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How and When Did the Jiva Makes a Choice to be in This Material World?
Part 5
If there is any doubt about this explanation, he further writes, (Jaiva Dharma, Chapter 16):
“There are unlimited jivas who are eternal associates of the Lord. In Goloka Vrndavana, they are manifested by Lord Baladeva for the service of Lord Krishna. In Vaikuntha they are manifested by Sri Sankarsana for the service of Lord Narayana, the Lord of Vaikuntha. They are eternally and blissfully engaged in the service of their worshipable Lord, always situated in their svarupa, always striving to make the Lord happy, always favorable to the service of the Lord, and always powerful with the energy of the cit-sakti. They have absolutely no relation, or contact with the inert maya. Indeed they do not even know that there is an energy called maya. Because they live in the spiritual region, maya remains very far from them. They are always absorbed in the bliss of service to their worshipable Lord. They are transcendental to mundane misery, and happiness, and are always liberated. Their very life is love, and they have no conception of lamentation, fear, and death.
The atomic conscious jivas, which come out like rays from Maha Visnu’s glance at maya, are also uncountable. Being in proximity to maya, these jivas see the variegatedness of maya. They have all the characteristics of the jivas as described before, yet because of their atomic nature, they sometimes glance marginally towards the spiritual creation, and sometimes towards the material creation. In this marginal state, the jiva is weak, because he has not yet attained spiritual power by the mercy of the worshipable Lord.
Out of these unlimited jivas, the ones who desire to enjoy maya remain eternally bound by maya, because of being attached to sense enjoyment. Those who engage in devotional service to the Lord, go to the spiritual world, getting the strength of cit-sakti by the mercy of the Lord.”
Besides the fact that this passage confirms the previous one, we also learn that the nitya-mukta devotees do not even know there is an energy called maya. Later on Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura writes that the reason why some jivas become liberated, and some become bound, is the proper use, or misuse, of their natural independence. This does not include the nitya-mukta jivas, who have no contact with maya, and thus have no scope to misuse their natural independence.
Also, from these statements, it is explicit that no one falls from Vaikuntha, because these jivas originating from Maha-Visnu, have never been in the nitya-lila in the spiritual sky, because Maha-Visnu is on situated in the Viraja river, which is the demarcation between the spiritual energy and the material energy.
Out of these jivas, being the tatastha sakti[1], some come to the material world and some go to the spiritual world, according to how they choose to use their minute independence, but no one falls into the material world from the Vaikuntha planets, or from Vrajaloka. The jivas in Vaikuntha are nitya-mukta and always have the power of cit potency.
Thus they can never be influenced by maya. This verdict is confirmed in the Krishna Sandarbha where Srila Jiva Gosvami[2] discusses at length the infallible nature of the Lord’s internal potency. This is discussed in later chapters in this book.
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[1] Tatastha-sakti—the living entities, the marginal potency of the Supreme Lord.
[2] Jiva Gosvami—one of the Six Gosvamis of Våndavana and the nephew of Rupa and Sanatana Gosvamis. His father, Anupama, died when the boy was very young. He grew up absorbed in the worship of Kåñëa and Balarama. Lord Caitanya instructed him in a dream to proceed to Navadvipa, and there he toured that sacred place in the association of Sri Nityananda Prabhu. He then went to Benares to study Sanskrit, and from there to Våndavana to be under the shelter of his uncles. He became a disciple of Rupa Gosvami and wrote eighteen major works on Vaisnava philosophy, comprising more than 400,000 verses. He is considered by many philosophers and Sanskritists to be the greatest scholar who ever lived.