Demons in krishna-lila 1 – Putana and the abuse of trust
So today since Invashtami Is coming soon I will speak on One of the past times of Krishna And we will talk about Not just a story But some important lesson That we can learn from the story This is A story many of you may have heard of Of The first demon Who attacked Krishna When he was Barely Out of His mother's lap Can you guess which demon are we talking about? Putana, yes So we will talk about The The principle of trust And its betrayal And its restoration Based on the story of Putana So Bhakta Vinod Thakur Is one of the prominent Acharyas in our tradition And he explains How every demon In Krishna Leela Represents a misgiving A weakness In our heart And how that weakness Can attack us And how that weakness can be overcome That is what we can learn From the past time So Quickly I will tell the story Then we will come to the point of The drama Where this lesson will especially become significant There are few things In the world Which Inspire A protective instinct As much As vulnerability When we see Anyone who is vulnerable There is a natural Part within us which wants to help Some say somebody can't see They are trying to cross a road and they are struggling Any half decent person Will want to assist them cross over So anybody with vulnerability It attracts A desire to help A desire to protect And there is nothing as Vulnerable as a New born baby All living beings When they have their Progeny The progeny is weak and needs Protection But among all such living beings It is the human beings Whose progeny Actually requires protection for the longest Period of time And this Is meant to create a deep bond Between the parents And the progeny And one way that bond Is created is that When the parents Or not just the parents, any caregiver Any adult See the Vulnerability Of a small baby It attracts attention It attracts affection Even people who are normally very grave And even scary looking If they come in front of a baby They start playing And you can see a dramatic transformation What happened? So that Small, tender Vulnerable Disposition of a child Attracts Attracts and then It especially attracts, activates a Protective instinct within us And It requires An Extraordinarily Inhumane degree of Cruelty To want to hurt a baby Most of us Will not knowingly want to hurt Anyone Or to speak of A small, tender Vulnerable baby And demons are such that Their characteristics Are often The opposite of human Not just human But humane characteristics Demons are said to be Evil Now evil, what does it mean? It essentially means To produce Suffering For the sake of producing Suffering That is the very essence of evil Sometimes Suffering is just accidental Say we are running towards something Very urgent and we step on someone's feet That's accidental Sometimes It's unavoidable Say There is so much crowd that We put our feet on somebody else Sometimes It may be Intentional but essential Say for example Somebody has a Infection and they have to be given an injection So all these You could say this kind of suffering is Excusable Either it is Accidental, unavoidable Or intentional and unavoidable Sometimes it is Unavoidable and unintentional Sometimes intentional and avoidable But when suffering is intentional And avoidable That is evil There is no need for that suffering There is no Purpose for that suffering And still somebody causes suffering Then that intentional and avoidable suffering Is evil Having said that The demons Often like to cause this kind of Suffering and Putana represents this to an Extreme degree Because she It will, although she came To attack Krishna Attacking Krishna Was not, attacking small babies Was not A one off activity for her It was a habitual Activity, that means She had desensitised Herself, she had become so cold Hearted that Just routinely She would kill babies So When Krishna was born There was a, Krishna of course Is never born, he appears in the world Like the sun appears in the sky The sun is created at that time Similarly Krishna appears in this world And at that time there had been a prophecy Before his birth That he The eighth child of Devaki Would be the cause of the death of Kamsa And therefore Kamsa was determined To Kill all the children of Devaki Through an elaborate arrangement Krishna was Taken to Vrindavan And he survived But Kamsa Suspected that Maybe the eighth child of Devaki is born somewhere And we should Should I need to finish So then he told He told He had to find someone who would kill Kamsa Kill Krishna, so he called Devaki Sorry, he called Putana, when he called Putana And told her That don't, that just go in the nearby Vicinity and wherever you find small Babies, just kill All of them Just kill all of them Even among demons Those demons who kill small babies Are especially Cruel Demons are themselves cruel But those who kill especially small babies It's Horrible Sometimes when abortion is done Especially if it's a late term abortion Then instead of the baby Getting aborted, the baby is born And then There are laws that once the baby comes Out of the womb, you cannot abort the baby So recently In New York There is a debate going on that If a baby is born, still the baby can be aborted And that Caused outrage No matter what When the child is born, how can you kill So Even among people who might think that There is nothing wrong with abortion But even they find it scandalously wrong That a child is born, how can you kill The point is that Putana had Especially cold hearted nature Because of which She was deputed To kill babies And it is not just One They did not know where Krishna was So just kill all the babies So it's like Say In a neighbourhood Where there are a lot of pet dogs There is a suspicion that One pet dog has a baby And then we decide that Kill all the dogs in this neighbourhood Not just the neighbourhood, the whole City, vicinity, everywhere It is It is disproportionate Sometimes say Suppose one terrorist is hidden In some big locality And the police should find the terrorist And kill it But if somebody decides that Just blow up the whole locality Hundreds, thousands Of people who might be living in that part of the city Everybody will kill them So this was the ruthlessness Of Kamsa In planning and it was in executing Putana And when Putana came To Vrindavan Vrindavan is a big area Initially Krishna lived In a place called Gokul Within Vrindavan And when she came to Gokul She Decided To sneak in And for sneaking in She took on a form That would lower the Guard Generally speaking Whenever We see a stranger There is some Caution, I mean suspicion Also and sometimes It is with good reason We don't know a person is a stranger We don't know what their intentions are Of course you could say that Even people whom we know, we don't know what their Intentions are But over a period of time when we live with them for a long time Or are familiar with them for some time Then we can Figure out their intentions to some extent But strangers we have our Guard initially So now the way to If That stranger Has something Attractive, then Our guard gets lowered a little bit Say if you are suspicious That somebody is going to come to rob Money from us And then if that person comes in a car That is bigger than ours You might think This person, they already have so much Unlike to rob Of course some things might temporarily get a big guard Just to lower our guard So, but the point is Whenever anybody has Something which is attractive, something which is Impressive, something which is Captivating, then that Lowers our guard Say for example, somebody comes and starts speaking Very sweetly, wisely Oh, this seems to be like a learned person Then that also lowers our guard Maybe they know what they are speaking Similarly, Putana when she wanted to Come in, she Wanted to lower the guard of the Vrajvasis So she took on a very Attractive form And this attractive form was such that It attracted Everyone The female form has two Broad things, it actually applies to everyone But there is the sexual Aspect, there is the maternal aspect So her form was so Attractive that The men who saw So beautiful They thought that is she some Apsara from the heavens And they were captivated by her But because she was so She looked so celestially beautiful Nobody suspected her Of any evil intentions And then as She came Into the Centre of Gokul Then the women saw her And she looked attractive But for them For Yashoda and Rohini and others They saw in her Maternal beauty So she Had, whoever might have A raised guard, she brought the guard Down for both men and women And she came in And She clearly came in With the intention Of Nursing Krishna Offering her breast milk Now in many traditional cultures In today's culture many times Even the mother doesn't want to give her breast milk to the child You want to replace and have some Artificial milk, but in traditional cultures Often there was the idea that If a baby Drinks the breast milk From many mothers Many women, then That will nourish the baby even more Because the nutrients From many different mothers will enter Into that baby So it was a sign of Maternal affection For women to Nurse For a baby to be nursed by multiple women Or for a woman to nurse multiple babies So Yashoda Was there and she was the mother of Krishna And she had abandoned breast milk But when Putana came She was so attractive Attractive In such a maternally affectionate way That Rohini and Yashoda Their guards got lowered And right in front Of them She came to Krishna And while They were all watching They were so charmed So charmed That they just didn't think Of this completely strange Woman Because she was just so attractive That her strangeness Didn't register in them And so they thought that maybe Oh this is a celestial damsel Is she the goddess of fortune Who is she? And they just let her come inside And when she came inside She went right up to Krishna And she wanted to Feed Krishna And she picked Krishna Now as she came near Krishna Krishna closed His eyes Krishna Can see us Not just our appearance But also our inner world Our substance So Krishna could see her dark heart And he just didn't want to See it For all of us If we are given an inner torch light To look inside us Most of us Would turn the torch light away Because There is a lot of darkness within us Of course there is a light of divinity Within us At the core of our being there is a soul Which is a part of God Which is godly But surrounding that soul There is a lot of darkness And you would not want to see it The darkness is quite ugly Quite unbearable at times There is anger, there is greed There is envy, there is lust There are so many Dark things in our heart Now in some people Those dark things are immediately Evident But most people conceal those dark things Within their hearts So Krishna could see her dark intentions And Krishna closed his eyes Now normally If we consider When do we If we see something new It's interesting Krishna's reaction Was actually the opposite Of the reaction of everyone else She was so beautiful That everybody was Irresistibly captivated by her And everybody Everybody was just Looking at her Wherever she was going But in Krishna's case Krishna was not at all Captivated by her And Krishna closed his eyes Now generally When do we close our eyes Multiple possibilities One is that when we are tired We just want to sleep Second is when we are very fearful We see something terrible And we just want to see it Close their eyes Or just be very comfortable And just relax So in this case Krishna didn't want to see What was happening He did not want to see Because her heart was so ugly When Putana saw this She was a demoness And as a demoness She sometimes had to fight with others So she could assess The strength of others And Something within her said Krishna is not an ordinary boy Maybe he is very powerful But then When she started thinking like this So she had lowered The guard of everyone But her own guard Was rising up Krishna who is he Generally say somebody is a Boxer Some people who are boxers They might be hugely built Some people might be very slim and wiry But still they might have very strong muscles And we might not see Their muscles, we might not see their size But when they start Fighting, there is so much strength So now if somebody Is trained as a fighter Then just by the way The other person moves If a fighter has to Fight with five people These four are not tough But this is a tough guy So they can make out, they can assess the strength If any fighter has survived They have the capacity to assess strength So something within her Said this Krishna is dangerous So Krishna Closed his eyes And he made her lower the guard Thought this is just an ordinary baby He is going to sleep And Then She picked him up And when she picked him up At that time She in front of everyone Offered him Her breast milk And Krishna started drinking And he Kept drinking And he kept drinking And Her plan had been Extremely devious Generally If somebody wants to Say kill someone They have to Carry some weapon But she had not Brought any weapons with her But what she had done was She had Smeared her breast with poison And her plan was Krishna will drink the milk And Krishna will eat the poison And the poison will kill him And she had put Extremely virulent poison Abundantly On her breast Small children Don't have any capacity to doubt If they started doubting Then they would not survive So We need to trust We cannot function without trusting in life But sometimes Our trust is betrayed And then Naivety In trusting Is bad Because we will be betrayed But cynicism Where there is complete inability to trust That is also bad So trusting is a strength But we also need Intelligence to be able to discern Whom to trust, whom not to trust So children are born with that innate Capacity to trust As babies And When somebody is so vulnerable And so trusting At that time to betray that person To attack that person Is especially vicious She planned to have Krishna Die by that poison Now Krishna Consumed that poison And consumed the milk But he was completely unaffected Even when God is a small baby He is not small Sometimes people think God's greatness must be that How can a small baby be God God must be very great See God's Greatness is such that Even In his smallness he can contain his greatness He doesn't have to be Physically great He can be small and yet he can be great So his greatness Is not a physical attribute Some people are very tall Now for others Oh you are so tall, that's impressive But those people are tall, they are stuck with their tallness If there is a low door Then they can't go as easily as everyone else can But God Is the strongest, God is the biggest But he is not stuck with his bigness He can be as Small as he wants and still he can manifest All the strength that he wants Through that So Krishna, although he appeared Vulnerable as a small baby He was invulnerable to that poison And then He kept sucking And then He started sucking her life air away And she was shocked She had to push the child away But Krishna had held on so Tightly That she started screaming Push her now She is a powerful demoness Although she had taken all the attractive Form of a woman Still the power was there She pushed and pushed And yet Krishna would not let go Krishna just Held on tightly And then For all the demons They need to have Whenever they assume A form They invest some of their mystic powers To maintain that form And then When They are on the verge of death Then all their power Gets concentrated on Self-defence And in the mystic power that they had invested In maintaining that Garb, that form That is dissipated And that's why as those About to die Their natural form comes up So Putana was a huge Hideous demon And She tried to run away from the village To try to get rid of Krishna Pushing him away I can't physically push him away Let me run, maybe he will fall off Just ran as desperately As she could Now Krishna could have Ended her life at that time itself But because She had assumed a big form If she had crashed down in the village She would have damaged Vrindavan So Krishna allowed her to run Ran and ran She ran out of the village And then finally Krishna Sucked out her life there And this huge demoness Who could so effortlessly Have killed a baby Was killed by the baby Now Bhaktivinoda Thakur says That Putana Represents a misleading teacher A misleading teacher A false guru What is the rationale For this correlation A teacher Is someone whom we trust And if a teacher Misleads Then they are abusing A sacred trust The bond of sacred trust Between a teacher and a student Is the basis for education And the furtherance of life And to Misuse, to abuse that sacred bond Is heinous So what Putana did was She was similarly Abusing another sacred bond The bond of a mother and a child Just as The teacher Gives the milk of Education For the student to grow Grow intellectually Grow in mind, grow in intelligence Grow in future prospects Similarly the mother Gives milk Which enables the baby to grow And If the teacher Abuses that Then it's grievous So what Bhaktivinoda Thakur does is There are specific incidents With specific characteristics Which Which are manifested by the demons Now the kind of Specific incidents that may happen In That happen in Krishna's life May not happen in our life But Rather than thinking of these stories Simply as Some Ancient stories from long time From distant past These stories Represent some universal archetypes Some universal patterns That are repeated So he takes those specific Incidents and he expands To them So that they become relevant To all of us So for most of us we won't face a situation Like Krishna Faced with Putana specifically But The whole idea of A sacred bond of Trust being misused Is something which we See so often in today's world That With respect to false teachers The idea is that In the world Actually The world is so Peculiarly designed That it is very easy To fool people And it is very difficult to convince Them that they have been fooled So most people Even after they have been fooled They live in denial So what happens Is to be fooled is bad enough But to be exposed as a fool Is much worse So if we buy Something Say it's $50 but we paid $500 For it Now if we realise it We will be very angry How did I get cheated like this But if somebody points out No actually $500 it's very special What you have is ordinary what I have is special So What happens is that To Convince people that way That they have been fooled To fool people is easier than to convince people That they have been fooled So because of this Sometimes When teachers They teach If They teach something wrong Then they betray The trust And for those who have been misled To even understand That they have been misled It takes a long time And thus they stay deluded So just as Yashoda She would Nourish Krishna with her milk Not just with her milk but with her love So when that Nourishment is given There is There is the External or physical component That is milk But there is also the internal component That is love So what keeps all sacred bonds Together is not just The external transaction that happens The mother gives milk But through the milk The mother and the child get bonded The mother's love flows To the child through the milk And that's what makes the Makes the bond real So similarly the Bhagavatam says When a teacher Is teaching The teacher should be Snigdha, should be affectionate To the students Should be concerned about the students If the teacher Is thinking How much Money can I get from him Of course the teacher may be earning a livelihood And that's fine But the teacher becomes very calculative Then The teacher will become exploitative Become discriminating This person can give you more, this person can give you less And That way That sacred bond gets abused Now Krishna He Was not taken in By Bhutana's Deceptiveness Although everybody else was taken in So that same Krishna Is present in our hearts And If we connect with Krishna If we Because in the world By appearance it's very difficult to know Who is trustworthy and who isn't There was a famous atheist Who was asked Do you believe in hell? Now The questioner thought That obviously the answer would be no If he is an atheist He doesn't believe in God He doesn't believe in the opposite of where God goes Where the godless go With hell He said of course I believe in hell Oh really? What is your conception of hell? He said Hell means other people So he had So many bad experiences With people He said people are trouble People are hell It's an extremely cynical view Of people and of relationships But In this case So We cannot be that We cannot afford to be that cynical We cannot afford to be naive also So if We Get the presence of Krishna in our heart Just as Krishna saw through the facade of everyone Through the facade That nobody else could see through Similarly Krishna will give us pointers from within Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita in 10.10 I will give you the intelligence By which you can come to Me Krishna says This is very significant Krishna is not saying here I will give you the intelligence By which you will solve all your problems See He says, I will give you the intelligence by which you can come to me. That means that sometimes as souls who are living in the material world, as people who are living in today's world, we will also encounter deceptive people. And Krishna is not necessarily saying that I will solve your problems, or I will give the intelligence by which all your problems will be solved.
That means sometimes we might face a problem, and Krishna can give us the intelligence by which we solve the problem. We may solve the problem. Sometimes we might meet some untrustworthy person, and we might get some warning, no, no, don't trust this person, keep your distance from them.
Sometimes it might be that some people might be just such smooth talkers, that even we might be misled by them. But, Krishna says, either way, when you find somebody trustworthy, or you encounter somebody untrustworthy, I will give you the intelligence by which you can come to me. Some people in our lives, they very lovingly lead us toward God.
Some people kick us toward God. Sometimes, when we meet trustworthy, loving people, we feel inspired, our faith in the goodness of humanity, in the goodness of existence, the goodness of God increases by interacting with such people. But sometimes our faith can be shaken, because people can be so terrible at times.
But if we see that through both, if we try to be devotionally connected, then we will be uplifted. In this world, there is no guarantee of protection from problems. But there is, Krishna provides the guarantee that he will help us learn through problems and evolve towards them.
That if we become devoted to him, if we infuse Krishna's presence in our heart, then gradually we will become uplifted. And through every situation, through our encounters with trustworthy people, we will learn and we will grow. Through our encounters with untrustworthy people, we will learn and we will grow.
And we need all kinds of lessons to evolve in our life journey. So that Krishna, who was present in Vrindavan and who is always present in our hearts, but is not manifest. If we practise his bhakti and start invoking his presence, then he will guide us to remove the confusion from within our hearts, the darkness within, which makes us blind to the realities outside.
And he will enable us to march toward him. So I'll summarise. We can have some questions after that.
So I spoke on this theme of how, about the demons in Krishna Leela. I spoke today about Putana. I started by talking about each demon represents a particular misgiving in the heart.
And now Putana came, it requires cruelty to hurt anyone. It requires a special cruelty to hurt someone filled with vulnerability. And a baby, newborn baby is the most vulnerable.
But Putana, she not only was ready to kill one, but that was her full time job, killing babies. And even among demons, there are especially high levels of cruelty in her. So she came and she got everyone to lower their guard.
The men, she attracted her by their beauty. The men by her beauty. And the women she attracted by her maternal bearick.
And she came in front of everyone to Krishna and Krishna closed his eyes. So that he didn't want to see her evil disposition. And he also wanted her to lower her guard.
Because she started sensing this Krishna something extraordinary. And then Krishna, when she offered her milk for Krishna to suck, she found that Krishna sucked out her life also. And Krishna let her live till she could run far enough, so that she would not cause any destruction in Goa, Gokula.
So then we discussed that Bhaktivinoda Thakur said this represents the false teacher, the misleading teacher. Just as the mother offers milk which nourishes the child, the teacher offers knowledge, wisdom that nourishes the student. And to abuse that, just as Putana abused the milk which is meant to nourish to kill, similarly sometimes some people might use the knowledge which is meant to educate to exploit, to manipulate.
And that is a terrible betrayal of trust. And then concluded that just as Krishna was able to see through the facade of Putana, when we invoke Krishna's presence in our heart, he will help us to see through appearances. And even if sometimes we are not able to see through appearances, Krishna says, I will give you the intelligence by which you can come to me.
Sometimes we learn, we are led toward Krishna by some people who are loving, and we are sometimes pushed toward Krishna, kicked toward Krishna, by people who are the opposite of love. But either way, by having Krishna manifest in our heart, we will always evolve towards him. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. So any questions or comments? Thank you for such a enlightening class. A question that I have, or a few questions that I have is, Putana was defeated by Kamsa to kill Krishna, and we know that Kamsa killed many deities, including Kamsa's six children.
So are there any parallels between his sort of deception, I mean not in that sense, but his cruelty and that of Putana's, as one thing? And what did he risk, as a demon? And my other question is, the inhabitants of Vrindavan, they're solely attracted to Krishna, they're not attracted to anything but Krishna. So how is it that they got attracted to Putana? Was it Yogamaya or some other potency or something? Good question. So first question is, are there any parallels between, say, Kamsa's killing of Devi and Putana's killing? Yes and no.
Both involve an amount of brutality. It's horrible. But, in the case of Putana, as I said, she was a Kheechari, a particular demoness, who would go around killing babies.
Whereas Kamsa, he had a particular fear, that Devaki's son would kill me. So he was going around killing all babies. Basically he killed Devaki's children.
But as long as his target was fixed, he was killing Devaki's children one by one. But then when he felt the target has slipped away, then he also became indiscriminate. And then he sent Putana.
So, you could look at it in two different ways. Say, suppose, somebody hires a mercenary, hires somebody to kill somebody else. Now, who is more brutal? Is it the murderer who is brutal or the person who hired the murderer who is brutal? You don't know.
Sometimes it's the murderer who is brutal. And this person may say, I don't even want to see the red boy. Just do it and I'll give you the money.
Don't even talk to me about it afterwards. But sometimes it might be that the murderer is even more brutal. This is a small job.
You do it for me. So, Kamsa had his own cruelties. You cannot say one particular case is more.
So, Kamsa definitely was cruel. And his cruelty was exhibited in different ways. He was ready to kill even his own sister.
And that too, it's like you say, there is sin, there is sin square and there is sin cube. So, to kill a woman, that's bad enough. To kill one's own sister is worse.
And to kill one's own sister on the day of her wedding, that is a day of such great joy and sanctity. So, that is not sin, not sin square, but sin cube. So, he was ready to do that.
So, in that sense, his cruelty is also no less. And specifically, his killing of babies was because he felt that they were an immediate threat to him. His Putana's killing was just because that was her nature, that was her job, that was what she did.
So, it's not exactly like a linear scale comparison, but we can look at the context and see that both of them are cruel. Now, how were the Vrachivasi's attracted to Putana and they only attracted to Krishna? Yes, sometimes we have this idea that to spiritualise ourselves is not to dehumanise ourselves. Even when we become spiritual, we still remain human beings.
So, to spiritualise ourselves is not to dehumanise ourselves. The natural human emotions that come, but they don't control. They don't control someone.
Now, for the Vrachivasi specifically, the scripture is such that when a particular point is to be emphasised, it is that point is highlighted and everything else is subordinate for highlighting that point. So, for example, in Narasimha Leela, it is said that everybody was terrified of Hiranyakashipu and everybody was bowing down to Hiranyakashipu. To the extent, not only the gods, but even the godly sages.
Narad Muni was bowing down to Hiranyakashipu and the only person who was ready to defy him, who was that? Prahlad. And then we see later on also that when Hiranyakashipu was killed, at that time the Devatas offered prayers, even Brahmaji offered prayers, but the Lord was not pacified by anyone except Prahlad. It said even Lakshmidevi, she came there, but she said, I have not seen anyone like him like this.
So, what is going on over here? The point is that in this particular pastime, so is Prahlad more glorious than Lakshmidevi? Is Prahlad more glorious than his Guru, Narad Muni? No, not like that. But in this particular Leela, the glory of Prahlad is highlighted. And for that purpose, everything is orchestrated in such a way that his glory comes out.
So, every Leela has a particular purpose. And whenever anyone behaves in a particular way, within a particular pastime, it is often orchestrated to highlight the purpose of that pastime. So, in the case of Krishna Leela, in this particular pastime, the point to highlight here was that Putana's deceptiveness.
The Putana's deceptiveness was such that she could attract anyone and everyone, but she couldn't deceive Krishna. So, to highlight that point, the Vrajavasis also appear to be deluded and appear to be attracted. See, basically, whatever is required for Krishna Leela is done in Vrindavan.
So, we can say even the Gopas, when later on, Aghasura's pastime comes up, the Gopas are with Krishna, but still they say, oh, this Aghasura seems to be a nice playing place. They are not sure whether it's an actual snake or it's not. Maybe it's not an actual snake.
It's a nice playing place. Let's go inside it. So, now, if they are there with Krishna, why should they be attracted to anyone else, anything else? Somehow, just because this is male and female, I think this is objectionable, whereas the Gopas getting attracted to a snake for a play field, that's not objectionable, that's just playful.
But the point is that any kind of attraction, if somebody is fully attracted to Krishna, why would they get attracted to anything else? But the point is, it's not that Krishna delights in everybody getting only attracted to him. Krishna delights in the reciprocation of love. And whatever is required for the reciprocation of love, that Krishna does that.
So, when Mother Yashoda is feeding Krishna her breast milk, but she sees the milk on the stove, overflowing, she puts Krishna aside and she goes there. Is the milk more valuable than Krishna? At that time, for the furtherance of this pastime, Krishna being deprived, and thereby Krishna getting angry, that's what is required. Mother Yashoda, she is attracted to that thing, but that is also a service attitude.
Oh, I have to feed this milk to Krishna. But the point is that, it is not that in Vraja Leela, everyone will be constantly, equally, exclusively attracted to Krishna. There may be, for the purpose of Leela, they get attracted to certain other things.
Temporary. So, there is temporary attraction to something else, but there is overall attraction only to Krishna. You see, Sita was with Ram, but Sita was attracted to a deer.
Through that the Leela went on. But if she had been, like she was so casually attracted, but she was attracted to a deer, but she was not attracted to Ravan, when Ravan propositioned her. So, there are, for the purpose of pastimes, great characters may act in ways that may not seem devotional.
But it's all for the purpose of furthering the devotional Leela of the Lord. Any other questions? Yes. Thank you so much Prabhu.
Many of the gems that you have given us, as Prabhu mentioned, when we read Srimad Bhagavatam, when we read it, it's not obvious, like, you know, don't judge the book by the cover, how she outputs in a manner so that people don't get, sort of, impacted by her, things like that. So, my question is, with regard to this Akashmani, the divine voice that came, the voice in the pastime, and both times, I think, it was called as fool. Now, is that common? And also, is the reason for that, is it because of the curse of the six sons of Marichi to be born as sons of Kalanemi and Kalanemi to become Kamsa, so that they get killed quickly, because if that Akashmani didn't come, still Krishna would have been born, and they would have been alive.
So, is that to get them to go back to their heavenly kingdom, and also some of the other children to be killed by Bhutana and others, so that they go back, it is there. So, is the Akashmani common, and what is the purpose of that Akashmani? Without that also Krishna could have been born. It's not so easy to isolate one particular incident from a chain of incidents, and to assess what would have been the impact of this, if this had not happened this way, if that had not happened that way.
There is a whole thing called history and contra-history, or alternative history. Only, if in this war, this person had, instead of attacking here, had attacked here, what would have happened? Maybe more familiar to us is contra-cricket history. Say, India recently lost a semi-final in the World Cup, and so many people become self-appointed commentators.
Only if this batsman had come earlier, only if this bowler had bowled like this, only if this person had come before. So, would that have changed? Well, maybe, maybe we don't know. Some other batsman comes before, but that batsman also gets out, who knows.
So, it is difficult to isolate a particular element from a whole narrative, but still broadly we can see a couple of things. That, is there a celestial voice common? Well, you could say it's not unheard of. It's not that it happens everyday, but we see in the first canto also, Narada Muni hears a voice, and he is a Narada boy, and he is performing austerity, he sees the Lord, he is delighted on seeing the Lord, but then the Lord disappears.
And after that he hears a voice that, because you are impure at heart and incomplete in service, you cannot see me now, but this glimpse you have been given so that you can long for me, and your longing for me will free you from all other longings, and then you can come to me, you will attain me ultimately. So, we see that, but we don't see that very common. Basically the idea is that, this is the terrestrial realm, this is the celestial realm, and interaction between the terrestrial and the celestial realms do happen, earthly and heavenly realms do happen.
They are not uncommon, devatas sometimes appear on the earth, sometimes in yajnas, sometimes other times, sometimes Arjuna goes to the heavens. So the specific modes of interaction between the terrestrial and celestial may vary, and in each context it may be for a particular purpose. When Rama is fighting with Ravana, towards the end, Indra sends his own chariot and charioteer.
That is Indra only who has, in a sense, who has gone to Brahma, and through that Vishnu has been invoked and Rama has descended. So that has been earlier done already, but specifically in a visible way that intervention happens just before the final war. So celestial-terrestrial interactions do happen.
In the form of Akashvani, they are not that common. Now in this particular case, as rightly pointed out, what all does it serve? Yes, it does serve to accelerate, to dramatise and accelerate the appearance of Krishna. So basically, now Krishna could have come and killed Kamsa, but how would the… it could just have appeared to be just killing someone.
The person's demonic nature, if it had not come out, then Krishna's killing him wouldn't have been justified. So normally, in ordinary situations, anybody can behave like a nice person, but it is when we are provoked, what do we do? All of us, even when we are provoked, we might deviate from our normal behaviour. Some of us may be a very gentle, nice person, but when they get angry, they become like a different person.
But all of us, even within our anger, have limits. Say, some of us, even when we get angry, we might never speak certain foul words, certain bad words we will never speak. Or no matter how much angry we get, we might not take some physical weapon to hit someone.
So we all have our limits, but some people have no limits. And their normal behaviour and their provoked behaviour are so different that somebody who has not seen their provoked behaviour will not be able to believe that this person can behave like this. So then, for the world to know the extent to which they can go when they are provoked, sometimes they need to be provoked.
So Krishna makes that arrangement through various people for that to happen. So Kamsa's cruelty becomes visible to the world when that Akashvani comes and then his behaviour alters radically. The same sister whom he is very affectionately carrying as the charioteer in his chariot, he suddenly turns to kill her immediately.
That's the extent of his evil disposition which comes out. So at one level we could say that the Akashvani happened just to expose to the world how demoniac Kamsa is. And then thereafter, this Kamsa killed all the previous babies.
And that is brutal, but that was the way also those babies got liberated, got delivered from being born here on the earth quickly and leaving. And as you said, there is a whole story behind that. So we could say there are multiple, generally see the idea is for one incident, you could find explanation at various different levels.
Say, if I am speaking right now to you and you can't hear what I am speaking. You could say that is because maybe this mic volume is low. You could sometimes say that my speaking volume is low.
Or you could say maybe your hearing has gone down. Or maybe you could say the acoustics of this room are bad. So you could have various explanations.
So generally we go toward the most obvious explanation, the most immediate explanation as long as it makes sense. So we could go to various levels and other explanations can also be true. So in this case, as you rightly said, explanation about those six children are also true.
But the immediate context is that Atashwani, that heavenly voice actually revealed Kamsa's hellish side. This part of the past time I will speak in another class in future. How Krishna delivered Putana.
But still let's mention this briefly. So your question is that was it destiny that she became Krishna's mother? She was delivered in this spiritual world. Or was it because for any reason she comes, somebody comes to Krishna and offers something to them, to him they will be delivered.
Definitely it's not destiny. Generally we have this idea of what is destiny. Destiny basically is, you could say, the kind of situations that befall us in our life.
How we respond to those situations is up to us. Sometimes we also use the word destiny in another sense that somebody who is destined for greatness. Somebody who is a small child is just a mathematical prodigy.
Then he is fulfilled his destiny. He will become a great mathematician. So we use it in a different sense also that what somebody is meant to achieve.
So was Putana meant to achieve Krishna? No. In this case, it was Krishna's extraordinary mercy. Now is it true that anybody who approaches Krishna for any purpose they get purified? Yeah, that is true.
It is said that, गोप्यः कामाद भयाद कमसो द्वेशाच चैद्यादयोन रुपः So that different people come to Krishna for different reasons. And because they become personally absorbed in Krishna, they become purified by that absorption. Now in the case of Putana, so for example, Kamsa was constantly absorbed in Krishna out of fear.
Oh, here comes Krishna, come and kill me, Krishna will come and kill me. So it is described he was so absorbed that at night when he would be lying down and his wife would come near him, Krishna has come. So he would not see his wife, he would see Krishna.
That is the level of absorption. And similarly, Sishupala also was absorbed in envy. There is no description specifically that Putana was absorbed like that in Krishna.
So different characters illustrate different principles of bhakti, different principles of life. So when Kamsa is eventually delivered or when Sishupala is delivered, that illustrates the principle of the fruit of absorption. That if one is anyway absorbed in Krishna, they will be elevated.
It is not just approaching Krishna. Approaching Krishna is the beginning. It is absorption in Krishna.
So it is, they were absorbed in Krishna, so they were elevated and liberated. In the case of Putana, there is no description that she was that absorbed in Krishna constantly. She was just deputed by Kamsa to kill Krishna.
So in the case of Kamsa, in the case of Putana, her deliverance is a demonstration not so much of the potency of absorption as the potency of Krishna's mercy, Krishna's extraordinary reciprocation. So there is a word called causeless mercy. Now what does causeless mercy mean? It means that the cause is too less for the mercy.
There is a cause, but normally we have reciprocation. If person A gives somebody $100, then they give some product which is $100. There is equal dealing.
Mercy means that it is completely disproportionate. Something which we don't deserve, we are given. So causeless mercy doesn't mean there is absolutely no cause.
There is a cause, but there is no proportionality. The cause is very little and the result what is given is very very large. In the case of Putana, Krishna saw there is a spiritual principle and there is a material principle.
And both can work in parallel. Say for example, if somebody has got diabetes and they see some gulab jamun and it's prasad. Oh, this is prasad, how can I refuse it? Now they take the prasad.
Now you could say prasad always purifies. Yes, it always purifies. The purification is at the spiritual level.
At the material level, if somebody has diabetes, there will be a result at the material level, isn't it? So if you wanted purification only, then you could have taken rice or chapati also. Why did you take gulab jamun specifically? So if you are taking it for purification, then that particular thing which we took, that might be inappropriate because it has some effect at the material level also. So in the case of Putana coming toward Krishna, at that time, at the spiritual level, because she had this spark of maternal affection, at least maternal action that she did.
So because of that, Krishna appreciated that. At least she has done some maternal actions. And it is described that she was in her previous life, and she was the sister of Bali Maharaj.
And when she saw Vamana at that small time, she was so happy to see this nice boy. And she had some maternal affection towards him. But then immediately that maternal affection changed.
When she saw that Vamana has taken everything away from Bali Maharaj, she became very angry with him. So from that previous life also, from this life also, there was a small amount of positive action or positive intention, whichever way you want to look at it. And Krishna appreciated that.
But this was at the spiritual level. At the spiritual level, Krishna took it small. Oh, you have acted as if you want to give milk to me.
I will give the facility to forever offer milk to you. That was at the spiritual level. But at the material level, because she acted in terms of a murderess, so she got the result at the material level.
The material level, the result was that she tried to kill Krishna, and then the normal principle is, if somebody tries to assassinate you, kill you, then in self-defence you will kill that person. So she got the result at the material level, because of her evil actions. But because those evil actions were done in a way that there was some eternal affection over there, so she was elevated.
So it's Krishna's causeless mercy. It's not destiny in that case. There were some factors which had come from a previous life.
But just those previous life factors were not enough. It was Krishna's special mercy that led to her elevation. Yes, ma'am? In being able to extract more practical examples, how can we practise that more when we are reading those scriptures or passions? Or how can we try to seek that more often than just reading it for the sake of reading it? So how can we learn to draw practical lessons from scripture? Of course, devotion is ultimately practical.
But still, I understand your question. See, there are different ways in which we can approach scripture. Say, some devotee might be a doctor.
Pro is a doctor now. So now, if I come to Prabhu because I have got some disease, the way I approach him and the way he approaches me will be different if I'm coming as a speaker. So we will have different kinds of interactions.
Similarly, it's our purpose that determines our perspective. So we could approach scripture in different ways. Madhacharya talks about three levels of approaching the epics.
It's primarily the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, but it applies to the Bhagavatam also. He talks about this in Brahma Sutra Bhashya, his commentary on the Bhagavatam, and commentary on the Brahma Sutra, basically. So there he says you can approach scripture at the literal, ethical, and metaphorical levels.
So at the literal level, it's just the story. And we just hear the story and relish the story. And so this could be a very devotional approach to scripture where, oh, let's just tell the story in a very sweet way and become absorbed in its sweetness.
And that's wonderful. We can do that. There are times for that also.
And then there is the ethical way. The ethical way is we approach scripture as a guide for our ethical decision-making. And that means, okay, this character acted in this way, this character acted in that way.
And we learn something from that. We have to be careful that we don't judge the characters as right or wrong. We only see those characters' actions as guides for our actions.
Because they are great characters mostly in the scriptures. And we don't want to put ourselves in the morally superior position of judging them. But we want to learn from them.
And then third would be the metaphorical, where certain characters can represent certain things. And this, all three, to do that and to gain something from that, it requires a certain amount of maturity and certain amount of expertise. Even the first literal, if somebody literally only repeats the story, after sometime you might just get bored with it.
I've heard it so many times. But somebody who can imbue it with rasa, with devotion, that expertise there, then even the story is the same. Sometimes some people recite it in such sweetness that we love hearing it.
Similarly, for ethical, if we ourselves are experienced and expert, then we can draw the right lessons from there. Generally, it's a big subject, but I'll try to explain as quickly as possible. For learning anything from some incident, that is quite different from the incident that we are going through, there is something called the ladder of abstraction.
The ladder of abstraction basically means, if you consider a ladder, at the bottom of it is everything specific. At the bottom of it is something abstract. Generally, for any learning to happen, there has to be a combination of the specific, the concrete and the abstract.
Say for example, if a news says that the population of polar bears in Alaska has gone down. That's some interesting information, but I'm not interested. Maybe I'm interested, I don't know.
But that indicates that global warming is for real. So now what has happened to the specific point, but from there, there is something more universal that is true. So if it's only specific, it's only entertaining.
It's only abstract, then it's too abstract. It doesn't engage us. So basically, whenever communication happens, it has to be a combination of the concrete and the abstract.
So we go up and down the ladder of abstraction. So now with respect to applying things to our context, so it's like, say, the scriptures were spoken thousands of years ago. So they are at a particular level, particular time in history.
That's the point of concrete, at the bottom of the ladder of abstraction. So from there you come up, and then another ladder of abstraction brings us down to our level. And then we can understand.
So starting from this point, going to the top, and then coming to the bottom on our side, we can broadly ask three questions. Whenever any particular thing happens, anything happens in scripture, what does this mean in its original context? So what does this mean in the original context? Then what is the context-independent significance of this? So some particular action is there. What is the context-independent principle underlying this? That will take us to the top of the ladder of abstraction.
And then to come down to the bottom of the ladder of abstraction, how does that context-independent principle apply to me in my context? How does this context… So if we do these three things, what is the meaning of this in its original context? What is the context-independent principle? And what is the contextual application of that principle in my context? Then we can draw some practical lessons from scripture. Say, I am talking about the ladder of abstraction, and actually it is abstract right now. Let me give you some simple example to illustrate this.
Say, we know that in Chaitanya Nila, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu refused to see the king Prataparudra. So that is an incident. Now we see Ishwara Prabhupada is probably the most prominent follower of Ishwara Prabhupada, of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in today's times.
But Prabhupada was in America, and some of his followers in India told him that it is an opportunity to meet Indira Gandhi. Prabhupada cut down his America tour and went all the way to India. To meet the head of the state.
Now Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was very conscientious. The king was in Puri. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was in Puri.
The king wanted to come to meet him. And Chaitanya Mahaprabhu refused. And Prabhupada seems to have done exactly the opposite.
He went to meet the head of state. So why is that? So we have to look at what is the… To make sense of this. What do we learn from this? What is the… What did that action mean in that context? So in that context it meant that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said at least that if people see a sanyasi hobnobbing with the king, they think, what is this? He is not detached.
And it will spoil the reputation of sanyasi. And if a sanyasi's reputation is spoiled, people expect a renunciate to be renounced. If people see a renunciate is attached, then they will not want to hear from him.
So then he felt that his capacity to teach anything spiritual will be impeded. So the point over there was, in that context, his meeting the king would have damaged his reputation. So what is the context-independent principle? You come to the top of the ladder of instruction is that we need to be conscious of people's perception.
Not that we just let people's perception guide our actions alone. But we have to be aware. If somebody's reputation is spoiled, they cannot do their service.
So we need to protect our reputation. Now what will be the contextual application in today's world? In today's world, people will actually be quite impressed if a spiritual leader meets a head of state. Because at that time, the overall understanding was such that there is another world, and that is the world we have to go to.
So somebody who is pursuing that world, what are they doing with somebody who is trying to rule this world? So there is an understanding. There is another world and we have to go to that world. In today's idea, there is the idea of another world.
Most people don't connect with it at all. So they think if somebody renounces this world, that person is living a worthless life. Oh, but somebody has renounced this world.
That person is meeting with somebody who is ruling this world. Oh, then this person who has renounced must be having something special. So it will enhance the reputation today.
So therefore, the actions are opposite, but the intention is the same. The intention is to facilitate one's service by shaping public perception in a way that is receptive for the service. So, of course, this is one example, but like that, if we move up and down the ladder of abstraction, then we can see what we can learn from specific incidents and specific stories also.
Thank you very much. I bow to you.