How many unborn items are there?

Note: This article is meant for intellectuals only

[Dr. Nikhil asked: Padanamaskarams Swamiji, I offer the following question at Your lotus feet for Your kind clarification. Your servant, Nikhil

According to many philosophies including Vedānta, only the unimaginable God (Parabrahman) is truly unborn (aja). His existence is absolute and spans the past, the present, and the future (trikāla abādhyam). Creation (prakṛti), including the individual souls (cara) and the inert components (acara) are created. They are not unborn in the strict sense. They are therefore not past-eternal, even if they may be future-eternal (ananta).

In contrast, the followers of Śrī Dayānanda Sarasvatī’s Traita Siddhānta claim that there are three real and unborn items namely God (Brahman, Īśvara), the individual soul (jīva), and creation (prakṛti). They quote the following verse from the Veda to support their claim:

jñājñau dvāvajāv-īśanīśāv-ajā, hyekā bhoktṛ-bhogyārtha-yuktā .

anantaścātmā viśvarūpo hyakartā trayaṃ yadā vindate brahmametat—Veda, Śvetāśvatara Up. 1.9.

The Omniscient Lord (Brahman, Īśvara) and the ignorant individual soul (jña-ajña; īśa-nīśa) are both unborn (ajau). Unborn also is she (ekā; prakṛti) who is engaged in enabling the enjoyer-enjoyed relation (bhoktṛ-bhogyātha yuktā). The one (ātmā) who realizes all these three as Brahman (Brahmetat trayaṃ), attain (vindate) the infinite (ananta), the universal (viśvrūpa), and the non-doer (akartā).

Could You kindly correlate the upaniṣadic verse, the Vedāntic view, and the Traita view?]

Swami replied:- Actually, the unimaginable God or Parabrahman is beginningless (unborn) and endless (eternal). Even Iishvara, the first energetic incarnation of God, is born from the point of the medium only. The first mediated unimaginable God is Iishvara. From the point of the unimaginable God, Iishvara is also unborn, but, from the point of medium, Iishvara is born. You can’t neglect the existence of medium. If medium is absent, He is Brahman or Parabrahman and not Iishvara. Anaadi means that which has no birth (Naasti aadih janma yasya tat anaadi). Annadi also can mean that the birth of which is not known (Na jnaatah aadih janma yasya tat annadi). From the view of this second definition, several items are called as unborn or anaadi. Similarly, you can have two types of definitions for the word ‘Anantaa’ or endless. The creation had beginning, but, we don’t know when it exactly began. Hence, we can call the creation as anaadi. Similarly, we don’t know when God will permanently end this creation without maintaining it in the subtle state (Avyaktam). God has the capacity to end this creation permanently. Hence, we can call the creation as anantaa since we don’t know the time when God will do so. Parabrahman or the unimaginable God alone existed, is existing and will exist in all the three times and hence, Parabrahman alone is the absolute reality without beginning and ending. All items other than Parabrahman are born and can end whenever Parabrahman wishes so. All these other items are existing only due to the existence of Parabrahman and this means that God gifted His reality to His created product. Such reality of all the other items is called relative reality. Hence, in view of both the definitions, the scholars are free to use both the words, which are Anaadi and Anantaa, in any sense they like. We can’t find fault with them. Since the sense of the usage of the word was lost, differences and quarrels arose among the ignorant followers of divine spiritual preachers. But, the divine spiritual preachers always understood the context of the meaning.

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