Where Do The Fallen Souls Fall From?

On learning that the material world is not our real home, we naturally wonder, “How did we get here?”

By Jayādvaita Swami

WHEN WE HEAR that we live in this material world because we are “fallen souls,” it’s natural for us to ask, “Where have we fallen from?”

Śrīla Prabhupāda says that as living souls we are all originally Kṛṣṅa conscious. But what does that mean? Were we all originally with Kṛṣṅa in the spiritual world? And if so, how could we ever have fallen? In Bhagavad-gītā Lord Kṛṣṅa says, “Once you attain to that spiritual world, you never fall.” So how then could we have fallen from there to begin with?

Some have tried to work around this problem by suggesting a different idea: We fell not from Kṛṣṅa's personal abode but from the brahma-jyoti, the effulgent light that surrounds it. As stated in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, yogis who seek the impersonal aspect of the Supreme may merge into that effulgent light—only to fall back later to the material world. Perhaps, then, we originally fell from the brahma-jyoti.

Śrīla Prabhupāda rejected this idea. Those in the brahma-jyoti, he wrote, are not Kṛṣṅa conscious, so they too are fallen. “So there is no question of falling down from a fallen condition. When fall takes place, it means falling down from the non-fallen condition.”

Well, then, since we’re called “eternally conditioned,” eternally illusioned, perhaps we’ve never really fallen at all—we’ve just always been down.

That idea, too, Śrīla Prabhupāda rejected. “Eternally conditioned,” he explained, simply means that we’ve been down so long that when we fell is no longer possible to know.

Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, three generations before Śrīla Prabhupāda in the line of spiritual teachers, put it this way: “Please avoid the misleading question ’When were these jīvas [living beings] created and enthralled?’ The Māyik time has no existence in spiritual history, because it has its commencement after the enthrallment of jīvas, and you cannot, therefore, employ Māyik chronology in matters like these.”

“The Relationship is Eternal”

Here, then, is how Śrīla Prabhupāda described our original state and the way we fall and leave it.

“Constitutionally,” he said in one letter, “every living entity, even if he is in the Vaikuṅṭhaloka [the personal spiritual abode of the Lord], has a chance of falling down. Therefore the living entity is called marginal energy.”

“Usually,” he explained, “anyone who has developed his relationship with Kṛṣṅa does not fall down in any circumstance, but because the independence is always there, the soul may fall down from any position or any relationship by misuse of his independence.”

In another letter, Śrīla Prabhupāda gave further insights. “We are always with Kṛṣṅa. Where is Kṛṣṅa not present?” But “when we forget this fact we are far, far away from Him. In the Īśopaniṣad it is clearly stated, tad dūre tad v antike: ’He is very far away, but He is very near as well.’ (Īśopaniṣad, Mantra Five). So this forgetfulness is our falldown. It can take place at any moment, and we can counteract this forgetfulness immediately by rising to the platform of Kṛṣṅa consciousness.”

Our relationship with Kṛṣṅa is never lost, Śrīla Prabhupāda said. “Simply it is forgotten by the influence of māyā. So it may be regained or revived by the process of hearing the holy name of Kṛṣṅa, and then the devotee engages himself in the service of the Lord which is his original or constitutional position. The relationship of the living entity with Kṛṣṅa is eternal, as both Kṛṣṅa and the living entity are eternal; the process is one of revival only, nothing new.”

In still another letter, Śrīla Prabhupāda restated this in yet another way: “We are all originally situated on the platform of Kṛṣṅa consciousness in our eternal personal relationship of love of Kṛṣṅa. But due to forgetfulness we become familiar with the material world, or māyā.” But when we chant the Hare Kṛṣṅa mantra sincerely and without offense, our original Kṛṣṅa consciousness is at once revived. “So naturally everything about Kṛṣṅa is originally known to us all, and as soon as we begin to associate with the devotees of the Lord and chant His holy name, this memory gradually becomes stronger as we remember our constitutional position of always serving Kṛṣṅa in different ways.”

Our separation from Kṛṣṅa, Śrīla Prabhupāda taught, is like a dream. We dream, “I am this body,” and we dream of happiness in material relationships. This dreaming condition is our non-liberated state. But although this state of dreaming may seem to last for lifetimes, as soon as we become Kṛṣṅa conscious we awaken, and the dream at once disappears. “After millions and millions of years of keeping oneself away from the līlā [pastimes] of the Lord, when one comes to Kṛṣṅa consciousness this period becomes insignificant, like dreaming.”

Don’t Figure It Out—Get Out

Ultimately, Śrīla Prabhupāda would stress, puzzling over when we fell or where we fell from won’t solve our problem. “The conclusion is that whatever may be our past, let us come to Kṛṣṅa consciousness and immediately join Kṛṣṅa.”

Again: “One should know he is in conditioned life and try to cure it.… Forgetfulness of Kṛṣṅa is the disease, so let us keep ourselves always in Kṛṣṅa consciousness and get out of the disease. That is healthy life.”

Still again: “Rather than taking account of how things happened that [we] came here, our best occupation is to get out of the scene by constantly chanting Hare Kṛṣṅa and being engaged in the transcendental service of Lord Kṛṣṅa.”

The advice is clear enough. But still the intellect hangs on, trying to figure out what can’t be figured out. So we delve into books to find out what was taught by other great ācāryas (spiritual teachers) of the past. And what do we find? Different teachers—all Kṛṣṅa conscious—seem to express different views. So then what? We take sides with one view or another, or simply become confused. Our mental circuits start to burn out.

Śrīla Prabhupāda's spiritual master, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, therefore gave this advice. We should avoid, he said, “vain empirical wranglings,” which he called “false and full of specious verbosity.” He reminds us, “What the unalloyed devotee of the Supreme Lord says is all true and is independent of any consideration of unwholesome pros and cons.”

When such pure devotees disagree, he says, there is “the element of mystery in their verbal controversies.” And “those whose judgment is made of mundane stuff” can’t “enter into the spirit of the all-loving controversies among pure devotees.” Lacking pure devotion, such people “are apt to impute to the devotees their own defects of partisanship and opposing views.” Therefore, he counsels, whenever such disputes arise about the pastimes of the Lord, we should remember what was taught by Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu and His associates the Gosvāmīs, “that the Truth Absolute is ever characterized by spiritual variegatedness that transcends the variegatedness of mundane phenomena; but He is never featureless.”

Endless Arguments: Māyā’s Trick

The Mahābhārata tells us that we can’t know the truth simply by logic and arguments (tarko ’pratiṣṭaḥ). Acintyāḥ khalu ye bhāvā na tāṁs tarkeṅa yojayet: “There’s no use arguing over that which is inconceivable.” After all, it’s inconceivable.

Śrīpāda B.R. Śrīdhara Mahārāja, one of Śrīla Prabhupāda's Godbrothers, respected for his deep philosophical realization, used to stress the same point, one of his followers told us. Repeatedly asked about where the living beings fell from, Śrīpāda Śrīdhara Mahārāja grew weary of the question. “Why do you always ask about the most difficult thing to understand?” he once responded. “Why not try to understand the most easy thing?” That is: how to become Kṛṣṅa conscious and go back to Godhead.

Pure devotees of Kṛṣṅa avoid endless arguments. Such devotees know that such arguments are merely another distraction offered by māyā. As stated in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (6.4.31):

yac-chaktayo vadatāṁ vādināṁ vai vivāda-saṁvāda-bhuvo bhavanti kurvanti caiṣāṁ muhur ātma-mohaṁ tasmai namo ’nanta-guṅāya bhūmne

“Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto the all-pervading Supreme Personality of Godhead, who has unlimited transcendental qualities. Acting from within the cores of the hearts of all philosophers, who propagate various views, He makes them forget their own souls while sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing among themselves. Thus He creates within this material world a situation in which they are unable to come to a conclusion. I offer my obeisances unto Him.”

Therefore, the student in transcendental science is best advised to simply accept what has been accepted by his own bona fide Kṛṣṅa conscious ācārya, or spiritual master. As Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura says, “It is a great offense to disrespect the ācārya and to seek to establish a different doctrine in opposition to him.”

The Crow-and-Fruit Philosophy

To illustrate the uselessness of arguing about where the soul fell from, Śrīla Prabhupāda once gave the example of the crow and the fruit of an Indian palm, the tāl fruit. On the top of a tree was a nice tāl fruit. A crow went there and the fruit fell down. Some learned scholars saw this and began discussing. The fruit fell because the crow shook the limb, one said. No, said another, as the crow was landing the fruit happened to fall. This frightened the crow, so the crow flew away. No, said a third, the fruit was ripe, and the weight of the crow’s landing broke the fruit from the branch.…

“What is the use of such discussion?” Śrīla Prabhupāda said.

Whether we came from Kṛṣṅa's pastimes or from some other spiritual source, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, “at the present you are in neither. So the best policy is to develop your Kṛṣṅa consciousness and go there [to Kṛṣṅa], never mind what is your origin.”

“At the present moment you are in māyā’s clutches,” he wrote, “so our only hope is to become Kṛṣṅa conscious and go back to home, back to Godhead.”

Don’t waste time with the crow-and-tāl-fruit logic, Śrīla Prabhupāda advised. “Now the fruit is there. Take it and enjoy.”

NOTE: The letters from Śrīla Prabhupāda quoted in this article appear at greater length in Śrīla Prabhupāda Śikṣāmṛta, Volume Two, pages 1157–1176. The quotations from Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura come from his commentary on Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā. The quotation from Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura comes from Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu—His Life and Precepts.

Jayādvaita Swami is the Editor of Back to Godhead.