THE TELEOLOGY OF THE ENLIGHTENED SOUL
The Vedic seers held that an enlightened soul neither ascends to a spiritual heaven nor descends to a spiritual hell after physical death. At this time, it does not go anywhere. Prior to death, the awareness of an enlightened soul has already begun its spiritual journey, by ascending and descending the divine ladder simultaneously.
In the process, it has the potential to cognize the spectrum of spiritual worlds known as the heavens and hells—even during its physical life.Yet it does not obtain these worlds through the performance of action or thinking. Rather, it reaches them through the practice of tapas—of transcending—that is characterized by tranquillity (shama) rather than action (karma). Moreover, the enlightened soul does not experience these worlds in a way that is unbalanced: it does not, for instance, experience a hellish world to the exclusion of a heavenly world. By simultaneously ascending and descending through the spectrum of layers, it experiences both worlds in a balanced fashion.
This results in a completely different type of spiritual experience from that obtained by the mortal soul—one that transcends the notions of good and evil. To the enlightened soul, the hells are not evil and the heavens are not good. Instead, both are viewed as part and parcel of the overall design of creation, which serves to fulfill the ultimate purpose of creation: the realization of immortality in the bosom of the infinite. The spiritual worlds are hidden to the mortal soul during its physical life—but they are not hidden to the enlightened soul. They are experienced as coexisting with the physical world, but on a different level of consciousness. Consequently, when the physical body of an enlightened soul dies, the soul does not have to go anywhere. It does not have to ascend or descend because it has already ascended and descended.
Whatever stage of ascent and descent the enlightened soul has attained during physical life will be preserved after physical death and will serve as the basis for further progress on its spiritual journey. In this regard, physical death was viewed as no obstacle to the attainment of true immortality. The physical body may fall away, but the immortal soul goes on forever, for the enlightened soul is not identified with its mortal, physical body. Instead, it is identified with an immortal body—the metaphysical body of Logos.
The twenty-eighth heaven, the world of Indra, may be the highest heaven that can be experienced by the mortal soul, but it is not the highest that can be experienced by the enlightened soul. The world of Varuna was an even higher heaven, which marked the boundary of the visible universe and everything in it.