The Philosophy of the Panchadasi: 3-4 & Chapter 4: Discrimination of Duality-1.Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 31, Aug 2025, 21:50.
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Upanishads
The Philosophy of the Panchadasi: 3.4.
Chapter 3: Discrimination of the Five Sheaths 4.
3.Isvara and Jiva:
Swami Krishnananda.

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3.Isvara and Jiva:

There is a universal determining power, which ordinarily goes by the name of law of nature, hiddenly present in everything in every condition, by which everything is regulated and on account of which things do not overstep their limits and maintain their distinctive features. This law is responsible for the harmony seen in creation: If there were to be no such law, anything could change its nature any time, and one would not be able to determine even the way in which one has to direct one's actions. There would be catastrophe in the cosmos and chaos created if a governing law were not to exist. It is Brahman reflecting itself through its Sakti or Power that appears as this law and determines the nature of things. Brahman, when it is supposed to be in association with this inscrutable Sakti, is called Isvara, and when it is looked at from the point of view of the sheaths, it is called the Jiva. 

Maya and Avidya are responsible for the designation of Brahman as Isvara and Jiva, as a person may be a father or a grandfather at the same time, to his sons and grandsons. Brahman is called Isvara or Jiva when it is envisaged through Maya or Avidya, and as Maya is pure Sattva, it is universal, and the reflection of Brahman in it is undivided, while Avidya is manifold, and so Jivas are many. When there are no sons or grandsons, there is no father or grandfather and when there is no Maya, or Avidya in the form of sheaths there is no Isvaratva or Jivatva in Brahman. When this truth is meditated upon profoundly with the proper inner qualifications such as the Sadhana-chatushtaya (fourfold ethical means), there comes about realisation of Brahman. The knower of Brahman becomes Brahman itself. Knowing is the same as being in the case of knowledge of Brahman. There is then no rebirth for such knower, for Brahman is unborn. (Verses 38-43)

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Next

Chapter 4: Discrimination of Duality-1.

1.Creation by Isvara and Jiva:

Though truth is unitary and Brahman is absolute, the realisation of it is possible only by stages and by a gradual rise of consciousness from its Jivahood in various degrees of reality which it experiences in the different stages of its evolution. God, world and soul, in their distinctive features, appear to have a reality in the beginning, and this being the fundamental stage, the Sadhana of the Jiva should begin from this level. The creation of the world, which is being taken for granted by the Jiva, is to be first analysed. It is to be shown now that the creation of the world as it is, and as projected by the will of Isvara, is not the difficulty of the Jiva. Towards this end, the two types of creation are being studied here. The Upanishads speak of Isvara's creation in various ways. Prakriti which also goes, sometimes, by the name of Maya, is the material cause, and the Supreme Lord or the Mayin, the instrumental cause of creation: so says the Svetasvatara Upanishad.

The Atman alone was in the beginning, and it willed to create the many by a cosmic ideation; so says the Aitareya Upanishad.

Brahman was truth, knowledge and infinity, and from it arose ether, air, fire, water, earth, the different bodies, and so on, and the variety of creation was effected by the primeval contemplation of the Divine Being to appear as the many: so says the Taittiriya Upanishad.

In the beginning it was only pure Existence, and in it arose the idea to become manifold, and it created the luminous medium of fire, from which water and earth and other bodies came out as effects: so says the Chhandogya Upanishad.

As sparks emanate from fire, all the variety consisting of conscious and unconscious beings came out from the one Imperishable: so says the Mundaka Upanishad

In the beginning it was all unmanifested, and by the will of the unmanifested Absolute the latent became patent, and the one became the many names and forms, down to the gross universe which is animated by the Virat. By subsidiary evolution, after the manifestation of Virat, the celestials, human beings, and animals, etc., even up to the ants, became the variegated expressions of the Universal Purusha: so says the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Isvara entered in the form of the life-principle in all the apparently divided aspects of Himself, and made them appear as Jivas with their own subjective ideations.

The substratum of consciousness called the Kutastha, the subtle body called Linga-Sarira, and the reflection of this consciousness through the subtle body, together constitute the Jiva, one being impossible without the other. The Sakti of Isvara which is responsible for the creation of the universe, also acts as a deluding factor when it enters into the constitution of the Jiva as Avidya or ignorance. The Jiva and Isvara are compared to two birds perching on the tree of the body or the universe, of which Jiva, by eating the fruits of the tree, experiences sorrow, while Isvara remains an unattached spectator and enters into no relations whatsoever. The eating of the fruits of the tree is the establishing of relations with the manifested world, positively as likes and negatively as dislikes, due to the fact that the Jiva is incapable of having a totality of experience as Isvara has, and is limited to particularised experiences of separated objects with which it has varying relations in the different stages of its evolution. The objects, with which the Jiva thus maintains relations, are, in their own capacity, creations of Isvara, but to the observations of the Jiva they bear differing values at different times so that the Jiva has no permanent and definite information of anything in the world, since, as it evolves, its ideas of things also evolve.

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Continued

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