Significance of Holi Bonfire and Color Festival

[Talk at Krishna House, Gainesville, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
says with great joy accept those things in our own lives and thus advance steadily on the path of bhakti. Thank you. Hare Krishna.
So thank all of you for coming here today evening on this very auspicious occasion of Holi. I’ll speak about this in three parts. First is something from the historical scriptural perspective and something from the contemporary socialist perspective and then lastly from the personal perspective of what it all means for all of us.
We all living beings are innately pleasure-seeking and we seek pleasure by striving to have something out of the ordinary in the sense of out of the routine. Our lives have particular routine, we have our jobs, we have families, we have our physical needs which we take care of on a regular basis and this over a period tends to become monotonous and to break this monotony there are different things which we do. Nowadays of course we have entertainment which it is interesting if you consider today the professionals who are paid the most are probably the entertainers.
There was a boxer, female boxer from Northeast India, a Bollywood movie was made about her and the Bollywood actress who made that movie she earned more for making that movie than what that sports star earned throughout her life. So why is it that entertainment is entertainers are paid astronomical amounts of money? So what a society values reflects its values. What we are ready to pay for indicates that this is what we consider very important.
So we are ready to pay so much for entertainment ultimately where are the entertainers getting their big pays from? It’s from our pockets. So society is ready to pay them so much because it feels that entertainment is such a great need because so if you consider this is our normal level of living and more or less life at the normal level soon becomes boring. It is sometimes distressing, sometimes titillating but on average it’s just boring and then when we want to break from the boredom we usually go from the real world to some fictional world.
Entertainment promises us the fictional world however that relief which comes from entertainment is temporary. It lasts for a short while and then it disappears and over a period of time when we want the entertainment for that entertainment to entertain us we need stronger and stronger dosages of the entertainment. The same level of entertainment will not give us enjoyment.
So you want action maybe in the past the movies had some one hero fighting with another villain but now action means a big building is blown up. That was fun. So we want more and more stimulation and we see this in sports also that the whole nature of the sports is now more and more stimulation, more and more passion.
In general when we look for entertainment, many of you are from India, India has two main sources of entertainment. One is Bollywood and its movies, the other is cricket. A few years ago Bollywood and cricket got married and they produced a progeny that was the IPL, the Indian Premier League where there are cricketers and movie stars combined together and the whole entertainment through that is more accelerated.
But the point is that this entertainment it just goes on getting more and more accelerated but it never fulfils the heart. So for the heart which is looking for stimulation and satisfaction, entertainment is ultimately like a painkiller. Most of the time when people go for watching movies, we also usually take something with us to eat, a popcorn or something like that.
Now one reason is everything is imaginary, something has to be real. So now what the spiritual wisdom traditions describe to us is that our longing for stimulation or longing for satisfaction, it comes from our spiritual core and the Bhagavad Gita describes the soul at its core is by nature joyful. It is sat, chit, ananda.
Ananda means joyful. So there is a physical level of the material or physical level of the world which is on average boring. To get a break from that we go towards the fictional level of the world.
But our need for stimulation is best fulfilled at the spiritual level. So when we realise who we are, if we are pure sparks of consciousness, parts of the infinite consciousness bonded in an eternal relationship of love, that realisation itself gives us immense joy. The Bhagavad Gita after it describes its wisdom, in its conclusion describes the consequence of understanding and appreciating that wisdom in Sanjay who is the narrator and he says on meditating on this message and appreciating its import, I am thrilled at every moment.
So what we are longing for at the fictional level is actually fulfilled at the spiritual level. So what we search for in fiction, we may get it in a few moments of titillation but we will get it enduringly at the spiritual level if we realise ourselves. But unfortunately most of us don’t know about the spiritual level and the fictional world is aggressively propagated through today’s culture.
That’s where we get sucked at, sucked towards. We get consumed by that. So in the spiritual traditions there are always various kinds of festivals and festivals they serve a purpose of giving us a break from our routine lives and we all as I said our routine life tends to become boring and we need some break from it.
But festivals especially those which are with some religious or spiritual significance, they provide us a break which is a glimpse of a higher level of reality. So when we come together in spiritual festivals and we say like all of you are doing the kirtas, you sing the holy names of the Lord, when we hear something about the higher wisdom, higher truths of life, then that reminds us that there is some other reality which also we are meant to explore. So festivals give us a glimpse of the higher level of reality and if we get attracted by that glimpse then we can pursue it more.
So generically festivals serve this purpose of giving us, especially when the festivals are spiritual, a spiritual break we could say, which reminds us of our spirituality and which prompts us to further realise their spirituality. And specific festivals along with this generic significance also have their own specific significances. So Holi is a festival which in the Vedic tradition has multiple backgrounds to it.
So one, the Holi generally if you look at the visual imagery that is associated with this, one is of a bonfire and the other is of colours being sprinkled. So I’ll talk about both of them. The bonfire comes from an ancient narrative.
There was a very virtuous prince named Prahalad and his father was a tyrant, a demoniac despot who was tyrannising the whole world and everybody cowed in fear to this demon, Hiranyakashipu his name was. But his son remained fearless and the nature of the materialistic mind is that there may be hundred things right in our life but it will focus on the one thing that is not right and it will make us miserable. Often we feel, oh this is wrong in my life, that is wrong in my life, that is wrong in my life.
If this person just changed their behaviour, my life would be so good. If this changed, it would be so nice. It’s possible definitely that certain external changes can make our life better but unless we make our mind better, unless we change our mind’s tendency to look at the negatives, to harp on the negatives, no matter how many things become good, we will not be satisfied.
Even if we are taken to paradise where everything is according to our will, the mind will say good but… So this was the situation of Hiranyakashipu. He had everything in his control, everyone was bowing down to him but that his own son Prahalad was not bowing down to him. This was unbearable.
So much so that the father decided to assassinate his own son and whose only crime was that the son refused to bow down to his father. The son was not a rebel in the sense that he was instigating an active revolution against his father or anything like that. He was just a 5 year old boy and he tried various means.
So in his cohorts, he had a demoness whose name was Holika. She had immunity to fire. So she could enter into fire and stay unaffected by it.
So when Hiranyakashipu tried various means to have Prahalad assassinated and failed, finally he called Holika and he told her, you enter into the fire and hold him there. So she said yes. There’s a huge fire and she has entered into that fire.
And she was there in that fire more time and she was thinking I’ll be protected because I have this boon. This boy, he will burn to death. She just went on and on and on.
Now in general, some of these stories might just seem fantastical or mythological to us. But we all have different levels of abilities. Some people have such phenomenal memories.
Some people have phenomenal mathematical skills. Some people they can just say multiply 13 digit numbers and tell you the answer in moments. For others, it may seem impossible.
So we all have certain abilities to do extraordinary things. And some people have some abilities to extraordinary degrees which far far be dazzle the ordinary. And there are certain processes, certain special prayers and rites by which such abilities can be got.
But in general, when we get some ability, the tendency of the ego or we could say the mind is to become overconfident. But I start feeling that I can stretch this law of nature. I can do what I want.
So I may be able to do it more than most other people. But none of us is infinite. So none of us can do anything to an infinite extent.
Just as ordinary people might be able to lift say 20, 30, 40, 50 kg weight. Somebody very well trained, very well muscle might be able to 60, 70, 80 kg weight, 100 kg weight, whatever. But just a person has a lot of confidence, a lot of power also.
They can’t lift 500 kg weight. They can’t lift 1000 kg weight. If they try to do that, they will be crushed.
So similarly, Holika had immunity to fire. But the immunity was not an absolute immunity. It was a capacity to resist fire, which is far greater than that of everyone else.
But in the process, she forgot that she also had her limits. And this is the human tendency coming from the ego, that when we are good at something, we forget our limits. We are better than others, but that doesn’t mean that we are infinite.
So as she was there in the fire, waiting with the expectation that Prahlad should burn. But what happened was, instead of Prahlad burning down, she herself started burning. And when she started feeling the fire, her ego was such that she could accept, I’m getting burned.
It’s just a sensation. It’s not true. And she burned and burned and burned, and she just burned to ashes.
So the same fire with which she was wanting to burn Prahlad, she got burned by that. And what happened to Prahlad? Prahlad was miraculously protected. Miracles are sometimes seen as unbelievable, unscientific, again fantastic.
Yes, many stories of miracles may be like that. But in principle, miracles are not against science. They are above science.
Science operates according to certain natural laws, and those natural laws are definitely valid. But at the same time, those natural laws operate under some higher supervision. And under some special circumstances, those natural laws can be suspended.
So Prahlad was a great devotee of the Supreme. And that Supreme, in order to protect Prahlad, decided through a divine intervention to stop the action of fire on Prahlad’s body. And thus, Prahlad was miraculously protected.
So there are pastimes where the Lord does extraordinary things. For example, if you have seen pictures of Krishna, one famous picture is of how Krishna seems to lift up a mountain. It’s called Govardhan.
Do you have a picture here? So when Krishna lifts up this mountain, how can anyone do that? How can you lift a mountain? Yes, we can’t do that. But Krishna is the name through which the Bhakti tradition, Bhakti Yoga tradition identifies God. So he, if he lifted up a mountain, if I had to lift up a laptop on my one finger, I can’t even do that.
And if I had to do that also, I had to find right the centre of the laptop. In physics terms, we’ll have to find the centre of gravity. And keep the finger right over there to balance it.
So how could Krishna find the centre of gravity to hold it? Hold the, not laptop, but the whole mountain up. So Krishna doesn’t have to find the centre of gravity because he is the source of gravity. So gravity acts by his will.
Mayadhyakshena prakriti suyate saccharacharam. Hetunane na kaunteya jagad bhi parivartati. That the laws of nature, science operates on the presumption that the laws of nature exist.
But science has no explanation why the laws of nature exist. So there is, there are many things that science explains. But there are many things which require to be explained for science to be able to explain something.
When Newton saw the fruit falling, when I had gone to Cambridge to speak of science and spirituality, I went by that tree. It’s still there. So when he saw the fruit falling, it was his brilliance that in such a simple event, he asked the question, what made the fruit fall? And he came up with the answer of gravity.
But the very question what made this fruit fall presumes that he understood that things don’t just happen by chance. There is some order. Now why is there an order in nature at all? So that order in nature is there by some higher source.
India’s famous mathematician Srinivas Ramanujan, he said that an equation for me, equations are often used to express the laws of nature. F is equal to gm1m2 upon r square. So he says that’s the law of gravity.
He says equation for me has no meaning unless it represents the thought of God. So that same God by whose will fire burns. Madbhayat vati vatoyam.
Agnis dhati madbhayat. That by his arrangement wind flows, by his arrangement fire burns. That Lord decided to intervene.
So Prahalad was protected whereas Holika was destroyed. And in this way the very effort that was used to destroy Prahalad ended up destroying his destroyer. It backfired against him.
The significance of Holi apart from the visual imagery also is that within all of us there is the tendency of Prahalad and there is also the tendency of Holika. There is a tendency, there is a part of us which is godly, which is devoted, which acknowledges that our good qualities, our virtues, our strengths, they come from some higher source. And there is a side within us which is power hungry, which is proud, which is arrogant.
And in this Holi what is signified is if we absorb our consciousness in a mood of meditation and prayer then the impure side that is within us will get burned away. And just as Prahalad emerged not only safe but redeemed, vindicated in his glory by coming out safely through the fire, similarly our godly side will come out stronger. And once a year we may have the festival of Holi where we burn, we set a bonfire.
But quite often in our life even without any lighting some bonfire starts. Problems come up and we feel as if we are burning in the problem. So sometimes some misunderstandings happen, circumstances go wrong.
At that time we do have to do whatever is practical for dealing with it. But instead of getting overwhelmed by it, if we understand that this problem is like a fire which is meant to burn away my misconceptions so that the real me emerges. So the problems of life they cannot hurt our essential core.
We have many accretions around us which will get burnt away by whatever afflictions come in life. machittah sarva-durgāṇi mat-prasādāt dhariṣyasi The Bhagavad Gita in 18.58 states that if we become conscious of the Supreme, of Krishna then He will enable us to overcome all obstacles. So that is the significance of Holi as a bonfire.
Now another significance of Holi which is again much more commonly known is when we throw colours on each other. And of course sometimes this throwing colours becomes just wild and revelrous. And what is the significance of this? This comes from the way Krishna celebrates with his associates in the spiritual world.
Krishna’s abode which is known as Vrindavan of which we have a replica in India. So there Krishna and his devotees, the Gopas, the Gopis, they celebrate in various ways. So Krishna has his topmost devotee Srimati Radharani, we know as Radha.
So they are a divine couple. There is one God who is talked about in different religious traditions. But the understanding of God is often different in terms of specifics.
Sometimes western critics say, oh you Hindus, you are polytheistic. You believe in so many Gods. We are monotheistic.
We believe in one God. Actually this is a categorisation itself which has come from a western thought system. And that does not apply to the Indian wisdom tradition.
So if at all you want to say what is the Vedic conception of God, it is neither polytheism nor monotheism. It is described as one God who manifests in many forms. So if you want to use western derived nomenclature, we will have to call it as polymorphic monotheism.
Morpho is form, poly is many. So there is one God who manifests in many forms. And nowadays there is the whole mood of gender equality.
So many people, especially in the western tradition, they protest, why is God male? In fact there is a whole Christian group, a church, which depicts Jesus as female. So Jesus is not a he but is a she. So he or she, whatever you want to call it, has female body parts and is worshipped as a female.
So why should God be a male? So the Vedic tradition describes, yes God is not just a male. God is a divine couple. So we see Ram, Sita.
We have Sita, Ram. We have Radha, Krishna. We have Lakshmi, Narayan.
This is a divine couple. And both of them are considered divine. So it’s not just polymorphic monotheism, it’s polymorphic bimonotheism.
There is one God who manifests as a divine couple and there are many forms of these divine couples. And they have eternal ecstatic loving exchanges, which are called as Leela. Leela means, it’s translated sometimes as play, sometimes as pastime, sometimes as celebration.
So Leela or sometimes it’s also translated as illusion. But it’s not illusion in the sense of being false. So God himself does not have anything to do because by his will everything happens.
That by his will, which is supreme, everything happens. He has nothing to do. But that doesn’t mean that God is bored having nothing to do.
No. He has his own life of love where he chooses to assume different roles in different relationships and celebrate. So as I said there is this material or physical world and there is a fictional world which you try to go to, to try to enjoy and there is a spiritual level of reality.
So there is a spiritual world. And in that spiritual world there are many many reciprocations of love between the Lord and his devotees. And those reciprocations are seen most vividly in the pastimes of Krishna with his devotees.
Krishna is God but he is not God who delights in his Godhood. God is supreme but Krishna doesn’t. I am God, you come and bow down to me.
That is not his mood in the spiritual world. He takes on the role of simply a lovable cowherd boy. And there are others who are just his lovable associates and with all of them he performs leela, he performs pastimes.
And in that way they all get the supreme joy. So one such love filled pastime which is performed in the spiritual world is Holi. So in the festival of Holi as it is celebrated in the spiritual world and as it was traditionally celebrated in the parts of the world where this revolution is available, the whole purpose was the reciprocation of affection.
We celebrate. When you want to celebrate, basically as I said earlier celebration means disruption of the natural routine of things. When you want to celebrate, you don’t just do the thing which you do everyday.
You do something special. So what they would do is when you celebrate, you take up colour. All the colours would be made from natural elements.
You sprinkle them on each other, throw them on each other, put them into pipes and again sprinkle them on each other. And in that way they would reciprocate affection. There will be competition.
Who can sprinkle more water on whom? In the western world one counterpart is sometimes people make snowballs and throw them at each other. So similarly this is what was done. And when devotees celebrate Holi, their mood is that we want to remember and replicate that joy.
So bhakti is actually not just spirituality. I talked about the material level of reality and the spiritual level of reality. So bhakti is sensory spirituality.
Many times people think spiritual means sit down, meditate, maybe go to a secluded place and just withdraw, retreat within yourself. That is one way to approach the spiritual. That means we distance ourselves from the material so that we reach the spiritual.
But bhakti is so inclusive that it uses the material to reach the spiritual. So one way to meditate is become silent, become inactive, calm the mind and try to go inwards. But bhakti what we do is we use the resources of the body.
We use sound, we use singing which is done with the tongue. But we sing not mundane songs, sing songs involving sacred mantras and by that our consciousness rises upwards. So we may even dance in kirtans where we use the physical body for reaching the spiritual.
So bhakti is sensory spirituality and Holi is that festival where this sensoriness, the capacity to use the sensory faculties for pursuing the spiritual, for delighting the spiritual is exhibited. Where we use colours which are visually very attractive and use hands and legs to sprinkle each other with colours and if all this is done in a spiritual awareness then it can be very spiritually uplifted. Of course over the centuries the form remains and the substance gets forgotten.
So nowadays much of Holi celebrations there is very little spiritual in it. It’s mostly sensual. That is unfortunate but that is something which happens in every religious tradition.
Christmas which is one of the biggest festivals celebrated in the western world, for most kids Christmas is not about Jesus, it is about Santa Claus. What is Santa Claus going to give me? So it’s very easy to just stick to the external forms and forget the substance. That’s why whenever festivals are celebrated, if along with the celebration there is some discussion, there is some discussion about the significance of the festivals, then we don’t just get caught in the externals but along with the externals we use the externals to reach the internal.
Diwali is a festival of lights but for most people Diwali is just noise and food, fire crackers and eating feast and feasting. Very little understanding of what the significance of Diwali is. So this is just a tendency that is everywhere.
But if we have forums where we can celebrate spiritual festivals in the association of those who know about the significance and we learn about that, we remember that, then these festivals can become accessible and appealing ways by which we can rise from the material level of reality to the spiritual level. So the celebration of Holi is, if done in spiritual consciousness, is a way for us to remember that spiritual life is filled with joy and it is not a retreat from the joy of this world to just go into some solitary kind of meditation. It is an elevation to a higher reality where joy is experienced in its richness and fullness, far more than what we can experience in this world.
The Bhagavad Gita says that whatever is attractive in this world gets its attractiveness from a spark of the attractiveness of the Supreme. So whatever is attractive, where does this attractiveness come from? So whatever entertainment, whatever celebrations, whatever festivals, whatever music, whatever dance, there is something attractive in that and that attraction is real. But it is also fragmented.
It is just tiny. It is there for some time and it is gone. But this attractiveness is a spark of the attractiveness of the Supreme.
So to redirect our attention from the part to the whole, from the spark to the complete flame, that is done through the process of Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti Yoga is a means by which we connect our consciousness with the Supreme and thus through that connection we get stimulation and we get satisfaction. So the same stimulation and satisfaction that is available at the spiritual level becomes available to us intermittently through festivals and it becomes available regularly to us if we practise Bhakti Yoga because it connects our consciousness with the Supreme and the reminder of our spiritual side and a pointer to explore and embrace our spiritual side, that is what festivals are ultimately meant for.
So I’ll summarise what I spoke. So I talked today about festivals and how we all in the routine course of life tend to become bored and this boredom in today’s world is so unbearable that people are ready to pay phenomenal amounts of money to those entertainers who can give them a break from the boredom of their lives. So whereas entertainment gives us some stimulation break, it is temporary and its returns keep diminishing, that’s why we need more and more entertainment, more and more wildly stimulating entertainment.
But our need for stimulation stems from the spiritual essence. So instead of going from the real world to the fictional world, we can rise from the physical world to the spiritual level of reality. And festivals provide us entertaining breaks from the routine of our material life so that we can experience something higher, especially when those festivals have some spiritual theme on which they are centred.
So I talked about Festival of Holi from two perspectives that it signifies the burning of Holika and the protection of Prahalad. So Hiranyakashipu’s actions signify the actions of our mind where hundred things may be right but the mind will obsess over that which is wrong and keep us dissatisfied. Holika’s overconfidence signifies our overconfidence in our abilities.
We may be able to do something much better than others but that does not mean that we are infinite or we can ever become infinite. So Prahalad’s protection is miraculous. Miracles are not against science, they are above science.
Science presumes the existence of the natural laws but where do those laws come from? They come from higher intelligence and on special occasions that higher intelligence can intervene and suspend those laws temporarily. So the bonfire of Holi also signifies how we ourselves can become purified where our ungodly side gets burned to ashes and our godly core emerges not only unscathed but vindicated and becomes more and more prominent. And then I talked about the Holi or the Festival of Colours that’s a replica of the festival that Krishna has with his associates, the Gopas and the Gopis.
So the Vedic conception of God is neither polytheism nor monotheism. What is it? Anyone remember the word? Polymorphic bimonotheism. Yeah, thank you.
Polymorphic bimonotheism. So God is both male and female so bimonotheism and he manifests in many different forms. So there are eternal ecstatic loving exchanges where God performs Leela.
He takes on various roles in various relationships to reciprocate love. And Bhakti is sensory spirituality. To go to the spiritual level we don’t reject the material but we engage the material.
So to meditate we don’t just go into silent introspection. We have sound and singing which raises our consciousness. Similarly colours and dancing and throwing things on each other.
This is all ways in which normally we would enjoy but we can spiritualise this. But to do this, for these activities to be spiritual, if we just do the activities we may just have the shell but not the substance. That’s why along with celebration we need to have some discussion of the essence of the celebration.
When both come together then Bhakti becomes a very accessible way by which the glimpses of spirituality that we may get on festivals, they can come to us not just intermittently but regularly. And thus our need for stimulation and satisfaction can be enduringly fulfilled through the raising of our consciousness to the spiritual level. Thank you very much.
Hare Krishna. My question here is, what is the Lord’s purpose when he chooses to intervene or suspend these natural laws? Is it a uniform purpose or can it be different in each situation? That’s the first question. Second would be, we talk about renunciation… Okay, let’s take one question at a time.
So why does the Lord intervene? What is his purpose? Okay, so why does the Lord intervene whenever he does descend or whenever he intervenes with different people? There are broadly three purposes. Krishna talks about this in the Bhagavad Gita. That he wants to deliver the pious, the virtues.
He wants to disempower the vicious. And he wants to establish moral and spiritual order in society. So for these three purposes he descends and for these three purposes he intervenes.
Now specifically one purpose may be more prominent at a particular time and another purpose may be more prominent at another time. So when the Lord came as Narasimha, he ensured that the disruption of the natural order that Hiranyakashipu was doing, that was stopped and Hiranyakashipu was eliminated and then Prahlad was enthroned as the king. So thereby, because Prahlad is a virtuous ruler, so virtue again prevailed.
So broadly there are these three purposes and specifically in specific occasions there might be that a particular purpose is to be served. Say for example, some person’s saintliness is to be demonstrated. So the Lord may intervene and protect them.
Like in Draupadi’s case, she was being dishonoured. Then Krishna arranged for unlimited saree to cover her. So that was where her saintliness, her chastity, her virtue was protected.
And those who were trying to do immoral things, they were thwarted. So specific occasions can have specific manifestations of the intervention. But they serve these three purposes.
Is it also to teach a lesson? Yeah, is it also to teach a lesson? Yes, as I said, each festival or each intervention has something which is perennial and something which is contextual. So contextually there are particular demons who are to be destroyed, there are particular devotees who are to be delivered, there is particular order to be established. But beyond the context, perennially a principle is demonstrated.
The principle that the Lord is omnipotent and he is omnibenevolent. That he can intervene when he wants and he does intervene for the good of others. So in that way, that becomes a valuable reminder for everyone.
So like that, the specific perennial lesson may also vary. Along with this point of the Lord’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence, there could be some specific reminder of the Lord’s attributes that might also be a lesson through that past. Thank you.
I have another question also. Does anyone else have questions? We will come back to you. Kamsa and Hiranyakashyapu are also good meditators on Krishna, I would say.
Arun, Kamsa and Hiranyakashyapu are also good meditators on Krishna? Yes, if we consider good meditation in terms of intensity of meditation, yes, they were good meditators. But if we consider intent of meditation, that was not good meditation. Yeah, they are thinking of Krishna, but thinking for what purpose? They were thinking to displace and destroy Krishna.
So their intent was unfavourable. Bhakti or devotion is defined as anukulyena krishnanu silanam bhaktiruttama. Anukulyena, that which is done with favourable intent.
That is bhakti. So the human heart is capable of raga and dvesha. It’s attachment and aversion.
And in both cases, there is intense contemplation on someone. Now say, a boy and a girl fall in love with each other. Then, they just are constantly thinking of each other.
And then they fight against the whole world and say, you know, I can’t live without him. I can’t live without her. And then after some time, when the initial hormonal rush, it dies down, then their conflicts come up and they say, I can’t live with you.
Just go to the other extreme. I don’t want to talk with you. But even when there is an aversion, they are constantly thinking about the other person.
How could he do like this? Why did she do like that? So, both through affection and aversion, there may be intense contemplation on someone. So, for some people who are demoniac, they have meditation through aversion. And that doesn’t lead to the development of a positive devotion connection.
So, we can take inspiration even from them that they were so much constantly thinking about Krishna. So, if they can think, we should also try to concentrate on Krishna. So, we can learn from them about the intensity of the meditation.
But the intent, we can’t take from them. That we have to take from those who are positively devoted. Thank you.
Yes. Do the demons have a God? Like in India, there is like Bajap and Congress. So, for some people, Bajap is good.
For some people, Congress is good. So, similarly, Krishna is the good thing. So, what is the bad thing? What is the supreme of the bad thing? We never talk about that.
So, do demons also have their own God? Say, if Krishna is the God of good people, then do demons also have their own God? There are two different ways of understanding this. One is that there is only one God, one Supreme. He is, the very word Supreme, if you consider God, one of his characteristics is that he is Supreme.
And if he is Supreme, he cannot have a substitute. Because Supreme means he is the highest. So, by definition, God cannot have any other competitor for himself.
So, there is one God. So, Krishna is the God of all living beings. He says that, surudham sarva-bhutana.
He is the well-wisher of all living beings. He is all living beings. Sarva-yoneshu kaunteya murtaya sambhavantiya taasam brahma-dhyone aham bhiji pradapita.
In 14.4 in the Gita, he says, I am the parent of all living beings. So, in definition or in constitution, there is only one God who is the source of everyone, who is the support of everyone and who is ultimately made of the guide and goal of everyone. That is in constitution.
But in conception, different people may conceive of different entities as if they are Supreme. So, people who are ungodly, if somebody is very superlatively ungodly, then they may worship that person as if he were God. So, this is their conception.
That is not the actual reality. But that person has extraordinary powers and so people conceive of that person as God. So, in different situations, different people may imagine or conceive of someone to be God.
So, the demons, they at different times also either themselves imagine that they themselves are God and want other demons to worship them or they may conceive of some being to be God. So, this is the conception of God and there is one who is constitutionally God. These two are not necessarily the same.
The Vedic tradition is so inclusive that even those who are demons, sometimes they may worship godly beings. So, for example, Ravana, he worshipped Shiva. The Vrkasar was a demon who also worshipped Shiva.
And Bhasmasur, you know. So, there the demoniac may also worship some godly beings so that they will increase their demoniac powers. But that does not mean that their God is different from someone else’s God.
So, Ram and Shiva, they are both in a very cordial relationship with each other. So, when Shiva, he gave power to Ravana. But when Ravana started misusing that power, then no matter how much Ravana worshipped Shiva, Shiva did not intervene.
And Ram ensured that Ravana got the karmic dues for his misdeeds. So, the demons may also worship some being as God but that doesn’t change who God actually is. They may just, because while living in this world, all of us at some time or the other start feeling that I alone can’t do everything that I want to do.
I need the assistance of something bigger than me. So, now what is that bigger than me? That if we come in contact with proper wisdom texts, then we will get a right understanding of who that is. Otherwise, we will come up with our own conceptions of who that supreme is.
And we will choose a particular being as supreme based on our proclivity, our psychology, our own nature, our own consciousness. And that’s why there can be different people who conceive of different beings as God. But these are subjective conceptions.
That is not the objective reality. There is one God for all living beings and He is the well-wisher of everyone. So, Ram himself, he fought against Ravana because Ravana was incorrigible.
Although Ram gave him many opportunities to rectify himself, he did not. Eventually, after Ravana was killed, Vibhishan, Ravana’s own brother said, he was such a vicious being, I do not want to perform his last rites. So, Ram told him, no.
He said, he is also a soul. And whatever wrongs he has done with the death of his body, that karma is over. Now, you need to do your part in helping that soul to go to auspicious destination.
So, Ram, although he fought against Ravana, he desired the good even of Ravana. So, in that way, God is the well-wisher of everyone, even those who fight against him. Same question to this.
So, why does hell exist in that case? I mean, shouldn’t there be only heaven? Why does the concept of hell exist if there is no one to rule over hell or something like that? Why does hell exist if there is no one to rule over? Hell is, the whole world basically is like a university. The universe is essentially a university where we are all meant to learn lessons in spiritual wisdom and spiritual devotion. To learn more and more about the nature of reality and to raise our consciousness upwards in our object of love.
So, we are all souls on a multi-life journey of spiritual evolution. And the world in its various aspects is like our classroom. Universe in that sense is like a university.
And in some religions, hell is conceived of as a place of eternal damnation. Somebody goes to hell and that’s where they stay forever. But the Vedic literature did not substantiate this.
They say that eternal is more on the subjective conception of a person who has gone there. But nothing except love for God and life with God is eternal. So, hell is simply a classroom which is a tough classroom.
So, where lessons need to be taught in a more harder way than what would be the normal course of life. And there are beings. There are the supervisors.
So, the universe as I said is like a university. And in university you have different departments. So, there are different heads of departments for different things.
So, like that hell is also a department. And there is a head of department for that also. So, Yama Raj in Indian tradition is described to be the head.
Now, he is not an evil being. He is also a godly being. But he has got that purpose of reforming people through aggressive intervention.
So, hell is not meant to punish but it is meant to reform through some aggressive intervention. Thank you. So, we are short on time.
So, if anyone has more questions, we can come forward and meet Proji at the end of the programme.