“Consciousness means endowed with free will, for without free will no consciousness can be conceived.
An atomic pinpoint of consciousness has very meager free will, and by misuse of their free will some jivas have taken their chance in the material world. They refused to submit to the supreme authority; they wanted to dominate. So, with this germinal idea of domination, the jiva enters into the world of exploitation.
In the Bhagavad-gita (7.27) it is stated:
iccha-dvesa samutthena
dvandva-mohena bharata
sarva-bhutani sammoham
sarge yanti parantapa
“Two principles in a crude form awaken in the jiva: hatred and desire. Then, gradually the soul comes down to mingle with the mundane world.”
At first, sympathy and apathy develop in a crude form, just as when a sprout springs up with two leaves. And gradually these two things help us to dive deep into this mundane world. Upon retiring from the world of exploitation, the soul may return to his former position in the brahmajyoti as spirit. But, if the soul has gathered the tendency of dedication through his previous devotional activities, he does not stop there; he pierces through the brahmajyoti and goes towards Vaikuntha.
Why has the soul come to the world of exploitation” and not the world of dedication? That should be attributed to his innate nature, which is endowed with free will. It is a free choice.
This is substantiated in the Bhagavad-gita (5. 14):
na kartrtvam na karmani
lokasya srjati prabhuh
na karma-phala-samyogam
svabhavas tu pravartate
“The soul is responsible for his entrance into the land of exploitation.” The responsibility is with the soul, otherwise, the Lord would be responsible for his distressed condition. But Krsna says that the soul’s innate free will is responsible for his entanglement in the material world. The soul is conscious, and consciousness means endowed with freedom. Because the soul is atomic, his free will is imperfect and vulnerable. The result of that free choice is
that some are coming into the material world, and some are going to the spiritual world. So, the responsibility is with the individual soul.
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