Adi-lita, Chapter 6 527

direction. In our practical experience we never see that inert bricks can themselves
construct a big building.

“The example of the water pot cannot be accepted because a water pot has no
perception of pleasure and distress. Such perception is within. Therefore the covering
body, or the water pot, cannot be synchronized with it.

“Sometimes the material scientist suggests that trees grow from the earth auto-
matically, without assistance from a gardener, because that is a tendency of matter.
They also consider the intuition of living creatures from birth to be material. But
such material tendencies as bodily intuition cannot be accepted as independent, for
they suggest the existence of a spirit soul within the body. Actually, the tree or the
the body of a living creature has no tendency or intuition; the tendency and intuition
exist because the soul is present within the body.In this connection, the example of
a car and driver may be given very profitably. The car has a tendency to turn right
and left, but one cannot say that the car itself, as matter, turns right and left without
the direction of a driver. A material car has neither tendencies nor intuitions inde-
pendent of the intentions of the driver within the car. The same principle applies
for the automatic growth of trees in the forest. The growth takes place because of
the soul’s presence within the tree.

“Sometimes foolish people take for granted that because scorpions are born from
heaps of rice, the rice has produced the scorpions. The real fact, however, is that the
mother scorpion lays eggs within the rice, and by the proper fermentation of the
rice the eggs give birth to several baby scorpions, which in due course come out. This
does not mean that the rice gives birth to the scorpions. Similarly, sometimes bugs
are seen to come from dirty beds. This does not mean, however, that the beds give
birth to the bugs. It is the living soul that comes forth, taking advantage of the dirty
condition of the bed. There are different kinds of living creatures. Some of them
come from embryos, some from eggs and some from the fermentation of perspira-
tion. Different living creatures have different sources of appearance, but one should
not conclude that matter produces such living creatures.

“The example cited by materialists that trees automatically come from the earth
follows the same principle. Taking advantage of a certain condition, a living entity
comes from the earth. According to the Brhad-agranyaka Upanisad, every living being
is forced by divine superintendence to take a certain type of body according to his
past deeds. There are many varieties of bodies, and because of a divine arrangement
a living entity takes bodies of different shapes.

“When a person thinks, ‘I am doing this,’ the ‘I am’ does not refer to the body.
It refers to something more than the body, or within the body. As such, the body
as it is has neither tendencies nor intuition; the tendencies and intuition belong to
the soul within the body. Material scientists sometimes suggest that the tendencies
of male and female bodies cause their union and that this is the cause of the birth of
the child. But since the purusa, according to Sankhya philosophy, is always unaf-
fected, where does the tendency to give birth come from?

“Sometimes material scientists give the example that milk turns into curd auto-
matically and that distilled water pouring from the clouds falls down to earth,
