Question: Does man’s evolution progress from one world to another?
The soul’s evolution, or transmigration, is based on his actions. When a human being acts piously, he is eligible to ascend to the higher realms but once his pious credits are finished he has to come down again to the earthly-planets. (Cf. BG 9.20-22) Those who act impiously are forced to enter the lower hellish planets or the animal species and in this way conditioned souls undergo repeated birth and death, wandering within the material cosmos. But when one fully awakens his dormant relationship with God, he becomes eligible to quit the material world and return to the spiritual world for an eternal life.
I have come to understand from many spiritual readings and also from hearing after-death experiences of people that there is a huge divine light that is there up in the heavens and this Divine Light is God. If the truest form of God is only Divine Light / Pure Light, I wonder how something so impersonal as Light be God? Is Krishna a manifestation of this Divine Light? And how can this Light manifest Itself as Krishna, Rama, etc? How is this Light greater than all the suns in this universe, greater than all the minds in this material world, and how could It have created this wonderful creation – planets and universes?
Answer by Romapada Swami:
According to Vaishnava understanding, there are three phases of understanding the Absolute Truth – Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan. (SB 1.2.11) Brahman is the all-pervading impersonal aspect; Paramatma is the localized partial representation, perceived as the Supersoul within everyone’s heart; and Bhagavan is the Original Personality of Godhead. Srila Prabhupada explains: these three divine aspects can be compared respectively to the sunshine, the sun’s surface and the sun itself. One who studies the sunshine only is the preliminary student. One who understands the sun’s surface is further advanced. And one who can enter into the sun planet and meet its presiding Deity is the highest. Similarly, the Brahman feature is only the glaring, all-pervasive effulgence of Bhagavan, and understanding the Bhagavan feature is the highest and fullest realization of God.
In other words, Krishna is not a manifestation of the Divine Light; conversely this Divine Light called Brahma-jyoti is the effulgence emanating from the transcendental person of Lord Krishna, and His Personal feature is the source of everything, there being nothing above and beyond Him (Cf. BG 10.8, 7.7)
The Brahman effulgence emanates from the Supreme planet of Goloka, mentioned above, and within this effulgence all the spiritual planets are situated. The entire material cosmos is also situated in the Brahma-jyoti like a speck of cloud. Krishna declares in the Bhagavad-gita that He is the basis of the Brahman effulgence. (BG 14.27) Just as the source of all energy in our earth is a reflection of the sun, similarly all the suns in the material world are a mere reflection of this Effulgence.
