Is mother earth a jiva a demigod or a metaphor?

From Puri Ashishkumar

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Puri Ashish Kumar Prabhu. Is Mother Earth a Jeeva, a demigod or just a metaphor? Why did she go to Lord Brahma rather than hearing the problem as law of Karp? Answer, Mother Earth is a Jeeva as well as a demigod and she can also be understood metaphorically.
Answer, the various planets have certain Devatas or certain Goddesses, Gods or Goddesses associated with them. So, usually these Devatas are souls, they are Jeevas like us. So, Indradev is the predominating deity of the heavenly planetary system of the Svargaloka primarily within that.
Similarly, Varuna has his own planet. So, Soma is the predominating deity of Moon, celestial body named Moon. What does it mean? There is a celestial body objectively called Moon and there is a soul and that person, that particular soul takes the post of the predominating deity of the Moon.
So, in this case, the correlation between the soul and the particular celestial object is not the two merge into one, but the soul becomes the head, administrative functional head, predominating deity of that particular celestial object of that particular Loka. So, now as far as the Earth is concerned, the Earth is having its many rulers. So, these rulers are the human beings who are ruling on the planet.
So, they are not exactly the same as we have in the heavens. So, because the Earth may be divided into different parts and there may be different rulers who are not necessarily appointed as a part of the divine administration, they may use their mundane politics and powers also to capture posts, but the Earth itself is a person and she is a female. So, just as when we say there is Ganga Devi, what does it mean? That Ganga is a person and that person also manifests as a river.
So, Ganga Devi, she can manifest herself separately as a beautiful female personality as she did when she married Shantanu and then Nishma and other sons were born and she can become unmanifest and then she flows through as the River Ganga. So, in that sense, the Ganga is not exactly the predominating deity of the River Ganga, rather there is an ontological oneness while at the same time there is a difference also. That means Ganga Devi and Ganga the water are non-different.
So, that same Ganga Devi manifests as the flowing water. So, it is not that there is a soul called Ganga and the river is the body of that soul. No.
Actually, the same Ganga Devi manifests as the river. So, now with respect to the Earth, there is a Bhoomi Devi. This Bhoomi Devi, all the Devis ultimately manifest from Srimati Radharani, but that does not necessarily mean that all the Devis are necessarily Shakti Tattva.
They may be, they may not be. It will vary according to person. So, Lakshmi Devi who manifests from Radharani is Shakti Tattva, whereas ultimately all Devis manifest from the Supreme Lord, but say Indra’s wife Shrishi Devi is not a Shakti Tattva.
So, like that there is a deity called Ganga, similar there is a deity, there is a personality who is considered divine, who is Bhoomi Devi. So, is she a Devi Lord? Yes, she is intimately connected with the Lord. In fact, the Lord accepted her as his consort when he lifted the Earth from the Garbhodak Sagar into which it had fallen because of the atrocities of Hiranyaksha and when that contact between the Lord and the Earth happened, at that time through that even a child was born and the child went on to become Bhauma, who due to his being spoilt by the Asuras became the Asura Bhaumasura.
But the point is the Lord accepts Bhoomi Devi as almost like his consort. So, not necessary that all his consorts always have to be Shakti Tattvas. So, they are certainly very special, they are divine in that sense and so in that sense she is a demigod, she is directly a consort of the Lord, but at the same time she is not a predominating deity of the Earth.
There are kings who are the predominating rulers of the Earth who keep changing, but the Bhoomi Devi remains the same. And in fact, when the Bhoomi Devi becomes aggrieved by the rulers who become non-Vedic and who become even anti-Vedic and become burdened, then she goes to seek rescue. Now, the idea of karma should never be misunderstood to passively enduring justices.
If the principle of karma were meant to become a license for enduring injustices, then that would indirectly offer a license to wrongdoers to keep continuing doing misdeeds. In fact, Krishna himself comes to this world to correct the injustices that happen over here. Whenever there is the uprising of a Dharma, at that time the Lord himself descends to this world and gives an opportunity for the godly souls to have a proper religious environment by which they can become elevated.
So, Krishna does not think that when unrighteous people are coming that, oh everybody is just suffering their karma, let them suffer. Yes, people may suffer the consequences of their karma, but the Kshatriya king has his responsibility to maintain law and order. And the principle of karma is never meant to be used as a justification for allowing the law and order to collapse.
So, the king has his own duty, maintain law and order, the king does not maintain that, then what will happen is that he will get bad karma. He will be failing in his duty and that itself will comprise bad karma, which will lead to further reactions in future. So, it will become a deadly cycle like that.
So, you can look at the question on destiny to understand this principle better. But suffice it to say here that when the earth saw that there are atrocities being performed, so she naturally went to seek relief. So, first she went to Brahma and then through Brahma she went to the Supreme Lord.
So, the point here is that Bhumidevi is concerned not only for herself but also for the souls who are living on her apart from those godless and demoniac kings. There are so many other living beings who are like her children and she has to take care of them and she has to ensure that they do not get misled. So, she also cares for them and they are the burden of love for her whereas the other demoniac living beings are the burden of the beast for her.
So, now what about the metaphor over here? The metaphor is the idea of the earth being burdened. The earth is itself huge and it is not that a few demoniac living beings have so much weight in their body is that their weight becomes a burden for the earth. The burden of the earth is a metaphor where when there is something that we do not like or appreciate then that is often seen as a burden.
So, the mother will happily carry the child but if somebody stacks 25 kg weight 20 kg weight on her body and tells her to carry it and she has nothing to do with that weight naturally she will feel it to be a burden. So, like that when there are demoniac living beings the earth feels burden that burden is not a physical burden but it’s an emotional burden. So, the metaphor here is that emotional burden is often described as a literal burden and the mother earth feels that oh these souls they are these kings they are such miscreants that they are burning me and I want this burden to be relieved and because the souls are living on the earth so the earth goes to the lord to ask him to intervene by which the burden can be relieved.
Thank you.