SB 7.9.37 – When the modes of passion and ignorance attack, appeal to the Lord to appear to rescue us
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
illumination, thank you Priyatamam Tanumamananti so here Prahlad Maharaj is telling the glories of the lord as they manifested in the history of creation, so after delivering Brahmaji from ignorance by giving him darshan in both senses darshan, he gave him darshan of his own form and he gave him darshan, that is philosophical knowledge then after that he is now delivering he delivered Brahmaji from another crisis that was the stealing of Vedic knowledge by Madhu Kaithab so this was a high tech robbery in terms that actually Madhu and Kaithab represent the modes of passion and ignorance and as the Prabhupada explains in the purport so spiritual knowledge is transcendental but it can be best understood when one is in goodness and when one is overcome by the modes of passion and ignorance then one loses the capacity to understand spiritual knowledge to a large extent one can practice devotional service from any mode but understanding philosophical knowledge requires goodness to substantial extent so just as Madhu and Kaithab stole away the Vedic knowledge from Brahmaji’s possession similarly the modes of passion and ignorance steal away spiritual knowledge from us and we start acting materialistically ignorantly passionately and we often do activities which are non-spiritual, anti-spiritual self-defeating, self-destructive because we forget spiritual knowledge so what did the lord do? so when that knowledge was taken away rather than panicking and acting ignorantly what Brahmaji did was besiege the lord for help the lord appeared and restored that knowledge to Brahmaji by killing the demons who were trying to steal away that knowledge similarly when we are overcome by the modes of passion and ignorance we may not be able to specifically decide ok what should I do when lust attacks, when anger attacks when greed attacks, these are the typical characteristics of the mode of ignorance then we may not be able to specifically know what to do at that time but if we just broadly keep it in mind that I have to serve Krishna and the best way I can serve Krishna is call out to him for help, call out to him for guidance how should I serve you so when we call out to Krishna then Krishna will in his own inconceivable and perfect ways appear and rescue us from the modes of passion and ignorance so the important point is that we at least be self aware enough to know that we are going to get into trouble and we need help so if we are that much self aware that much basic level of goodness we have, that much internalization of spiritual knowledge we have done so when for example lust tempts us we undergo a conflict internally where one side of us tells us that lust is undesirable other side tells us that lust is desirable so if that side of us our intelligence is at least somewhat active it has not been entirely muted then we will, that voice will be there but then we just tell this is undesirable and if it is undesirable then at least with that beginning awareness we will know how, that I need to do something to deal with this and what will be that something that will begin by somehow or the other connecting with Krishna, calling out his names going in front of the deities going in front of the picture of the deities whatever, it may vary from person to person but it may well begin with chanting the holy names because that is the yuga dharma and from there we will get specific intelligence of how to move forward and then we will be able to overcome the effects of the lower modes and become by the grace of the lord who will appear in his own way, we will become restored in spiritual knowledge as was Brahmaji