Lord Narasimha – Half-man half-lion full-God

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.
On the sacred occasion of Narasimha Chaturdashi, let’s contemplate on the speciality of this extraordinary form of the Supreme Lord. Lord Narasimhadev is half man, half lion and full God. Narasimha is mainly man and lion.
Now, there is a specific historical reason why the Lord manifested in this particular form and that we know from the past time of Narasimhadev as given in the Bhagavad Purana, the Vishnu Purana, the Narasimha Purana, other Puranas, was to ingeniously work his way around the benediction that Hiranyakashipu had extracted from Brahma about not being killed by any of the 8.4 million species. So the Lord appeared in this extraordinary form, Adhrishta Purva, so a form which had never been seen before. So that is the specific contextual or historical reason why the Lord appeared in this form.
But in this talk, I would like to focus on the philosophical significance of this form. So, normally the God is conceived of in different ways, in different traditions. Now, though God is conceived of differently, usually the word God is associated with the word good and that means God is considered as the supremely good being and because he is supremely good, so he is all auspicious.
So he is supremely benevolent. And whatever way God is conceptualized, God’s ambition, God’s revealed, the point is that he is considered to be a very loving being, a gentle, kind, loving being. And yet we have Narasimhadev over here who is in a ferocious form, who is in a form that would well be considered brutal.
We have his teeth, fangs coming out of his mouth and Bhagavatam itself describes in the 7th canto, 9th chapter that, in the 7th canto, the 8th chapter describes the appearance of Lord Narasimhadev and his fight with Hiranyakashyapu and his defeating of Hiranyakashyapu and the 9th chapter describes the prayers that he receives from Prahlad Maharaj. So the description of the form of Lord Narasimhadev comes in both the 8th chapter and the 9th chapter and there it is described that his tongue was moving like a sword and his eyes were so ferociously blazing that they seemed to have stolen the effulgence of the celestial objects, the stars and the sun in the sky. And he was frowning and he was roaring and his roar was so thunderous that even the elephants closed their eyes and fled away.
And normally speaking, when a person is fighting, when two warriors are fighting, it’s quite natural that both of them may make gestures and sounds to express their strength and to try to intimidate their opponent. But usually an opponent would not get intimidated or at least would not show signs of having been intimidated. And Hiranyakashyapu was the king of demons.
He was in his own palace surrounded by his servants, his assistants, people for whom he was the commander and he had commanded them almost like he was God. So amid such people for Hiranyakashyapu, who to actually show fear would have been most unbecoming and it would have been a matter of great insult for him if his own followers saw him being afraid. And yet the roar of Narasimhadev was so ferocious, so thunderous that even Hiranyakashyapu closed his eyes momentarily in fear.
What is this sound? I can’t hear it. Such was the thunderous roar of Narasimhadev. So in every way with his ferocious fangs, with his ferocious jaws.
So he had his fangs and jaws and claws and thunderous sound and furious eyes and a blazing seeming mane. So that was an awe-inspiring, terror-inducing form. And the question, So now such a form would be ferocious and normally the question would come up, How can anyone consider such a form to be that of God? How can anyone consider such a form to be worshipable? Indeed to be considered divine.
In fact, in the early days of the Krishna Consciousness movement, when people in the West were unfamiliar entirely with Krishna Consciousness, with the Vedic tradition, with the Vaishnav tradition. And so when some of the people in the West saw the form of Narasimhadev which is being worshipped, that in one of the court cases against ISKCON, the idea was that it was a brainwashing movement, it was a cult. So one of the notions that was made, argument that was made against ISKCON was that they worshipped such a ghastly form of God.
And not only is Narasimhadev considered to be such a ferocious pose, having such a ferocious form, but further he acted as a ferocious deed. And what is that? He rips apart the intestines or the belly of Hiranyakashipu and then not only does he rip it apart, yes, killing is a fact of war, but killing can also happen in lesser or more gruesome ways. So shooting and killing someone is one way of killing.
Poisoning is a little less gruesome way of killing. Chopping off the head is an even more gruesome way of killing. And ripping open the stomach is among the most gruesome ways of killing someone.
Generally speaking, even when the head is cut off, then just a rush of blood comes out from the body as it’s decapitated. But the belly is the area where the largest quantity of flesh and blood vessels and everything is concentrated at one place. And when that belly is ripped apart, not only does the blood come out, but the whole ghastliness of the action of killing comes out very vividly, very graphically, very disconcertingly.
Even when a person is stabbed in the stomach, at that time a lot of blood comes out. But when a person’s belly is ripped apart, at that time the extent of the blood that will come out and the ghastliness of the sight that emerges, it’s distasteful at the very least, horrendous at the worst. And not only did Hiranyakashipu rip apart the stomach of Hiranyakashipu, but after ripping apart that stomach, he actually took out his intestines.
Now, ripping out the intestines from the body of someone, this would almost seem like a rakshasa activity. Now, it’s not that cannibals might do something like this in taking out the intestines of someone. Further, not only taking out the intestines, Hiranyakashipu’s intestines were taken out in Narasimhadeva and then put as a garland around his body, around his neck.
Now, what kind of creature is this? You may think that, you may raise this question, what kind of creature is this who puts a garland of an intestine? Now, Shiva, Bhairavnath, Bhutanath or Kali, they put a garland of skull. Now, skull itself is ghastly enough, but intestines, it is ghastlier still. And not only these intestines, but intestines that have just been ripped out of the body.
The intestines are actually still, blood is dripping out of them. And who would put an intestine like that on one’s head? This is the sign of a barbaric, cannibal-like person. So, who would do something like this? And why would anyone consider such a person who does something like this to be God? Naturally, this question will come up to a thinking, come in the mind of a thinking person.
And the answer lies in understanding the complete glory of God. God, if we look at the way it is explained in the great theistic traditions of the world, it is understood that He is the source of everything. The source of everything means that all attractive things come, all things come from Him.
And if all things come from Him, then we have to understand that even the things that look attractive and new things that look attractive in an unattractive way, they also come from Him. Attractive in an unattractive way means that, as they say that when there is violence, when there is brutality, that to many people is not attractive, it might seem repulsive. But yet, there is a certain perverse sense of attraction even to that.
And that’s why when there are images of earthquakes or natural calamities that cause great destruction, it’s a sobering, shattering sight sometimes, still people want to see it. So it’s attractive in a distorted sort of way, but still it’s attractive in its own way. And the point is that, the Vedic scriptures describe that the fullness of, that the greatness of God is not partial, it is all-round.
So all-round greatness of God means that He is attractive not just in the sense that we consider normally attractive, but also attractive in various senses. And that means also attractive in its destructive manifestation. So the gruesomeness, the form and activities of Nirsimhadev are, from the philosophical point of view, indicative of His complete greatness, of His all-round greatness.
That He is attractive not just in an attractive way, but He is attractive also in a destructive way. In what we could say, for some it might feel a distasteful way, but all His attraction is complete. So awesome displays of power which cause destruction are also attractive in their own way.
And such is the attractiveness that the Lord manifests in this particular form. Now, it’s not just that Nirsimhadev is manifesting this form to illustrate the completeness of His greatness. The form of Nirsimhadev also urges us to look beyond appearance to substance.
To look beyond, some people may say, Oh, this bloody intestine around, and what kind of God is this, I can’t worship. But if it goes beyond the appearance, not going beyond the appearance in the sense of minimizing the appearance, but trying to understand the rationale underlying that appearance. When one does that, one understands that the rationale is love.
And the rationale is love means that Lord Nirsimhadev is considering that my devotee Prahlad has been threatened and tormented and almost executed by this brutal Hiranyakashyapu and no one else came to protect him. Even the devatas who offer prayers to me did not do anything either to protect him or even protest against his persecution. And that’s why he’s furious.
He’s furious at the assassination attempts against his beloved devotee and he’s furious at the abortiveness exhibited by all those who could have protested or protected him. But because none of them do that, he himself manifests. That’s why Nirsimhadev’s form reveals his love for his devotee Prahlad.
And so now we could say that Nirsimhadev’s appearance and actions reflect his protecting tendency, his protecting nature. But at the same time, his appearance in this particular form demonstrates how he exhibits his love not just for the immediate devotee under protection, but also for his devotee who had given his word. So Brahmaji had given a word to Hiranyakashyapu and Lord Vishnu who manifested as Lord Nirsimhadev wanted to honour that word.
And thus it is his Bhaktavatsalya that is manifested. It is his Bhaktavatsalya that is manifested in the ferociousness of the form and it is Bhaktavatsalya that is manifested in the specific rationale for that form. So it is because the Lord is bound by such love that he is unable to do anything except come in a form that will fulfil the devotee’s heart and fulfil the mission of redemption that he has come to descend in this world.
So Lord Nirsimhadev is half man, half lion, half man and a full God. What does that mean? It means he is manifested in a form that is Narasimha, Narasimha, Narasimha Vapoh, Sriman Narasimha Vapoh that is one of the names of Narasimhadev is half man, half lion and his form is like that. But along with that Narasimhadev also manifests the full power of divinity.
So there is that thunderbolt of Indra which is capable of by one strike reusing mountains to piles of rubble that same thunderbolt when cast by Indra at Hiranyakashipu that thunderbolt could not even make one scratch on the body of Hiranyakashipu and gave that body which remained unscratched even after the assault of Indra’s thunderbolt that weapon, that body which could withstand an attack that body could not withstand the attack of simply the nails of Narasimhadev. So the nails of Narasimhadev are more powerful than even the Vajraastra of Indra and in this way the greatness of the Supreme Lord’s power is manifested in this pastime through the Lord appearing in this particular form and then exhibiting unparalleled power for the sake of protecting his devotees specifically his devotee Prahlad Maharaj and also for other devotees participating in pastimes in this particular world and withstanding dangers, those of us who may face these dangers we may not know what form the dangers may come in we may not know what form the Lord will come to rescue us but we should know that just as whatever be the complex conditions and complex obstacles that might be there in the path in the path of Prahlad Maharaj’s safety the path for overcoming the benedictions that Hiranyakashipu had got from Brahma the way to get an exception from around them seemingly impossible but Narasimhadev found a way around and that way around was that he appeared in the form of half-man half-lion and thus he actually managed to protect Prahlad so essentially when we recognize the beauty of it all don’t just look at the ghasis of the form but look at the beauty of the love that is there in the heart so whether we look at the love of the Lord manifesting in this particular form the love of the Lord in manifesting this form with such ferocious expression that it will terrorize all those who want to terrorize his devotees and this way Narasimhadev is the icon of protection of divine protection and we can pray to him to protect us from our selfish desires and to help us attain right supreme destination thank you