Bhagavatam-daily 194 – 11.10.36 – The difference between the bound and the entangled eludes the eye

Thank you.
So, this question goes on to the next verse also. Let’s look at this verse first. Katham, in what way? Vartet means to be situated.
Viharet means to move around or to enjoy. Kairava gyanet lakshanai. Kairava, how are we to know? Lakshanai, by what symptoms? Kim bhunjeetot vishrujeet.
Kim bhunjeet. Bhunjeet means to actually eat over here. Vishrujeet means to evacuate, to pass out.
Shaeet, that is to lie down. Aseet, that is to sit. Yativa, and to go.
So, here Vitho is asking that at the bodily level, the liberated souls will do the same activities as the conditioned souls. The liberated soul will eat and they may say the liberated soul will also evacuate. The liberated soul will also sit.
They will also walk. They will also travel. They lie down.
So, how can one, by what lakshana can one know that the Lord is, that someone is liberated and someone is conditioned? So, Vishwanath Chaturthakur, in his commentary, talks about those who are liberated, eternally liberated, which is the Tatra and Bharata. And then he talks about those who are in eternal condition like Devadatta and Yajnadatta. These are all different significant persons in the broad Vedic tradition.
We are not going to their specific histories. But the important point is that we come to know about their status because scripture tells us so. And we accept that Uddhava’s implication is, if scripture tells us that this person is liberated, then we can accept that.
But when we are interacting with someone, how can we know that someone is liberated and someone is bound? So, again, just as in this world, appearance creates illusion, the appearance that sense objects are enjoyable creates illusion, making us think that, oh, this is what will make me happy. Similarly, the appearance that these things are miserable, they create aversion within us. And thus, we stay deluded with our attachments and aversions largely determined by the appearance of things.
The same Pratyaksha Radha, which actually creates illusion, when we are living in this world and are seeking worldly gratification, that same Pratyaksha also creates illusion when we are trying to come out of material existence. Because by Pratyaksha, there is created another kind of delusion, which is confusion about the liberated state and the entangled state. So at our first level, Pratyaksha creates the illusion that this world itself is enjoyable, that there are so many good looking things in this world, and if you can just get them, then you will all be able to enjoy.
Once we break free from that illusion, then comes the next level illusion, that is the illusion that we can’t differentiate between the liberated and the conditioned states. So to give an example, if somebody is sick, but that person is so deluded that the patient doesn’t even realize I am sick, that is definitely an illusion. But suppose somebody somehow understands that okay, I am sick, and I need treatment by which I will become healthy, but then if that person is not able to see the difference between a sick person and a healthy person, then how will that person know who is healthy, what is healthy state, and how can one become confident that by following a particular process for healing, I will actually move from the sick state to the healthy state.
So now usually most diseases, especially when they are in an advanced or acute state, at that time the symptoms manifest at a physical visible level, and that’s when actually patients go to the doctor, when either some sort of inconvenience or disfigurement happens, or the pain rises to a level above the threshold of perception, that means the pain becomes perceivable and the pain becomes an endurable, or at least not neglectable, then people go to a doctor. But if suppose nowadays we know there are diseases like cancer, which are extremely dangerous diseases, but these diseases are not perceivable in the initial stages, one has to be very attentive maybe to see if there are some nodes that are formed, and then to check whether those globules or nodes that are formed, whether they are tumors, whether they are cancerous or not, so all that has to be checked carefully, and without checking that to the naked eye, a person may seem quite healthy, and similarly a person may be wracked by a terrible disease internally, but externally because the disease has not come to the level of manifestation, so one may not be able to understand, when we think of a diseased person to be healthy also, so the point here is that when we rely on externals, then just as we may not be able to discern who is healthy and who is sick, similarly by relying on externals, we find it difficult to discern who is liberated and who is conditioned, and thus we stay entangled and we stay in illusion, and here Uddhava is asking, how do I know who is liberated, because from the external point of view, all the bodily functions that a conditioned soul performs, a liberated soul also performs, not necessarily, he doesn’t list the activity of sense gratification over here, but he talks about the activities of bodily maintenance, they have to be done, so how can we perceive, so actually it is not with the Marma Chakshu, with the eyes of flesh, that we can perceive the difference between conditioned and liberated souls, we need first of all Jnana Chakshu, the eyes of knowledge, by which we can start noticing the difference, and ultimately we need Prema Chakshu, by which we can see the spiritual, the devotional stuff, the devotional reality clearly, and that will be explained by Krishna in the next chapter, in due course.