Ben: I am mindful of the fact that the discussion on animals, humans and karma is in the domain of mithya and not to be taken too seriously. Anything can happen and there can be many viewpoints in the shifting sands of mithya. I will share with you what I have learnt from Swami Paramarthanandaji.
Sundari: So true, but in terms of understanding mithya in order to negate it, we need to investigate the nature of the dharmafield, what it is, and how it functions. The nondual scriptures state clearly that moksa requires knowledge of the complete teachings on satya and mithya. In many ways, this is the essence of self-inquiry because it is relatively straightforward, (assuming qualifications and proper teaching), to understand the nature of Awareness as a partless unchanging whole. Bring in a creation however, and it gets really complicated understanding how to take Awareness as my true identity! Therefore, the discussion on karma is one of the subtlest, and thus probably, one of the most important to understand and assimilate. I am glad we are having this discussion, it is very helpful.
Ben: I understand your viewpoint (from your previous email) – that the distinction between animals “are” karma and do not “have” karma.
Sundari: Firstly, it is not ‘my’ viewpoint. Though one can have viewpoints, true Vedanta does not lend itself to personal viewpoints, as you must know. The distinction between animals ‘are’ karma and ‘have’ karma is not my interpretation. It is how I was taught and understood Vedanta by my teacher, Ramji, who was taught correctly by his teachers, Swami Chinmayananda, Dayananda and Paramarthananda. It is not a minor point as it strikes at the heart of discrimination between satya and mithya.
Ben: We could say that all life forms, including humans, “are” karma in the sense that it is karma that gives rebirth, that it is karma which is the constituent and fuel for the cycle of birth-death-rebirth. Of course, this principle applies only to the matter aspect but not the Consciousness aspect of the mixture, the living being
Sundari: Yes, correct. The whole creation is karma – as in cause and effect. As we know, it is ‘seeming’ cause and effect because duality is a superimposition onto nonduality. There seems to be a cause and effect from the mithya or jiva perspective, but nonduality negates both cause and effect. And therefore, all karma.
Ben: The principle behind the operation of karma is that the “eternal travelling unit” consisting of subtle-body-plus-causal-body, does not die but moves from form to form according to the operation of Karma. Krishna used the term … “eternal jiva” … in BGita 15.7b.
Sundari: Yes, correct. More on this below.
Ben: The “eternal travelling unit” is a way of explaining that every action, karma, brings a result, karma phala, which accrues to the doer of the action. That result will be/must be experienced by the doer of that action, sooner or later, even in another life.
Sundari: Yes, except that animals are not doers. Only human jivas have avidya, personal ignorance, and think they are doers. Thus, karma ‘becomes’ personal. In truth personal karma is another name for ignorance. The most important point in this whole discussion is simply this:
What is karma other than what the ego makes of it? An animal or any other sentient life form does not have an ego and the faculty to evaluate what happens to it. Therefore, it does not suffer under the illusion of personal karma and doership. Thus, the statement holds that there is no personal karma for animals.
Ben: When the physical body dies, there has to be a structure in the doer-who-just-died to carry and undergo the ‘unexperienced result’ of action in some other form, as determined by the operation of Karma. Krishna said this in BGita 15.8d when He used the example of the wind carrying scent from its source. I was taught that this principle applies to every living form, plant, animal, human.
Sundari: Agreed. I said so in my last email to you.
Ben: Did you mean the word ‘jiva’ to refer only to human beings? I have been taught that the word ‘jiva’ applies to every living thing … plant, animal, human. Every living being is a mixture of Consciousness and matter appearing in the form of that plant, animal or human.
Sundari: I made it clear that the term jiva applies to all living sentient beings, which includes plants and trees, etc. The distinction I made was between humans, who have an ego, the faculty of self-reflectivity and the illusion of doership, and every other living form, who do not.
Ben: I am surprised at the statement that animals do not have karma. Could you please tell me what your source is for that statement.
Sundari: As stated, the source of the statement is the nondual teaching of Vedanta as taught to me by Ramji and he by his teachers in the lineage of Swami Chinmayananda, Dayananda and Paramarthananda. And as understood by ‘me’ as logical according to the infallible principles of nondual thought.
The nondual teaching is that karma is just the impersonal playing out of the gunas, which do not condition the Total Mind/Isvara because Isvara is beyond the gunas. Isvara is pure Awareness (Paramatman) minus the gunas. Isvara plus the gunas assumes a role and “becomes” the creator operating Maya. As previously stated, there is no karma for animals because they do not have intellects and are neither ignorant nor do they have knowledge; they are a program run by Isvara.
As you know, animals do not think and they act purely on “instinct”, meaning according to Isvara. Karma itself is value neutral. It is just action and its results. This is the central issue in the discussion on karma: Karma only becomes meaningful when we evaluate it. We either like it or don’t like it or are indifferent to it. Only in the minds of human beings does action become ‘karma.’
Animals cannot do this because they are not under the spell of Maya, doership. So we can view them as ‘enlightened’, except that they have no ability to know or discriminate between ignorance and knowledge.
Ben: Agreed, animals do not gain agami during their current life since they do not have volition. But what about the “eternal travelling unit” in the current animal body? In what form was it present prior to this animal birth? This implies the presence of samcita and prarabdha. I have not come across a source which states animals do not have these. The source for my understanding is Swami Paramarthananda’s teaching.
Sundari: See above. As established, the Subtle body of the human and of all other life forms are fundamentally the same eternal principles in that everything arises out of the Macrocosmic Causal body, and resolves into nondual Awareness. But other sentient jivas and humans differ because they have very different mental faculties. The hypnosis of duality and doership only applies to human jivas.
Karma with a big ‘K” is Isvara and applies to the whole of creation. Because Isvara is karma phala datta, all karma is impersonal karma for all sentient life; however, a jiva identified with its egoic identity assumes personal karma, so prarabdha, samcita and agami karma only apply to human jivas who have the power of self-reflectivity under the spell of Maya – doership.
Ben: A question … if animals are “… just programmes run by Ishvara … blink on and off …”, what drives the programme? What decides the timing, place and type of birth of the animal and which type of animal? What determines its life and life events? What determines its timing, type and place of death? Doesn’t Karma, Ishvara, operate even for the animal?
Sundari: As I point out above, the answer is obviously Isvara, the Total Mind, the uncaused cause of the creation who brings into and keeps all life forms in manifest form. As long as the creation is manifest, all forms, sentient and insentient, are constantly recycled.
Ben: The word ‘programme’ implies something making up the programme, i.e. its constituents, which is karma, and also something driving the programme, i.e. karma. How that karma operates is determined by karma itself.
Sundari: Yes. To repeat: Karma depends on who you think you are. Though all karma is actually impersonal, only IN THE MIND of the jiva does it become personal. There is no such thing as personal karma, actually; it is an idea cooked up by Maya when ignorance, avidya, covers the mind of the human. Hence, moksa is surrendering the idea of doership and agency to Isvara.
There is no karma for an enlightened person (jnani). The individual or jiva identified as a jiva accumulates karma that seems to come to the body/mind sense complex; when moksha obtains, the karma burns up. However, one has to look at what “burns up” actually means. Karma does not burn up for Awareness as there is no karma for it because for it nothing ever happened. It is not a doer. Karma is not real.
Karma is just an idea in the mind that causes suffering. So “burning up” karma happens when the jiva is no longer identified with the mind (egoic identity) and knows that its true identity is Awareness. This does not mean that impersonal karma does not still play out (for all jivas) because the body (all life) belongs to Isvara, the Total. The momentum of past actions, impersonal prarabdha karma, which is Isvara delivering the fruits of actions via the gunas, plays out as long as the jiva is alive. When prarabdha karma is finished, the body of any jiva dies. The karma seems to pass onto the ‘next’ life, but what does that mean? There is only life, one Jiva, whether you think you are eternal unchanging Awareness or whether you think you are the finite person.
Karma “burns up” for the Subtle Body, because, it is only ever “in” the mind, not in the physical body or the Self. The body – whether human, animal or plant – is just meat/matter. It is inert, so there is no karma for it. Karma seems to take place in the physical body because the physical body is “attached” to the Subtle Body. It is a counter across which experience is transacted. But as stated, from the Self or Isvara’s point of view (Causal Body) there is no karma.
Ben: Ishvara is not a person but is the totality of all the Laws, Energies, Forces, Principles, Powers, Matter in the universe. One of the Laws is the Law of Karma. So, instead of ‘Ishvara’, we can use the word ‘Laws’ e.g. the Law of Karma or Gravity, etc.
Sundari: Yes, agreed, and as stated above – all karma is neutral and impersonal from Isvara’s point of view because Isvara is the Self, Nirguna Brahman, and ‘sees’ only itself. Isvara operates as Saguna Brahman in the role of creator, the field of existence or impersonal karma, but never enters the creation nor is affected by the gunas.
Ben: Swamiji said the Vedas do not support the idea that once human, an ignorant human jiva will always continue to be only human. A human can relapse into an animal in another rebirth. The only guarantee of continued human rebirth which Krishna gives is in BGita 6.40 – 45, for one who has begun the study of Vedanta.
Sundari: Assuming we provisionally accept duality, agreed. See above.
Ben: Swamiji also said that as current humans, we have been plants and animals and other humans in our innumerable previous lives. The word ‘jiva’ applies to every living being. This means every living jiva is driven by their punya-papa karma into different types of rebirths. This principle includes animals too.
Sundari: I stated this in my first email to you and reiterated it above. This does not change the teaching that only in human form can the jiva develop the qualifications for moksa and can obtain enlightenment, and this is possible because only as a jiva does Maya produce avidya because we have the power of self-reflection.
Ben: It all depends on the parcel of prarabdha which fructifies from the infinite store of samcita of every living being … plant, animal or human. Nobody can know what that fructifying prarabdha will be. It all depends on the operation of Karma, Ishvara.
Sundari: This is correct from the point of view of Isvara, the impersonal Causal Body, as karma phala datta. All karma for all life is impersonal – just the playing out of the gunas. Only humans make it personal.
Ben: The animal gets rebirth because of its particular prarabdha, exhausts that prarabdha, does not gain agami during life because it does not have volition. At death, there is no addition of agami to its samcita, as occurs with humans.
Sundari: If you are using the term ‘prarabdha’ in the impersonal meaning of karma, yes. The animal exhausts its karma in that when that program dies, life is over for that Subtle body. Some animals have very good lives, whether wild or domesticated, some do not. Why that is only Isvara knows. It makes sense that a human living an adharmic life could devolve into a lower status because we have ‘free will’.
Ben: Where the “eternal travelling unit” of the animal goes at the time of death is determined by the operation of Karma, Ishvara. It may re-enter into another new animal body or enter into a plant body or human body. That is why it is said that getting a human rebirth is rare and so precious, our chance to ‘break free’, which is not available to animals and plants.
Sundari: Yes – again, assuming we are provisionally accepting duality. In mithya, how or why an animal is born or reborn as a human is hard to explain, I know. It would suggest that an animal gained an understanding of ignorance and knowledge, and thus accrued punya karma. But animals and other life forms do not have the power of self-reflection, so this is not logically possible. The only logical answer in terms of nondual thought is that Isvara simply assigns karma according to rules we cannot understand from the mithya perspective. Thus it is said in the scriptures …’on the subject of karma, even the sages are perplexed.”
As we know, it is precious to get a human birth because only with it do we have the power of self-reflectivity. Though with it comes the illusion of doership and the accrual of personal prarabdha, agami and sancita karma, the upside of this means we can escape the jaws of Maya, ignorance, which no other life form can.
Ben: Interesting … this difference in understanding samcita, prarabdha, agami in different jivas … differences existing in and so typical of mithya!!!
Sundari: The topic of karma is a complicated one for sure! In the case of sentient beings, the distinction is only between personal and impersonal karma. The bottom line here is that karma is only real and can thus cause existential suffering depending on who you think you are, and what you as a human jiva make of it. If the doer has been negated by Self-knowledge, there is no karma for you as the Self. And any karma that plays out for you as a jiva as long as it lives, is neutralized by Self-knowledge.
Much love
Sundari
