Doesn’t the idea that devotees deliver their ancestors indicate bodily identification?
Question from Shivam Saroki Prabhu. This is in relation to Shiladravapada, Koti's devotee and escapist.
It is said that 20 generations of a devotee go back to the spiritual world with him. Isn't this a bodily identification? Please clarify and forgive if I have committed any offense by asking this question. Answer, bodily identification is not necessarily something which has to be treated like an untouchability or some terribly infectious disease that we have to avoid.
Our bodily identifications and our bodily relations are natural and we see that in the Bhagavad Gita repeatedly Krishna refers to Arjuna by names which you could say are all bodily identifications, Partha, Kaunteya, Bharata, Shiva, Kuru and Vena. So, the idea is that, as I have written in the Gita daily article, we don't have to massage the false ego nor do we have to pinch the false ego. We have to take it along towards, pat it along towards Krishna.
So, when the bodily identifications become obstacles in the spiritual path, because we think that this is all that I need to do, that I am the body and my bodily relatives, taking care of them and enjoying at the bodily level is the ultimate goal of life, then it becomes an obstacle. But our bodily relationships are also dharmic, especially if they are done in the context of dharma. So, if I take care of serving our parents, taking care of our family, doing our duties to our family, these are aparadharma.
They are not spiritual religion, but they are material religion and material religion is not unimportant. The mistake happens when we make it all important. So, it is important as long as it doesn't contradict or violate our paradharma of serving Krishna.
An ideal human society is where both are harmonized. So, devotee does aparadharma, devotee takes care of the family and also serves Krishna. That is the way of life that is ideal for most human beings.
Very few people will be renounced, who will give up aparadharma completely for paradharma. And even the renunciates don't give up aparadharma entirely. They also take up sannyas, ashram or brahmacharya ashram.
It is also an aparadharma. It is not necessarily the soul's nature to be a brahmacharya or a sannyasi. Soul's nature is to serve Krishna.
So, even renunciation is aparadharma. But that is aparadharma that allows us to focus far greater on paradharma, on practicing devotional service. So, here in the case of Prahlad Maharaj, he had to go against his aparadharma to practice paradharma.
So, he had to defy his father so that he could serve the Supreme Lord. Now, did that mean he failed in his duty to his father? Lord Narasimhadev assures him that he did not. What to speak of his father? He is going to deliver many, many generations of family members.
Actually, in the aparadharma it is said that we have duties to three primary groups of people, the devas, the rishis and the pitras. So, we do our duty to the devas by doing yajna for them. We do the duty to the rishis by studying the scriptures under their guidance, which they have given us.
And we do our duty to the pitras by begetting children and continuing the dynasty. Of course, there are other ways also these duties can be done. But these duties are important as far as aparadharma is concerned.
So, by begetting children, the shraddha is performed, the pindadan is done. And in that way, the pitras get the offerings by which they can continue on in a materially auspicious way, living on. So, it's important that these aparadharmas not be trivialized or rejected.
Although they should not also be exalted as if they are the aparadharma. So, especially when a devotee gives up aparadharma for the sake of aparadharma, the Lord wants to assure that actually the aparadharma is not trampled on. The devotee has not failed in the duty to be done over there because the Lord will arrange for the fulfillment of the aparadharma.
That means the ancestors who could and should have been delivered by the descendants, they will be delivered not by the rituals of karmakand, but by the direct.