Why do some scriptures say that the demigods are supreme?

Transcript

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why do some scriptures say that durga or shiva or some other god some other devatas are supreme now let’s look at the bhagavad-gita itself in krishna talks about the worship of the devatas from 7.20 to 7.23 so in 7.21 he says that those who are too much of this according to their own natures according to their own natures then next verse he says krishna says whichever devata particular person wants to worship i make his faith strong in that so with this faith when someone worships what happens the person’s desire gets fulfilled but i won’t give you the fruits is i will give the fruits and then krishna says in the third verse that actually those worship like this they are the fruit of the worship devatas is and therefore those worship devatas are so now this is a very interesting verse set of verses because what is krishna saying krishna says i only give faith to the worshippers to worship the devatas now and i only give the devatas the power to grant the fruits also so what is krishna doing over here now in the abrahamic religions there is the concept of a jealous god jealous god means that for example the commandment of the commandment says thou shall not worship any other god before me because i got the jealous god so then the idea is there’s one real god all the false gods and that’s why in these abrahamic religions what would happen is whenever they’re going to conquer india the first thing they do is destroy all the temples of the false god no we as a the hindu culture overall the many cultures so we have actually allah jesus allah christ krishna they’re all the ones saying god but christians muslims most of them they don’t think like that they actually think as a christian muslim they say allah is the only god now this is not necessarily the interpretation it is the understanding which you get if you have 100s of quran faithfully but this is the mainstream understanding you say allah is the only true god and all other gods including krishna or ram or whoever else they are all forms that the satan has taken to allure people away from the true god and therefore when we destroy all these false gods we are destroying the manifestation of satan and by that the glory of the true god will be established and that’s why whenever these abrahamic religions they will conquer india the first thing they have to do is go and destroy temples because they think that this is the way we proclaim the glory of the true god we’re destroying the false gods so they have this dichotomy of duality between the true god and the false god and they’ll convince you to be a true and a false god so we worship the true god and destroy the false gods but the very scriptures you know this man is saying krishna is not a jealous god he’s a zealous god zealous means he has a great zeal for elevating the traditions it’s in the bible in the biblical tradition at large there is this story the prodigal son most of you all know the story isn’t it the son leaves the father he’s going to live all alone and then when he comes back the father welcomes the son back but this in one sense shows the unconditionality of the love of the father and although the son rejected the father the father rejects but the scriptures explain that god’s love is much greater than simply welcoming the lost son back what krishna does is much more krishna accompanies the lost son as he’s supposed to so he’s not only waiting for son to come back he’s escorting the son and constantly to guide him back that’s the first thing but along with that krishna creates systems to help the lost son even while he’s lost it’s not that he’s just waiting for the son to come back it is also helping the lost son how is that so extending of the law of prodigal son suppose there is a king now and there’s this prince and the prince has quarreled with his father and he’s left the prince later prodigal son was gone so the prince doesn’t want to see the face of the father he says i just want to live my life don’t interfere and goes away now once the father has said that he’ll be there he knows that my father my son is not ready to come back to me so what i have to do is i have to send my minister i will send my ministers and he sends the minister into the uh to meet the lost son and the minister doesn’t say that i am coming from your father oh look how do you look so nice can i help you today just take me to your job and then now what’s happening the son has left the father the father the king but now the king sent the minister and the prince except the ministers and indirectly the prince has come in the kingship in that it was represented so the minister of this are like the devatas so what is so amazing that krishna gone away that soul doesn’t want to accept krishna krishna says you know my interest is not when krishna speaks about his glory now i am god now it’s not that krishna is some kind of egomaniac you accept that i am god it’s not like that when krishna speaks his glory it is not to prove his position it is to improve our disposition it is to improve our understanding what is the reality and to become purified by that but krishna is not really interested in just making sure that i am the exclusive object of worship krishna the interest is not in his glorification his interest is in our innovation so therefore what happens if the soul is not ready to worship him the king provides the ministers now when the minister gives salary to the prince where does the minister get the money from from the king so krishna is saying the devatas give some fruits whether they are getting the fruits from or from the fruit they come to krishna now krishna actually is more busy no metaphor that he can give in the world is complete because all metaphors are just they can they have a rubber band in the mouth object object it just gives us one hold on one part of the object so now when the king is helping the prince by sending the minister the king is not present with the prince actually but krishna is present inside the worship also and krishna says that he says that and then krishna gives faith in one more way through the scriptures that glorify those and by that they will become devoted to the devata and by that they will focus in the world now see there are two kinds of religious quests broadly speaking there is the circumstantial quest and there is the existential quest and there is the spiritual quest circumstantial quest means i am in trouble circumstances i am hungry i am thirsty i am sick hey god help me so some troubles and circumstances are part of my life and that’s why i go on a quest existential quest means what is the purpose of my existence so from the circumstantial quest krishna baba somebody help me there’s someone up there please help me so that kind of thing people go to devatas but gradually the purpose of dharma gradually their existence in the state of ignorance yes i’m going to devata who is the devata actually who am i actually what is the actual purpose of you have to do this first evidence and then you can do it so now the important point this is the whole background the question must be asked why are the certain scriptures glorified certain devatas the point is they are part of the scripture master now we when we are when we want that’s even krishna look at krishna’s point of this this particular for the king’s point of view this prince is lost and he wants the prince to be under some shelter so he’s sending a minister over there now at that time the point is not whether that minister is the prime minister or the best minister second best minister or the king the point is that the prince should take shelter of the minister isn’t it so in the in the in the books which are connected with the devatas in general the questions are non-existent the questions are very specific please tell me the glory of shiva please tell me the glory of dhruvdevi and like any sort of questions if you look at the bhagavatam it’s not saying please tell me the glory of krishna that is what you can do later but the fundamental question is if i’m going to die what should i do it’s a very universal question that’s the question of shukadeva before that the question of the rishis again universal there are so many scriptures which is the most essential there are so many dharmas which is the first dharma there are so many course of action what is the best course of action so again these are i hope this is different from the existence and circumstances it’s very important to understand so certain scriptures are circumstantial in the sense that they are meant to elevate people from their circumstances to higher level and certain scriptures are existential scriptures that means they answer questions of the fundamental nature of existence and this difference you can see in the content of scriptures the content of scriptures will be more metaphysical more serious philosophical discussion and other will just be pastime of the particular devata oh this demon was in trouble this demon was troubling worship was done and the demon was killed so the point is that if you look at the content of the scriptures you will notice this progression so when a faith in a particular devata has to be communicated at that time the scriptures don’t go into proclaiming whether that devata is supreme or not the focus is to get that person to start worshiping that particular devata now if you look carefully one can find that the qualification of devatas is contextual it is not absolute that means lord shiva will be called vishwanatha but lord shiva is not called nandgodi brahmandamaya nandgodi brahmandamaya is vishwa lord shiva is vishwanatha this vishwa is under the care of durgadevi and durgadevi’s master is shiva so in that sense he is vishwanatha that is not wrong and when these qualifications are there we understand that they are primarily meant to promote faith they are circumstantial statements meant for producing faith they are not metacritical statements as answers to existential questions they are not used in the I’ll include these two points now first historical and philosophical so I’ll put historical first there are many many worshippers of devatas when they moved from circumstantial points to existential points they moved from the worship of devata to the worship of krishna so for example there is a famous vaishnava called chandigas now he is very named because he is the worshipper of chandigas and that’s what he was now he was very well reared he had a brother who was a vaishnava who was quite poor and they used to give him flowers so one day the vaishnava brother asked him he says I want to give you some flowers can I he has a beautiful garden with so many flowers can I take one flower and worship your worship to krishna he said no not even one flower every single flower has been donated to chandigas so his brother went back and did not say anything did not take the flowers next morning when he had come back he saw this flower he saw this hearted desire if I can just offer one flower to my devotee and his mind was visualizing I want to take that flower and then what happened to that his brother he woke up and went to play a bar and he did the same thing and he offered it to chandigas and the chandigas prayed he said I am very pleased with you what do you want he said I am grateful to you that you are here and I will ask for permission afterwards but please tell me I have been worshipping you for so long what is it that made you appear today he said today you gave me the maha prasad I said what do you mean you mean to say worshipping krishna is better than worshipping you he said of course krishna is not just my lord he is the lord of my lord my lord is krishna and he is the lord of krishna he said why don’t you tell me this I never asked for this you know how you are dhanam dehi, kutram dehi and you are just asking circumstantial questions and I was very circumstantial to ask this but today because you have done increased your energy and now the important point is it is not that he rejected chandi you are not god, forget it get lost no he kept the chandi but he considered chandi to be his guru and then after he has written very beautiful songs about krishna’s pastimes in his book he used to hear beautiful songs so there are examples of worshipers of devatas coming to krishna and many examples like that if they know the existential question like somebody goes to the existential question for devata then what happens? then the devata will directly say krishna so any of you are confused when you found out you are worshiping shiva and now you are all coming together krishna is a bit confused now don’t because of confusion give up the ism who is supreme I don’t know so better not get into the ism there is a plan over there if you have faith in shiva worship shiva and pray to shiva and give I have studied some scriptures to some extent so you also know that pray to shiva and pray to krishna also please help me to understand all this and you see the truth in everything and this is how we become sensitive with respect to worshipers of devatas now sometimes when we think that we have to worship krishna and everybody is less intelligent and we have to remember that we were less intelligent as a shaman then we might be less intelligent so it is that we don’t have a right to become self-righteous towards everyone they are also within krishna so that’s why they don’t worship people who don’t worship krishna and this is the the historical modality and one possible modality that when the scriptures are focused on a particular devata at that time those puranas which do talk about these things in the purana itself there is a there is a in the skanda purana tamasic puranas tamasic puranas which talk about the worship of shiva and other gods so now there itself shiva is the vikartikeya that shiva shastra basically what it says is that if there is shiva shastra and there is vishnu shastra then if there is a contradiction between the two then vishnu shastra is a biased so now within the scripture it’s not that the scripture is naive it’s not that the sages were so foolish the sages didn’t realize that one book i wrote shiva shastra and another book i wrote krishna shastra and i never realized both it’s not like that the scriptures are aware that there is this contradiction and the scriptures themselves give us a harmony a method for resolving this contradiction what is that called? that is shastra tarakam tarakam means hierarchical arrangement there is a hierarchy of scripture and now this principle of hierarchy applies in laws for example there is one law that if you kill someone then you have to punish capital punishment or whatever that is one law now another law is that if a person is attacked the person has the right to self-defense now suppose a person is being attacked and in self-defense he is being attacked to be killed and in self-defense the person kills the attacker now what should be done at this time? should the law that if you kill you should be punished? or should the law that if you are attacked you are rightfully punished should attack? second should attack the point is that there can be even in our normal human law forms there can be situations where two law forms face two different things and then there is a hierarchical arrangement of these by which we understand which law form to attack so like that there can be situations where scripture contradicts each other and at that time there has to be shastra tarakam there has to be a hierarchical arrangement of scripture and there is one scripture which is nirnayak nirnayak means that which is to be decided and nirnayak is that which is to be decided so now what lord shiva is telling to karthikeya over here is that if there is a contradiction between a shaivite scripture and a vaishnavite scripture this scripture talks about shiva’s glory what should we do? we should actually worship and worship exactly the verdict of the vaishnavite scripture not only that if you look at the life of Vyasadeva himself Vyasadeva is the author of the scripture not author of the original authoring of the putting down of the krinika so what was his experience he wrote all the scriptures and still he is dissatisfied and then he wrote the bhagavatam in which he glorified krishna and then he was satisfied so from his own experience also he has consistently demonstrated that actually when we that so the bhagavatam is sarva pramana chakravarti there are various pramanas all the pramanas are like kings but it is a chakravarti chakravarti is the emperor king of kings some of all the pramanas the bhagavatam is the emperor is the chief pramana and it is the nirnayak scripture therefore we do not reject other scriptures we accept them but we subordinate them to the bhagavatam and that is based on the verdict of the shayaraja scripture as well as the amala purana which is based on Vyasadeva’s life’s destinies so in this way we can reconcile contradiction in the scriptures by seeing them as variable instructions for people at various levels in their spiritual progression thank you very much