Churing the ocean, the Bhagavatam and the heart – 2

Much Hare Krishna so we continue our discussion of churning the ocean the Bhagavatam and the heart yesterday we discussed about the pastime of churning the milk ocean and we came to the point where the Devatas and the Asuras have agreed to together churn the ocean so they all went took the Mandara Parvat the giant mountain and they lifted it now today with our sceptical logical mind we may think how can a mountain be lifted actually the important point to recognise in such situations is that possibility is a matter of scale now if there's a glass on the table in front of me and if a ant is moving along the table for the ant moving that glass may seem to be impossible for the ant the glass may seem like a mountain so that's why possibility is dependent on proportion and that's why we shouldn't extrapolate from our proportion what is possible and what is impossible so these are empirically impossible for us like lifting up mountains but they are possible in principle if there is adequate strength so the demigods and demons have far more strength than we have and that's how they can even lift mountains then they started lifting the mountain jubilantly and marching along but they got exhausted they had to take the mountain the Mandar mountain it is described in the cosmology of the Bhagavatam in the fifth canto that it is it is tall it is very long and although it is giant but it is shaped so that it can be used as a churning rod so they were carrying the mountain along but its huge size and giant weight became unbearable and it started crushing them and they started falling down and as they were in great pain being crushed by the weight of the mountain they didn't know what to do the demons were simply agonising in pain but devtas again called to the supreme lord for help and the lord came along flying on Garuda and he just picked up the Mandar mountain with one hand this is Krishna lifted up Govardhan with not just one hand but with one finger of one hand not just any finger the smallest finger and according to our acharya it was not even the finger that lifted up Govardhan it was the nail on the finger that lifted up Govardhan so Krishna similarly lord Vishnu came along and lifted up the mountain effortlessly with one hand so miracles are not against science they are above science against science means unscientific above science means trans scientific science mostly studies things which are in our experience and it tries to extrapolate based on the observations that we have made to general inferences or principles but science cannot talk much about things which are beyond our observation and so beyond our inference also so science mostly studies the gross material realm there are three levels of reality gross matter subtle matter and spirit so science mostly studies gross matter and that's why subtle matter and spirit are not against science but they are above science so the lord has spiritual energy and by that spiritual energy he not only has spiritual energy but he also has supreme energy because he is omnipotent so he can do anything and gods doing things which seem like miracles to us like lifting up mountains that is not against science that is above science so lord Vishnu lifted up the mountain and then placed it on his carrier Garuda so not only could the lord lift up the mountain but even Garuda could lift up the mountain we see that Krishna lifted up Govardhan and Hanuman carried a mountain Hanuman carried a part of the Himalayan mountain range mountain which carried the herbal medicines and he carried all across the Indian subcontinent from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka so similarly Garuda is an empowered devotee and he could also carry Mandara mountain and the lord also sat on Garuda and both of them they flew with Mandara next to the lord on the back of Garuda and they reached the milk ocean now it is important to understand when we talk of the milk ocean Shweta Sagar yes it is a milk ocean but it is existing in higher levels of reality it is in the higher areas of the cosmos and because of that because of being in the higher areas of the cosmos it is of a different nature so in this we know that in the heavenly planets the bodies are also made of subtler elements that's why when the devatas come here they can come to the world and unless they give the power we cannot see the devatas because their bodies are made of subtler matter so similarly when we talk about milk ocean the milk is not the same as the milk we have on this planet in this world everything is gross but in the higher planets things are subtle so the devatas eat food their food is also subtle so like that it's a Shweta Sagar it's an ocean of milk and it's huge so the plan was what the lord had outlined that they get the mountain the mountain will have some herbs in it and they were also told to get other herbs and when the herbs were mixed to be mixed with milk and then the mixture was to be churned so by that churning of the various herbs with the milk the milk was going to be transformed into nectar nectar was eventually going to emerge from it so there was a transformation and emergence that was going to happen now before this whole past time action had started when the lord was talking with the devatas headed by Brahma along with Indra so Brahma is the like as I said the brahmana the advisor of the gods and Indra is the functional head he is the person who rules and who commands in warfare who is the king basically Kartikeya is the functional commander and Indra is the king of the gods so while talking with them Vishnu had told Indra that it is by violence you cannot solve things easily but by patience and tolerance you can solve problems so therefore when you are dealing with the demons don't get angry if they make any proposals agree with whatever they are saying and move forward with your plan so this was the plan of that the lord had outlined and accordingly everyone started out so here the lord had told them that don't don't have any quarrel with the demons so finally they had come to the milk ocean they had brought the Mandar mountain and now when churning is to be done say when in traditional home settings mothers would churn the mothers or the house wives would churn butter and churn to make butter or eventually ghee so then they would have a churning rod and that churning rod could be moved with the hands but what to do when there is a huge mountain how do we churn that so they needed a rope the rope would go around it and any ordinary rope would just get worn out by the power of the friction so they decided that they needed a more powerful rope and that they decided was the serpent Vasuki now there are in the Bhagavad Gita if we read the 10th chapter Vibhuti Yoga so Krishna talks about Sarpana among Sarpas he says I am Vasuki and among Nagas I am Ananta so what is the difference between Sarpa and Naga Naga is basically a hooded serpent there is like Kalia was a hooded serpent so Nagana Anantashasmi so not all serpents have hoods just like not all serpents are poisonous so similarly not all serpents are hooded so those which have hoods are called as Nagas and some Nagas have also multiple hoods so now Vasuki was a serpent a very powerful serpent in fact he is considered the king of the serpents so he was told that let your body serve as a rope now nobody will do anything for free he said why should I undergo this trouble of letting my body be ground like this undergo the friction so they told him that we will also give you a share of the nectar and then hearing this Vasuki also became happy so everybody wants to live as long as possible and everybody wants to do whatever is possible to prolong life and that is something which is very strong that longing for immortality is a very strong indicator of our immortal nature of our spiritual nature now atheists find it very difficult to explain that if we are just material creatures and matter is by its very nature temporary and we we who are just products of matter why should we have the urge to live for long why should we have the urge to live forever none of us want to die and even Darwin's theory of evolution is based on the concept that everyone wants to survive but the fittest will survive survival of the fittest so why is it that we want to survive at all where if everything is temporary by its very nature temporary and that's how it has been for all of all time since the world was created then how did the urge for living forever come into the human mind we can't just imagine something which has no connection with anything that we ever experienced so our very innate longing for immortality which is so directly in contrast with the nature of everything that we see around us indicates that we don't belong to the nature that is around us that we are of a different nature now if we are in a house where we see that everything is made up of stone and there are breaks or slabs or concrete and then suddenly we see a gold pebble lying over there you wonder where does this gold pebble come from that its nature is so dramatically different from the nature of everything around it and the question will come up naturally insistently where is this gold come from it is not from here it must be from somewhere else is there some gold mine or may be gold shop or some treasury with gold over there so similarly when we see that everything around us is temporary and we have the longing for immortality longing for eternity where does this come from that means there must be some part within us which is immortal and from that part within us our longing for immortality is coming and that is not just a part within us when we study the Vedic philosophy systematically we understand it is not just a part it is actually essentially who we are that is the soul, the soul is immortal and the soul presently has got a material body and is identifying with that material body but still the soul's innate longing for eternal existence which is naturally fulfilled at the spiritual level the soul is not trying to fulfil at the material level so that is how we understand we infer from our longing for immortality our spiritual nature which is actually immortal so Vasuki also agreed to become a rope so that he would get the share of the nectar after it was churned and then the demigods and demons started churning so lord Vishnu had also come with the devatas and he led the devatas and they went to the head of the serpent and they grabbed the head side and the demons they were told to go towards the tail side so at this point the demons objected their idea was that we are also powerful we are also knowledgeable we are also heroic and in fact their thinking was that at this point we have defeated you it is you who came to us for a truce so why should we be given the tail part we want the head part so lord Vishnu saw the rebellious expressions on the faces of the demons and he smiled and he put down the head part and quietly went to the tail part of the serpent and the demigods also followed without any objection and the demons immediately went happily proudly to the head part and took up that part and they started churning and as they started churning the churning went on very fiercely several things happened but I will conclude complete this analysis before coming back to the events so when the churning went on for a long time then now there was poison and poisonous substance in the belly of the serpent and that poisonous substance started coming out of its mouth and as it was coming out those noxious fumes they started choking the demons and they started their eyes started tearing up they started coughing and grasping their stomachs and their chest and they became miserable and the demigods looked at lord Vishnu and they started smiling with each other so actually the demons demanded something as their right and eventually when they got the right they found that it was all wrong that actually they got the worst part of the deal so actually in this world everybody wants everybody is very interested in rights you know this is my right this is my right this is my right but often in the demand in the struggle in the conflict for rights people often end up doing something which only creates trouble for them so this doesn't mean that there are not basic human rights which have to be given to everyone but all of us have a position and as by constitution we are parts mamayam shojiva loke jiva bhuta sanatana so by constitution we are parts and therefore by constitution our role is contribution by constitution our role is contribution so every day I write an article on the bhagavad gita on my site the gita daily gita daily dot com so recently I wrote an article live not for gratification live for contribution so gratification means one's own pleasure contribution means contributing to the whole so the lord is the knower of the whole and he knows what role we can play the best and when we take up that role and we play that role efficiently then we contribute in a way that is the best for us and the best for the whole so and the demons they did not want to accept the role which the lord had given them and what happened was they themselves got into trouble because of that so as so as living beings we are meant to be controllers but we are meant to be controllers in assistance to the supreme control of the lord if we consider the hierarchy there are three fundamental components or three fundamental aspects which are studied in the in the upanishads so these they are called tattvatraya tattva is truth and traya is three tattvatraya is jagadish jiva and jagat so jagadish is the supreme lord jiva is the living entity and jagat is the universe and these three tattvas are discussed especially in the 13th chapter of the bhagavad gita the among all the chapters of the bhagavad gita the 13th chapter is the most upanishadic it resembles the upanishads both in its style in the kind of verses that are there in its content the kind of profound enigmatic statements that are there that i am inside everything i am outside everything also bahirantasya bhutana acharam charame vacha so it is that absolute truth is inside everything outside everything also so that sort of enigmatic statements are there the 13th chapter is the most upanishadic in the bhagavad gita and the 13th chapter is appropriately titled by Srila Prabhupada as nature the enjoyer and consciousness so this you know the same senses which are the cause of bondage can also become the source of liberation if they are used in the service of krishna that's why we see so many times in the prayers of the devotees they are talking about how we want to use our senses in your service so the same eyes which can get attracted to sense objects and cause bondage those eyes we can use to take darshan of the lord so in the 9th canto this is how it is described ambarish maharaj engage all his senses so it's a long series of verses so like that it goes on he uses mind to think of the lord his power of speech to glorify the lord and he uses his hand to do seva for the lord he uses lotus feet to go towards the temple and the dhams of the lord and then he used his he used his nose to smell the flowers and the tulsi are offered to the lord so like that the same senses which can which cause bondage can also bring about liberation if they are used in the service of the lord so the important thing for all of us is to act according to our position so the demons have to act according position have to act according to their position so the demons have to act according to their position so the demons have to demons have to act according to their so the have to act according to their position so the position so the for the purpose of past time the lord performs this so that he gains pleasure and he gives service and gives opportunity for spiritual advancement to others so kurma dev became the platform on which the mandar parvat as the churning rod rested and then they started churning it vigorously and as they were churning it vigorously another problem came up that the rod started getting vertically imbalanced it started falling off the one problem could be the rod will sink the other problem the rod can fall off and again the rod was so giant that to hold it up aloft hold it vertical became a big challenge and as the demigods and demons were struggling sweating slaving so they started panicking and then the lord manifested in another form as ananta and he came above and he held the churning rod from above with his many arms and in this way the lord was above the lord was below and the lord was next to the mountain so the lord was actually doing everything I will describe further the effort of churning started exerting and hurting everyone so then the lord entered into all the participants in different modes the demigods the lord entered as a mode of goodness and energised them thereof and he entered into the demons in the mode of passion and he energised them thereof and he entered into vasuki in the mode of ignorance as the mode of ignorance not in as the mode of ignorance and he put him off to sleep now something is troubling the lord if the person is in a lot of pain and the pain is neither curable nor tolerable then what is the solution many times doctors use sedatives just put the person to sleep so there is a natural sedative and that is the mode of ignorance that's how all of us are able to sleep when this mode of ignorance comes upon actually sleep itself is a mystery and a miracle we don't think of it that way but sometimes when we try to sleep and we are not able to sleep we can realise that actually sleep is not in my control often we realise that sleep is not in my control in the opposite situation we may not want to sleep and we fall asleep we want to chant attentively but suddenly we nod off then also we realise that sleeping is not in my control but even when sometimes it happens that some people suffer from insomnia so they are just not able to sleep even when they want to so even sleeping is not in our power because the act of sleeping involves a switching of our consciousness our consciousness our means this consciousness of the embodied soul goes through three different stages that is jagruti which is the level in which we are right now then there is swapna which is sleep stage and sushupti is deep dreamless sleep so the soul's consciousness when it is rooted through the gross body to the outer world that is the jagruti stage when the soul's consciousness is withdrawn into the subtle body but not expressed into the gross body then that is the swapna stage and the soul's consciousness is so deeply withdrawn that it is not there in the subtle body then that is the sushupti stage that is the deep dreamless sleep so now switching from jagruti to swapna that means withdrawing the consciousness from the gross matter and letting it be present only in the subtle matter that is not in our power it is the super soul who switches off the switch so every night when we go to sleep we can thank god for whatever happened in the day but we also need to thank god for the sleep that we get because without his mercy without he turning off turning the switch we can't go from jagruti to swapna so there is the natural sedative in the form of the mode of ignorance that comes by the arrangement of the lord and that allows us to rest and recuperate so this natural sedative in the form of ignorance entered asuki and he went to sleep now it's interesting that both the demons and the devtas were exerting themselves and both were exerting themselves vigorously but still when both were exerting themselves vigorously it is said that the demons were energised by the mode of passion and the devtas were energised by the mode of goodness so how is it that the same amount same kind of demanding work could be done by both but while being animated by different modes sometimes some people think if one is in goodness then one will have to become very calm very very almost like passive no a person in goodness is also very active but a person in goodness is thoughtfully active a person in passion is often impulsively active thoughtlessly active now it can there are three modes if you want to understand we can say we can phrase it in a humorous way as some people make things happen some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened so some people make things happen they are in the mode of goodness some people watch things happen they are in the mode of passion now they want things to happen and they start things but then things go out of control and they know this went wrong that went wrong this went there that went there so they watch things happen what is happening and then the people who are in ignorance some people wonder what happened what's all this happening around me so this is a typical of three modes so actually goodness and passion both involve activity a person in goodness is also active a person in passion is also active in fact a person in goodness may not be running around frantically as a person in the mode of passion but the person in goodness can also be doing as much activity and can do it more productively and more intelligently so when we practise spiritual life it is not that we have to do less activity of course we can give up doing unnecessary activities but devotees are also busy we see Srila Prabhupada would sleep just for a few hours at night and work so vigorously and why was he working so vigorously because he wanted to serve Krishna and Srila Prabhupada writes in the purport of 6.17 in the Bhagavad Gita Yuktahara Viharasya that a devotee cannot tolerate sleeping for one moment more than necessary because the devotee wants to do so much service for Krishna so it's very very poignant phrasing poignant means very emotionally stirring phrasing that a devotee cannot tolerate sleeping more than necessary a devotee feels oh there is so much to do how can I sleep so devotees are also active but they are active for Krishna service so sometimes when we feel that I have so many things to do how can I manage time for studying spiritual life how can I manage time for chanting for studying scripture for associating with devotees so many things to do yes there are lot of things to do but we also need to know that just having a lot of time doesn't necessarily translate into doing lot of things because often when there are lot of things to do the things cause all those things when they are just thoughts about them are running around in their mind those thoughts cause stress and friction I have to do this also I have to do this also I have to do that also I have to do that also and we know in any machine when there is friction the friction waste energy internally and therefore not much productivity productivity outside gets decreased by that so similarly when we are in the mode of passion what happens is there is a lot of friction within the mind Krishna says I have to do this also I have to do that also the consciousness is split over hundreds of things and that's why there is friction should I do this that that that and that friction dissipates a lot of energy but if we take time out to connect with Krishna now Krishna is transcendental there is ignorance passion goodness these are like in a hierarchy and above them is transcendence so when we connect with Krishna through studying scripture through chanting the holy name through associating with devotees that connection with the transcendental Lord elevates our consciousness brings it to the mode of goodness and in the mode of goodness we can think clearly and act productively so when we have to meditate we have to chant the holy names actually that doesn't take away our productivity that does not subtract from our productivity it actually adds to our productivity why? because it removes inner friction so meditation removes inner friction minimises inner friction and maximises outer contribution so we shouldn't feel that the time for chanting is taking away the time from my other things which I have to do no it actually if chanting takes away any time it is our worry time and the waste time that is taken away the worry and the waste it's all the inner friction that goes on so when that inner friction is minimised then outer contribution is increased so when the demons and demigods both are pulling so now it's not that if one person pulls more and the other person pulls less then the churning will not happen properly both have to pull with similar energy so that means both of them were pulling and both of them were working at on equal footing but still it is said the demigods were working in goodness and the demons were working in passion and as they kept pulling vigorously then the churning went on and on and gradually things started coming out of that churning now so the lord was actually doing everything and now the lord started acting in some extraordinary way so how he acted we will discuss in our next class are there any questions thank you very much Raya Krishna.