How to see God’s presence in the world – in things, in events and in our actions

[Bhagavatam class on 7.9.48 at The Bhakti Center, New York, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
So grateful to be here with all of you today at the lotus feet of their Lordships. Am I audible to you behind? Thank you. So in this verse, Prahlad Maharaj is talking about the mysterious presence of the Lord in the world.
So I’ll talk about this and the theme I’ll talk about is how God is manifest in the world. I’ll talk about in three parts. The understanding, the immanence and transcendence of God.
Then I’ll talk about when does God act in this world and when he does not. And lastly, we’ll talk about how we can see the events in our life in that light. So here we see the prayer itself is very philosophical on occasion that is quite dramatic.
The dramatic occasion is just a big fight has got over and Lord Narasimhadev has delivered Hiranyakashipu. And after delivering him, now Prahlad is offering prayers which are meant to pacify the Lord. And that also is the Lord was furious.
The Acharya has explained that although the devatas offered prayers but the Lord was not satisfied by those prayers because their prayers he said they’re just like we have fair-weather friends. So fair-weather devotees, they were like that. He says when my devotee Prahlad was being tormented, was being threatened, you neither protected him nor did you protest.
So you neither protect nor protest. And now you offer prayers. He’s not satisfied by those prayers.
When Prahlad starts offering prayers, then the Lord becomes pacified. And this particular prayer, the prayers are becoming very philosophical over here. And he says, my dear Lord, you are, he’s listing all the gross material elements.
You are the earth, you are the water, you are the fire, you are the air. And he talks about subtle elements. You are the life air.
You are the mind. You are the ego. You are the senses.
Indeed, he says, you are everything, which is, as Prabhupada says, gross and subtle. Beyond you there is nothing in this world. So what is, how do we understand this? So we see that Prahlad started, this whole dramatic incident started by Hiranyakashipu asking Prahlad, where is Vishnu? Is he in this pillar? He says, he’s everywhere.
He’s of course in this pillar also. So now, when the Lord emerged from that pillar, then what happened after that? Immediately there was this dramatic action and now Prahlad is offering prayers. So although he said Vishnu is everywhere, even in this pillar, when the Lord emerges, at that time he offers a garland to the Lord, not to the pillar.
So that means, yes, God is present everywhere, but still God is present in everything and yet God is different from everything. God is present in everything, but that doesn’t itself make everything worshipable. So there is this difference, there is unknown difference.
We see this also in the Bhagavad Gita, where 7.19 Krishna says, bahunam janmanamante gyanavan mam prapadyate vasudevah sarvamiti samahatmasudurlabhah So vasudevah sarvamiti, that God is everything, Vasudev is everything. This is what? Gyanavan, those who are wise understand this. But it’s interesting, when they understand this, bahunam janmanamante gyanavan mam prapadyate they surrender to me.
It’s not said gyanavan sarvam prapadyate. Although they understand God is everything, they don’t surrender to everything. They surrender to God.
So this means that, yes, God manifests through everything, but that doesn’t make everything God. So we are talking this first point here about immanence and transcendence. Transcendence refers to God’s existence beyond matter, beyond material nature.
So that is how he exists in the spiritual world. And God’s immanence refers to his manifestation in the world. So he is immanent in various ways.
He is immanent as the deities. He is immanent as the avatars. He is also immanent when he is the animating spirit, the super soul who makes the cosmos active.
And in the start of the universal, the start of the universal is described, devatas were offering prayers to the Virat Rupa, but nothing was getting activated till eventually the Lord’s presence was invoked. So the idea over here is that God is immanent and it is to this immanent, this indwelling aspect of God that Prahlad is offering prayers. So when he is saying you are wind, you are air, what does it actually mean? This is something similar to what Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, when he talks about the Vibhuti yoga, the opulence of the absolute.
In that section, there is a verse where Krishna says towards the end, Among the Pandavas, I am Dhananjaya. Dhananjaya is Arjuna. Now when initially Krishna is speaking and Arjuna is hearing, Arjuna thinks, surely Krishna will say Yudhishthira, because Yudhishthira is the most virtuous.
But he says Dhananjaya, because yes, Yudhishthira is virtuous, but Arjuna is most devoted. But the point for, we are not comparing the devotion of Yudhishthira and Arjuna, that could be a separate class. But here the point is that when Arjuna hears, Among Pandavas, I am Dhananjaya.
So then Krishna, he doesn’t tell Krishna, that means we two are one. There is no need for you to speak the Bhagavad Gita. Just shut up now.
So it’s not a simplistic oneness, which is being talked about over here. So what does Vibhuti mean? Vibhuti means that the one above the many manifests as the one among the many. The one above the many is God in his transcendent aspect.
He exists above the material, mayadhyakshena prakriti. So the one above the many manifests as the one among the many. Who is the one among the many? The one who has the most extraordinary prowess, who is extraordinary in some ability, that ability is a manifestation of God.
yad yad vibhuti mad-sattvaṁ śrīma dūrjitaṁ eva vā tattva devā vadajjhatvaṁ mama tejo amśa-sambhava mama tejo amśa-sambhava It’s a spark of my splendour that is manifesting. So the power of the powerful comes from Krishna. In that sense, there is oneness.
So the one among the many can be used for us to remember the one above the many. So it’s more a connection for the purpose of recollection. It’s a connection to convey manifestation.
It’s not an absolute oneness. So when he is saying over here, you are the wind, you are the fire, you are the air, you are the life air, what it means is that all these are very powerful. This Prabhupāda uses the word in the Bhavata, gigantic manifestations.
And these are, their animating prowess comes from God. So if we see the giant ocean waves, sometimes a wave can easily just overturn a giant huge ship. Now storms are coming, Florida, there is a big storm that is coming.
They have phenomenal power. With all our power we can’t stop them. So this extraordinary power, where is it coming from? It’s coming from God.
So the emanance of God in this context when he is saying, it is referring to how the power of God or some other attribute of God is manifested in this world through the various manifestations of the world. In that sense, nothing has any power separate from God. Nathadastilinā yatsyātmāyābhūtaṁ carācaram Krishna says nothing can exist without me.
So the Prahlad here is seeing the Lord and says, my dear Lord, just as you are manifested in front of me, similarly you are manifested through all these cosmic elements. So I was always surrounded by you. And not only I was, I am always surrounded by you.
We are always surrounded by the divine. So this is the, it’s not a literal oneness, but it is a conceptual connection which talks, which signifies how God manifests and how we can recollect. The air is not literally God, but the power of the air comes from God and seeing the power of the air, we can remember God.
That was the first point about understanding God’s emanance and transcendence. And the second point is, how does God act in this world? This is something which is very mysterious at one level. When Hiranyakashipu came charging towards Prahlad.
Now Prahlad said that Vishnu is present in this pillar. Now did Prahlad see that actually it is Vishnu who is coming to kill me? When something bad happens to us, is it God doing that bad thing to us? So how exactly does God act in this world? Is it that everything that happens is done personally by God? So for example, when Dushyasan is trying to disrobe Draupadi, is Draupadi thinking that is Krishna doing this to me? Obviously not. So now this is where to understand how God acts in this world, we have to understand that there are multiple levels of causation.
So there are multiple levels of causation and we have to see which cause makes the most sense when. What do I mean by this? That if we all exist in a nested loop of things, nested network. For example, right now, if suddenly you stop hearing the sounds.
Now some of you who are tired, you might feel, OK, good, I can sleep peacefully. But some of you who are interested in hearing, you say, what happened? Did the mic suddenly go off? Or is it that maybe the speaker near me has stopped working? Or is it that the power itself has gone off? Or has the speaker gone off? Is the speaker still there? So you could actually give multiple explanations for the same event. And you could extend that maybe America is in a terrorist attack and the power grids have collapsed in America.
So you could now, which of these is valid? We have to look at the context. So basically when anything happens, we put it in different causal boxes. We can put it in different causal boxes.
Causal box means a box of cause and effect. When I see a particular effect, what is the cause that is responsible for this effect? So if I am not able to hear the class, what happened? Has the mic volume gone down? Has the speaker stopped working? Has the power gone off? You could put this same thing in different causal boxes. So we need to put things in the right causal box so that we can function.
Now, suppose somebody, the mic stops working, somebody says, hey, America has been attacked by terrorists. What’s wrong with you? Why are you paranoid like this? Isn’t it? So quite often when people are mentally unbalanced, what happens is they keep putting things in the most inappropriate causal boxes. Say somebody, I greet someone and that person doesn’t greet me.
And then immediately my mind may say, nobody cares for me. Nobody respects me. Nobody loves me.
Nobody even worries whether I’m existing or not. The world is such a terrible place. People are so terrible.
What? One person didn’t glance at you? Why are you going to such a crazy thing? So basically, when the mind is unstable, we start putting things in inappropriate causal boxes. And we need to learn which causal box is the most constructive. So now, if we start saying that everything that happens is done by God, not necessarily that everything is done by God.
There are evil people who do evil things. And when those evil people do evil things, we need to stop it at that particular point. Now, God, we can say, allowed it.
Maya Adhyakshena Prakriti. Krishna says, I am overseeing everything. He’s not saying I do everything.
Upadrashta Anumantacha. I am the overseer and the permitter. Not that I am the doer of everything.
So sometimes bad things happen. And when bad things happen, it is not that that has to be attributed to God. So God has given each one of us free will.
And when we abuse that free will, then that creates impressions within us. And that those accumulated impressions are what we can call as evil. So basically, whenever anything happens, there can be multiple causes for it.
There is God’s will, there is free will and there is evil. So God’s will, free will and evil. And we have to see what level a particular thing is done by whom.
So in this world, when Hiranyakashipu was charging towards Prahalad, Prahalad was not thinking that actually it is Vishnu who is charging through him to kill. He’s evil and he’s doing it. And Vishnu, whatever his will will happen, I’ll accept his will.
And so when Bhishma is attacking Arjuna, at that time Arjuna doesn’t think it is Krishna’s will that I be attacked and I die. Arjuna is fighting back with Bhishma. And Arjuna is not fighting wholeheartedly.
Krishna reveals his own will by running towards Bhishma to stop Bhishma. So basically, everything that happens, it can happen because of various reasons. It can be because ultimately it can be God’s will, in the sense of God’s intention, God’s desire.
Or it can be the soul’s will and God sanctions it because the soul has some particular karma by which they can do it. So when here Prahalad is saying, my dear Lord, you are all these things. So is he thinking that you are also the raised sword with which my father was going to kill me? If you are everything, you could say you could be that element also.
But you understand that there is a free will of everyone. And the free will is used repeatedly in a negative way that leads to evil. So we can’t simplistically say that everything that happens, God is doing it.
Yes, God is allowing it definitely. You could take this further and you could say everything that is done, everything that we are doing, everything that is done in this world, God is doing it. Then if somebody does something, if we do something wrong, if we do something which is immoral, unethical, and can you say that God did it through me? Really? I go and slap someone.
Why do you slap me? God did it through me. They will slap me back. Now God is doing this through me.
So it’s not that simple to say that everything. So everything is allowed or sanctioned by God, but not that everything is initiated or done by God. So the emanence of God does not mean that he is the sole cause of everything.
He is the ultimate cause. The word cause is used in different senses in philosophy. So cause can mean the initiating agent or cause can also mean the sanctioning agent.
When it is said Sarva Govindamadi Purusham, Sarva Karana Karanam is the cause of all causes. That means he is the sanctioning agent for all initiating agents. No initiating agent will be able to do anything unless he sanctions.
But he is not necessarily the initiating agent for all sanctioning agents. He is not the initiating agent for everything. And people do evil things.
It is they misusing their free will. So this is when does God act in this world? It is when he directly manifests his will or there are those who are devoted to him. They are doing his will.
That is God’s action. That brings us to third point that how do we apply all this in our life? So for us to apply this in our life, there is the principle of, in Bhakti there is the principle of dependence on God. But there is also responsibility for God.
So now responsibility, that word can be understood in different ways. In this context of Bhakti, the way we will understand it is that it is our response to his ability. Responsibility means our response to God’s ability.
So when a devotee takes responsibility, a devotee doesn’t think that I am the doer of things. Because the devotee doesn’t think it’s my ability. When Prabhupada came to America, we see this dynamism in Prabhupada.
He is saying that, नचाओ नचाओ प्रभु नचाओ से माते, काच थेरे पुत्थली जथा नचाओ से माते. That make me dance O Lord, make me dance, just like a puppeteer makes a puppet dance, make me dance. So here Prabhupada is expressing dependence and surrender.
But at the same time, Prabhupada was not an insentient puppet being made to dance by a puppeteer. He was a fully conscious being and Prabhupada was intelligent. You try one thing and if it didn’t work, then Prabhupada would try something else.
Here when Prabhupada was in New York, he tried to work with the United Nations and they invited him and Prabhupada went for a few meetings and he said they are just talking, they are not doing anything. Prabhupada stopped going for that. Then he went for some UN organised peace marches and they did not allow them to do kirtans.
Prabhupada said there is no use of it. So Prabhupada tried various things and if it didn’t work, he tried something else. So it was not that he was passively dependent on the Lord.
See if we think everything God is doing, then why do we need to do anything? Everything God is only doing. No, God is doing and we have to do his will according to our capacities. So for a devotee to take responsibility means that we primarily take responsibility for using our free will properly.
And when I say it is our response to his ability, that means we all assess, okay, what can I do? I can do this and I’ll start doing this. But sometimes Krishna can expand our abilities. How Prabhupada was able to manage a whole international institution, how he started it, how he took care of so many devotees, it’s incredible.
So how are some people able to do so many things and sometimes we are not able to do even one thing properly. So we could say, oh, this person is so dedicated, so advanced. It’s true, but it’s also that actually Krishna is manifesting through them.
So God’s ability is infinite. When we take responsibility, that means it is our response to his ability. That means we look at the situation, we try to deal with the situation to the best of our capacity, but we are open for God to act through us or God to act around us.
So when we are in this sense responsive to God, then he may empower us in ways far beyond our capacities. And if he doesn’t empower us, still our response is we serve him. Sometimes we serve him and we are able to do extraordinary things.
And sometimes we serve him and we just do ordinary things. The real extraordinary thing is not the result of what we do. The real extraordinary thing is just serving the Lord.
If we are trying to serve him, that itself will purify us, that itself will elevate us and that ultimately will liberate us. So for each one of us, when we understand that Krishna is present everywhere, we understand Krishna’s immanence, that Krishna can potentially act through everything. But when say, concluding one example, there are so many people who told Prabhupada, when he was trying to preach in India and he was trying to go to America, so some people just said, how is it possible? You are an old man.
Sumati Murugaji is reputed to have said that, Swamiji, you are so old and America is so cold, how will you live there? Now Prabhupada did not see that as Krishna speaking. He saw that as her speaking and he persuaded her, he said nothing is going to happen to me. But when a postman told him, Swamiji, you are writing these magazines, people read and throw away, write books.
Oh, this is Krishna speaking. So what does it mean? That means a devotee has a fixed purpose to serve Krishna. And when the purpose to serve Krishna is there, a devotee is open to resources for serving Krishna from various ways.
This can be a resource for serving Krishna. This can be a means by which I can serve Krishna. So a devotee is fixed in the purpose of serving Krishna and a devotee is flexible, you could say resourceful about the process to serve Krishna.
How should I serve Krishna? What I am going to do in my life, I am fixed, I am going to serve Krishna. How I am going to do it? That, let’s see what Krishna has in store for me. This is what is the path clear for me right now.
This is what I will do right now. And if Krishna gives me some more ability, gives me some more resources, I will do more. So in that way, a devotee, once we understand this concept of responsibility as our response to his ability, so if we have little ability, we do little, but we do it diligently.
If Krishna gives more ability, we do more. And that way we can follow initially Prabhupada’s footsteps in our own small way. Prabhupada has it, had his feet firmly on the ground, but his head was in the sky.
A big plans for Krishna. He knew Krishna’s ability is infinite and Krishna can empower me in extraordinary, infinite ways. So Prabhupada is open for that.
But it is also clear what is Krishna given me right now to do. So feet on the ground means we look at the reality and serve in the reality. But head in the sky means we don’t let the reality overwhelm us.
We don’t let the reality, this is how always things are going to be. We are open to possibility. And this way when we work, our life can become sometimes exciting, but always fulfilling.
Sometimes exciting when Krishna manifests some extraordinary abilities, extraordinary changes, extraordinary things. It’s exciting, but it is always fulfilling because we will be always connected with Krishna, serving Krishna and increasingly relishing his presence within our hearts. So I’ll summarise.
I spoke today on the topic of understanding how to understand God’s presence in our life. And I started by speaking about how, three points I spoke. First is how do we understand God’s immanence and transcendence.
Prahlad is after this dramatic pastime offering philosophical prayers. So although God is present beyond this world in his transcendence and he is present in this world as immanence, it’s not at everything. Although God is everything, everything is not God.
God can manifest through everything, but that doesn’t mean everything worshipable. We see everything as a manifestation of God and then we see everything as a means by which there can be recollection of God. But it’s not an absolute simplistic oneness.
And then that in terms of conception, this vision of the oneness and difference of God with the world, that first point was in conception and second and third was in action. In action, in terms of how things happen, everything that happens may not be God’s will. I talked about how there are multiple causations.
God is the cause of all causes means that he is the ultimate sanctioning cause for various initiating causes. So we need to, when anything happens in our life, we need to place it in the right causal box. At what level should I understand this? If you start escalating everything to God, then that may be inappropriate causal boxes.
People who are mentally unstable, they fit things in inappropriate causal boxes. So first was how do we see God in the things of the world? Then how do we see God in the actions of the world? And the third was how do we see God in our own actions? And I talk about responsibility means response, our response to his ability. So God can manifest through us.
God can manifest around us and enable us to do wonderful things for him. So we have our feet on the ground in the sense that we recognise what we can do right now and do it diligently. And we are also open to possibility.
Sometimes Krishna can empower us in extraordinary ways. Krishna can change things in dramatic ways. And we are open for him to act in those ways.
And when we are open like this, we’ll see so many avenues open for us to serve Krishna. And that can make our life exciting. But even if we are not empowered, if we stay connected with Krishna, our service will always be fulfilled.
Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. One quick question.
You spoke a lot on free will. To what extent are we perpetuated by the modes and to what extent are we free? Well, at the very least, you can say that we have free will to choose within our mode. That means, choose within our mode means, let’s say somebody is a Kshatriya.
Now they have to rule. Krishna says Ishwarabhau. That is their characteristic.
They want to rule. They want to delegate. They want to control.
But they can do that control virtuously or they can do it viciously. So Krishna tells Arjuna, you cannot become a Brahmana. But don’t become a Kshatriya like Duryodhana.
So we may say that we are controlled by the modes. So the way I write on the Gita every day, at gitaadindhi.com, one article I wrote is that we are bound to our nature, but we are not bound by our nature. We are bound to our nature means, say, if somebody is tied, then the range of hand movements, leg movements they can do is limited.
But within that, maybe say if my hands are tied, I cannot move my hands in particular ways. But there are particular ways I can move. So we are bound to our nature.
So I cannot remove the bonds that are there only. But within that bondage, I can act. So the choice between virtue and vice is always there for each one of us.
And if we choose virtue more and more, then virtue becomes stronger within us.