Why did Vritrasura fight as a demon and not become pious?

Podcast:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question did Vitrasur accepted a situation as a demon but didn’t do God’s will because he continued fighting against the devatas? Why did he become pious? The Vitrasur was born out of yajna to fight Indra.
Can this be considered Krishna’s will? Can it be said that results are predestined? And reasoning we give behind the results of free will? Answer, two distinct things over here. One is how we look at other situations that are unavoidable. And second is how we work on the situations that are changeable.
So, Vitrasur was cursed by Mother Parvati to become a demon in the next life. And now we could ask the question, what does becoming a demon mean? Does it mean get the form of a demon or even get the mentality of the demon? In our philosophy, we understand that the soul is different from the body and the mind, both. And it is the soul that is unaffected by material things, including things like curses.
Curses may affect not just the body, but they can sometimes affect the mind also. That means that not only did Vitrasur get the physical form, the body of a demon, but to some extent, due to the curse of Parvati, he also got the mentality of a demon, at least in the sense that it was to fight against the gods, it was to do the kind of things that demons typically do, that is, increase their power by conquering the regions of the devatas. And yet, if we see further, we will find that even while doing this, Vitrasur was not exactly a ruthless demon in the sense that he didn’t run away when all the soldiers were running away.
He didn’t try to kill his soldiers because they were running away. He tried to inspire them to fight on their… to stand and fight. He called them to do their duty as warriors.
So, we could say, even within his demoniac disposition, which he had got as a result of the curse, he still had, to some extent, the Kshatriya virtue of courage and heroism, whereas he was ready to fight on his own. Now, the curse of Parvati started losing its effect as death became nearer and inevitable for him. So, that’s why in the final conversation that is with Indra and Vitrasur, initially, Vitrasur is just acting like a demon and is goading Indra to fight on the basis of the principles of warriors, of Kshatriyas, using typical Kshatriya bluff and bravado.
And he says, you are going to be killed and I will satisfy my dead brother’s soul with your death. But if, however, you kill me, that contemplation of that possibility itself requires humility. And that is where the doorway to devotion opens for him.
And we start seeing him suddenly speaking, not just spiritual philosophy, but devotional philosophy, wherein he starts expressing great attraction to the Lord and submission to His will. So, just like we will see later in the canto of, the 8th canto, Gajendra’s curse, the curse by which Maharaja Indra Duryodhana became Gajendra, continued on till when he faced inevitable death. And that is the time he suddenly remembered the Lord and called out to the Lord.
In his case, the Lord came to rescue him in a visible form. Here there was no visible form to rescue, but still the Lord gave him divine consciousness with which he was rescued. And the idea is that he was still helped and elevated.
So, the Vitrasur story is a very specific example of how even when a curse can lead to misfortune, if one has served the Lord, then that service is not forgotten and the Lord remembers and the Lord delivers. So, this story is especially relevant for Parikshit Maharaj because he too has been cursed to die and at least the curse for him was only at the level of the body, it was not at the level of the mind. So, even if that had been a worse curse, still there is hope because bhakti, its awakening of the soul and the soul’s love for Krishna is never lost.
So, these stories that are there in the Bhagavatam, while they are timeless stories illustrating the glory of the power of devotion, they are also specifically the stories that address Parikshit Maharaj’s situation. So, now coming to the specifics, is the result predestined and the meaning that we give to the result is up to us? Well, in some cases, yes. For Parikshit Maharaj, his death was destined, but how we approach the death was up to him.
So, in some cases, it could be that some results are destined. Now, we don’t know in advance. So, we try to find the most devotionally conducive understanding of our situation and then we continue on serving enthusiastically based on that understanding and then whether the outer result manifests or not, the inner result in terms of our heart going closer to Krishna will surely manifest.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.