of ignorance). Its bondage to the gunas demeans its ability to perceive its original root, the ātman (inner spirit or inner self), and the consciousness of the Self. Bondage makes it forgetful of its original nature as a derivative of the ātman. As a result, it gets entangled in those gunas and performs all thoughts and actions within the framework delineated by those gunas. It needs to realise its own self, its source, originator, and basic nature. Life is the source of life. Anything that is not life is its surroundings, and life is itself. It implies that the surroundings are the external others and that anything that is not life is the external other. It is a cosmo-organic totality because, through cosmic energisation and enlivenment, everything in the cosmos is intricately caused, sourced, interwoven, organised, coordinated, and arranged in a state of organic relationships.

The Ishā Upanishad invocation declares that is Whole, this is Whole, the perfect has come out of the perfect; having taken the perfect from the perfect, it remains. Let there be peace, peace, and peace. Whatever remains is Whole. The Ishopanishad declares Brahmān, or Supreme Being, causes all motion in nature. He, by His energy, entered and took up residence in each atom of Prakriti (matter). The Prakrit is under Him, and all this motion in matter is of Him because He has permeated it. He, therefore, is the only Free Agent. Be content with what He has given you. Since none but Him is truly free.

Swami Krishnananda says that consciousness is divinity that is present immanently both in the subjective and objective sides and yet remains transcendent to both the subject and the object.

 According to Bhakti Niskama Shanta, living organisms exhibit many such overtly noticeable goal-oriented or teleological activities (self-determination, self-formation, self-preservation, self-reproduction, self-restitution and so on), which make them distinct from insentient mechanical and chemical systems. He says that the Vedāntic view states that the origin of everything material and nonmaterial is sentient and absolute (unconditioned). Thus, sentient life is primitive and reproductive of itself, life comes from life. This is the scientifically verified law of experience. Life is essentially cognitive and conscious.

2. Scriptures

Sentience, consciousness, and cognition are basic to the germination of life processes. Ātman (the inner spirit or soul) is the energy, or consciousness, that illuminates and inspires the life form in a living being. The Supreme Spirit, or Paramātman, is the root cause and source of all living beings. The Srimad Bhagavad Gita has verily declared this.

 mama yonir mahad brahma tasmin garbhaṁ dadhāmy aham

sambhavaḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ tato bhavati bhārata

sarva-yoniṣhu kaunteya mūrtayaḥ sambhavanti yāḥ

tāsāṁ brahma mahad yonir ahaṁ bīja-pradaḥ pitā

Sri Krishna says the total material substance, prakṛiti, is the womb. I impregnate it with the individual souls, and thus all living beings are born. O son of Kunti, for all species of life that are produced, the material nature is the womb, and I am the seed-giving Father.

In the same vein, He declares in the Bhagavad Gita that I am seated in the hearts of all living entities. I am the beginning, middle, and end of all beings. The souls, by the power of His sentience and consciousness, become eternal and catalyse the formation of lives in every being.

The Srimad Bhagavatam (3.26.19) also puts it in a straight-forward manner:

daivāt kṣubhita-dharmiṇyāṁ

svasyāṁ yonau paraḥ pumān

ādhatta vīryaṁ sāsūta

mahat-tattvaṁ hiraṇmayam

After the Supreme Being impregnates material nature with His internal potency, material nature delivers the total of the cosmic intelligence which is known as Hiranamaya. This takes place in material nature when she is agitated by the destinations of the conditioned souls. Then, inspired by the karmas of the individual souls, the material nature gets to work to create suitable life forms for them. Matter is external, and the spirit soul is internal. So this internal spirit soul is coming from the Supreme Soul.

The originator to the life form is the ātman, or inner self, and this self is very dear to it. In the Srimad Bhagavatam (10.14.50), Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī said to King Parikshit for every created being, the dearmost thing is certainly his own self. The dearness of everything else-children, wealth and so on-is due only to the dearness of the self. For this reason, the embodied soul is self-centered and is more attached to his own body and self than to his so-called possessions, like children, wealth, and home.

Therefore, Bhagavatam (10.14.54) says it is his own self that is most dear to every embodied living being, and it is simply for the satisfaction of this self that the whole material creation of moving and nonmoving entities exists.

In the Bhagavatam (10.14.55), to the question, how did the gopīs (cow herd women) develop such intense attachment to Sri Krishna, which they did not even feel toward their own child?” Śukadeva Gosvāmī replied: Please understand that Sri Krishna is the Supreme Soul of all living beings in the universe. For the benefit of the whole universe, he has, out of His causeless mercy, appeared in a human form by the strength of His internal potency.

The Kathā Upanishad (Verse 2.2.13) succinctly states that

nityo'nityānāṃ cetanaścetanānāmeko bahūnāṃ yo vidadhāti kāmān |

tamātmasthaṃ ye'nupaśyanti dhīrāsteṣāṃ śāntiḥ śāśvatīnetareṣām || 13 ||

Ātman is eternal among the ephemeral, conscious among the conscious, who, being one, dispenses desired objects too many, the intelligent who see him seated in their selves, to them, eternal peace, not to others.

3. Remarks

The life of man, according to Swami Sivananda, shows what is beyond him and what determines the course of his thoughts, feelings, and actions. He says that the wider life is invisible, and the visible is a shadow cast by the invisible, which is the real. The shadow shows the substance, and one can pursue the path to the true substance through the perception of the shadow.

As life on this earth is characterised by incessant change and nothing here seems to have the character of reality, nothing here can satisfy man completely. The Srimad Bhagavad Gita emphatically declares that this world is transient, impermanent, unhappy, the abode of sorrow and misery, and joyless. Sri Krishna says that you should therefore strive incessantly to realise and be conscious of Me through selfless surrender and devotion to become free from this world, birth, and death.

The very fabric of life's journey process is to realise the original nature, the self-realisation, and be conscious of the intrinsic nature being. The great lawgiver Manu, after describing the various tenets of Dharma (ethical and moral righteousness), finally asserts: "Of all these Dharmas, the Knowledge of the Self is the highest; it is verily the foremost of all sciences; for, by it, one attains immortality." Swami Sivananda succinctly says that positing Dharma (ethical and moral righteousness), Artha (material value), and Kāma (psychological or vital value) has its meaning in the attainment of Moksha (liberation), which is the greatest of all the Purushārthas (purposes of human life). He says that Moksha, among these, is the infinite value of existence, which covers all the others and is itself far greater than all these. Others exist as aids or preparations for Moksha.

-Asutosh Satpathy