SB 8.3.8 The Lord’s coming to us is far more extraordinary than our going to him

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
So after talking about the exaltedness as well as the accessibility of the Supreme Lord, now Gajendra talks about how the Lord reaches out to the conditioned souls. It is not that Gajendra is alone praying to the Lord, seeking the Lord’s help. He recognizes that for a long long time before, the Lord has been trying to reach out to him.
And he points that out by saying that, though the Lord is transcendental to matter, He becomes manifest in matter. नविद्दिते यसे जन्म कर्मवा That Lord, His janma and karma, His nama and rupa, they do not have any guna-dosha, they do not have any contamination by the three modes of material nature. But in spite of that, तथापि लोकाप्ये संभवायू लोकाप्य, in this world, where there is creation, maintenance and destruction, स्वमायया तानि अनुकालं रिच्चति By His own potency, स्वमायया, by His internal potency, the Lord appears again and again.
So, Krishna Prabhupada translates this as that actually, the material world is created and destroyed, what is the purpose of its existence? That purpose ultimately will not be fulfilled if the Lord does not provide the way to get out of the world and to return back to His abode. And thus, to fulfill that ultimate purpose of the world, Lord appears again and again and yet again. That is His supreme mercy.
So, for a king to come to the prison, where everybody is a criminal, to besiege the criminals, to give up their criminal ways and to return back to normal citizenship as law-abiding members of the community and the state, that sort of repeated coming of the king is extraordinary. Usually the king will not even look at the prisoners. Those who are in prison, let them suffer.
And after the normal course of the law is over, they can be released. But here, Krishna is not like that. Those souls who have turned against Him, those who are trying to enjoy separate from Him, those who are rebelling against Him, even for those souls, He has a soft, compassionate, considerate, concerned heart.
And with that heart, He appears before them and appeals to them. That He appears by His own internal energies. Although He comes in the material world, He is not affected by the modes of the material world that affect everyone else.
The king who comes to the jail is not affected by the laws of the jail, although all those who live in those jails are under those laws. So, the modes of material nature, they create passionate desires, lust, anger, greed, envy, pride and illusion in everyone. But they do not create such desires in the Supreme Lord.
And He always remains transcendental. And the relevance of His transcendence for us is that He is never contaminated by any selfish desires. When He wants us to love Him, that is for our own greatest happiness.
Because only in loving Him will we be supremely happy. And in order to allow us that facility to love Him, He comes again and again and yet again to this world. So, the Lord is actually our greatest well-wisher.
And Gajendra is remembering that. He is now calling to the Lord to come. Is that an extraordinary request? Yes, for an ordinary soul to call to the Lord, please help me, that is extraordinary.
But he recognizes what is even more extraordinary is that even when no one calls, the Lord Himself comes as Incarnation. Of course, the devotees may be calling, but when the Lord comes as Incarnation and He establishes Dharma, that benefits everyone. So, the Lord’s extraordinary compassion is the hope of all conditioned souls.
And meditating on that compassion enables us to get the motivation to focus on the Holy Name also when we are chanting and to remember Krishna whenever we are trying to connect with Him. It is not that we alone are trying to connect with Krishna. Krishna is trying far more than us to connect with us.
Krishna, just as He comes periodically as Incarnations, He comes perennially as the Holy Name. And He is always available for us. And that Holy Name, although it manifests from our material, physical tongue, still it remains non-material, non-physical.
And the more we chant it, the more we become purified, the more we realize its non-physical, transcendental nature. And that experience makes chanting into the ultimate ecstasy.