Tread the path of the ears to the eyes and the heart

Srimad Bhagavatam class at Corvallis, Oregon (Srimad Bhagavatam 3.9.11)

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. So, today morning I will discuss from the Srimad Bhagavatam, third canto, ninth chapter.
This is the prayers that Brahma offers for creative energy. So, this represents the mood in which we all can and need to act in this world if we are to be successful. So, this chapter also contains the Chatur Shloki Bhagavatam, Bhagavatam in four verses.
That is slightly different. I will take 3.9.11. आसेशुतेक्षितपतोननातपुम्सम् यध्यध्यातूरुगायविभावयंति तत्तद्वपुप्रणियसे सदनुग्रहाय So, here Brahma is praying. तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू यू परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभ योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग � योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग परिभावित रुच्चरोजः तौम् भक्ति योग � desires of the devotee who worships him.
In this way you offer mercy to the devotees. So in the universe, in life at large, there are certain patterns which keep getting repeated. There was a famous historian Arnold Toynbee.
He said that the one thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing. What that means is, if you look at history, people again and again commit the same mistakes. People succumb to lust, people succumb to greed, people succumb to ego.
So we see the six enemies which are there in evidence throughout history. Sometimes big big wars, world wars break out because of minor ego clashes. So essentially the lesson that we learn from history is that we learn nothing.
We human beings keep committing the same mistakes again and again. And yet it is not necessary to commit those mistakes. So the Bhagavatam is not so much a chronological record of human history as it is a compendium of those who have successfully gone beyond the foibles of human nature.
That is those who have transcended the normal weaknesses that beset all human beings. The Bhagavatam offers us a narrative of their lives. The Bhagavatam’s focus in that sense is not literally describe what happened when.
At one sense if we look at it sceptically, history is nothing but a record of dead successful people. Successful people, but they’re all dead now. So in that sense, who did what? There’s a philosopher who said that news, one way we look at events in terms of what happened in the past, that is history.
What is happening now, we call that as news. But he said, what is news? He said, news is nothing but old things happening to new people. It is old things happening to new people.
Okay. There is a disaster over here and this happened to this place and there’s a calamity which happened in that place. There is this World Cup.
Four years ago this team won the World Cup. Now this team won the World Cup. So if we remove this surface appearance, essentially the same things keep happening, whether it is the past history or whether it is the present.
So what is important is not a precise record of what happened when. Before Newtonian physics came in, Newton was a person whose insights mark a sort of significant separation in the way humanity started viewing science and knowledge in general. So prior to him, because Newton, that began what was called as classical physics and classical physics was the foundation of the mechanistic universe.
Mechanistic universe means the universe is controlled by mechanical forces. And by understanding those forces, we can understand everything about the universe. That was the assumption that came about.
So now, yes, there is a mechanistic aspect to the universe, but that is not a complete description of the universe. So Newtonian physics led to, because in mechanistic conceptions of the universe, numbers are very important. If f is equal to gm1 m2 upon r square, if we say, then what is m1? What is the exact value of m1? What is the exact value of m2? What is the value of r? Numbers become very important.
Quantity becomes very important when the conception of the universe is mechanistic. But whether it is in India or in the Western world, prior to Newton, numbers were not considered very important. And so that was led to the account of, this is a whole big subject, but we are focussing on history.
So based on this, in giving a great importance to numbers, then that led to a different way of keeping history. Prior to that, the way of keeping history was, what was important is not precisely what happened when, but what was important was what is to be learned from what happened when. So history was seen more as a method for instruction through recollection, not the record of the precision of recollection.
It is not important exactly which date what happened. In many traditional cultures, people don’t really celebrate their birthdays. They do not even know their birthdays because the day is not considered very important.
In some Buddhist traditions, they have the idea that we have gone through so many births that every day could have been our birthday and every day could have been our dead day. So why celebrate? Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that birthday shouldn’t be celebrated. But this, the point which I’m making here is that in the past, the way of looking at the world, the way of recording things was different.
So now the Bhagavatam is called as Itihas. So Itihas can be translated as history at one level and that’s a fine translation. But if we consider that to be history, the way history is kept according to modern methods of historiography, where all precise facts are important, then we may find the Bhagavatam very unsatisfactory.
It doesn’t exactly describe when this happened, when this happened, if this king lived, for how many years he lived, and when did this happen, when did this happen. It doesn’t go into dates too much. So the focus of the Bhagavatam is recollection for the purpose of instruction.
We remember the past so that we can learn from the past. And what we have to learn ultimately is that how we can go beyond our fallible human nature to our transcendental spiritual nature. See, our current existence is two-dimensional.
We are spiritual beings caught in material bodies. And because we are spiritual beings caught in material bodies, so we have two kinds of drives. The body is more or less a machine geared for self-survival.
And Darwinian evolution talks about survival of the fittest, adaption of species for the fitness of the body. There is some element of truth in it, but it is not a complete truth because it looks only at the body. Yes, the body is a machine geared for survival.
But we are more than the body. So now, because the body is concerned only about survival and immediate bodily gratification, whereas the soul is concerned about deeper things in life. The soul longs for meaning, but the body settles for pudding.
What that means is, if we want to know the answers to the big questions of life, why do I exist? What is the purpose of my life? What am I meant to achieve in life? But these are the questions which our human heart longs to have answers for. But if we are given quick pleasures, the body settles for pudding. Oh, if you get nice food, why bother about anything else? So quite often, we can become too comfortable to be comfortable.
What that means is, if we become too materially comfortable with things, then that brings complacency. And then we are no longer spiritually comfortable. That means you’re not spiritually properly situated.
So the Bhagavatam repeatedly talks about austerity, tapasya. Today’s Ekadashi. Every fortnight we have opportunity to do some level of tapasya.
And the Bhagavatam actually begins with austerity. We see that begins with in the sense that we have the sages who are assembled at Naimisharanya. The Bhagavatam is a conversation at many levels.
This particular conversation which we are discussing in the third canto, this is actually a fourth level nesting in the conversations of the Bhagavatam. The first level nesting is, you know, you have in a computer called nested loops. So one loop inside another loop, inside another loop, inside another loop.
So like that, sometimes the Bhagavatam has so many levels of nesting that we can lose track who is speaking to whom. In the seventh canto, in the third and fourth chapters, the nesting goes to seven levels. One after another.
One person is speaking something. So we have the outer level nesting is Suta Goswami speaking to the sages of Naimisharanya. Actually, we could say the outermost level of nesting is Vyasadeva speaking to all of us through the book that he has written.
But within the Bhagavatam itself, the first level nesting is Suta Goswami speaking to the Naimisharanya sages. And all the sages have sat down for performing austerities. So then second level nesting is we have Shukadeva Goswami speaking to Parishad Maharaj.
Suta Goswami is recollecting that Shukadeva Goswami spoke this. So Shukadeva Goswami speaks to Parishad Maharaj. So actually that starts from the last few verses of the 19th chapter of the first canto.
So actually Shukadeva Goswami appears. Prabhupada titles the 19th chapter as Appearance of Shukadeva Goswami. And then Shukadeva Goswami doesn’t speak in the first canto.
His speaking begins from the second canto, first chapter, first verse. And his speaking continues to the 12th canto, fifth chapter. So at the end of the fifth chapter, Shukadeva Goswami departs.
He leaves from there. And then Parishad Maharaj is bitten by that snake. And there that narrative ends.
And then after that, again Suta Goswami starts speaking to the… Suta Goswami’s speech to the sages continues. And that goes on till the end of the 12th chapter. So this is the second level nesting.
And here also we see that Parishad Maharaj is performing austerity. He has said, Naishadati Dussaha Shunmam. He says, Tattodam Apinabadhate Pidantibantam Tammukham Bhojam Chutam Harikatamritam.
He says, Oh Shukadeva Goswami, do not hurry up in your speaking. Do not think that because I am fasting from food, I am fasting from water, I am fasting even from sleep. But still it doesn’t mean… I am fasting from food and water.
That doesn’t mean that I want this whole thing to get over so that I can break my fast. He says, Apinabandham Tammukham Bhojam. From your lotus lips, I am getting the nectar of Harikatha.
And that is nourishing me spiritually. Therefore, I do not… I am not feeling any discomfort, any misery because of the austerity. So the point is, again Parishad Maharaj is also performing austerity.
The third level nesting is what starts the third canto or third canto onwards is Maitreya Rishi is speaking to Vidura. That begins from the third fourth chapter, third canto, third chapter onwards. So there, this setting is that just before this, Maitreya Rishi has heard the Uddhava Gita from Krishna.
And that narration will be in the 11th canto. From the 11th canto, 6th chapter onwards, around the 30th chapter. So the third level nesting is that Maitreya Rishi is speaking to Vidura.
And within that third canto nesting, then there is a report of the events that transpired at different times in the universe. So more or less from the third canto onwards, from the 6th, 7th chapters, the whole Bhagavatam can be read as a narrative of events in one day of Brahma. So prior to that, actually the first and second canto, first canto is setting the scene.
The second canto discusses various subjects from third canto onwards, not the first chapter, some of the 6th, 7th chapters onwards. It is the birth of Brahma is described. And from there onwards, the Bhagavatam is a linear narrative of the events in one day of Brahma.
Again, it’s not a precise historical narrative, but roughly it’s a linear narrative. So for example, the first Manu is Swayambhuva Manu. So in one day of Brahma, there are 14 Manus.
The first Manu is Swayambhuva Manu. And from the third canto onwards, till the 8th canto, the various kings during the period of Swayambhuva Manu are described. Then 8th canto from Swayambhuva Manu to the current Manu which is Vaivasvata Manu, the 7 Manus are described just briefly in one chapter.
And then from the 8th canto onwards till the 12th canto, the events in the Vaivasvata Manu’s Manvantara are described. So it is in this Vaivasvata Manvantara that Rama appears. It is in the Vaivasvata Manvantara.
So that way, roughly the Bhagavatam becomes historical, not in a historiographic sense of today, but in the instructional sense of the past from the third canto onwards. So right now, here we are at the beginning of the universe, beginning of the early days of the universe, beginning of the day of Brahma. And at this stage, Brahma is the only resident of the universe.
There is no one else there at all. And sometimes when there are too many people around us and making too many demands, we feel, I just want to be alone. Just leave me alone, we may say.
And to some extent, that desire for relief is fine. There are also people who are introvert, who get strength when they are alone and they get drained out when they are with people for too long. And there are extroverts who love to be with people.
The more they are with people, the more they feel happy. But either way, sometimes when we just feel too burdened with people, I just want to be alone, leave me alone. But then, if we were left alone forever, that would be a scary prospect actually.
And not just if you are left alone in an unknown place. Oh, we just, suppose we go to sleep and wake up and find, where am I? There is no one anywhere around. And not only if we are left alone in an unknown place, in utter darkness, that would be even scarier, very scary, it is scariest actually.
So, Brahmaji is born in such a situation. He is born, he is completely alone. He does not know where he is.
He does not even know, can’t see any tamasam, tamasam gahanam gabhiram, it is said. The darkness is total darkness that he can’t see anything. He is actually on a lotus and all that he can sense is that there is some, if we are close to an ocean or a river, we can hear the sound of the water.
So, like that, Brahmaji can hear that I am on something and below me, there is water. There are waves, giant waves. And as he is sitting there, suddenly he starts feeling stormy waves coming.
And then the whole lotus starts shaking. And there, now he has this fear, I will just fall off into the ocean. So, he is holding on for dear life.
And he doesn’t know what to do. So, at that time, he hears the words, tarpa, tarpa, tarpa, perform austerity, perform austerity. So, you know, we may not literally be on a lotus in a dark place, but we all are also in a situation of predicament.
We may not always be in predicament, but we also face problems at times. And sometimes we face problems where we feel, what is the solution? And we just feel there is no way ahead. If I do this, this problem will come.
If I do this, this problem will come. If I do this, this problem will come. What should I do? So, when we face indecision, when we face perplexity, when we face adversity in life, the Bhagavatam offers us this narrative, through this narrative, the instruction that rather than immediately frantically trying to find out a solution, okay, this is a problem, let me solve this, let me solve this, let me solve this.
Rather than doing that, better turn inwards. So, tarpa. Now, Brahma, how does he know at that time, what does tarpa mean? There is no guru to tell him how to do austerity also.
But what he understands is that tarpa means the external world is, externals are too agitated, too uncertain, too anxiety inducing. So, let me turn inwards. So, the essence of austerity is simply turning inwards.
Now, how we turn inwards? There are different processes of yoga. And Bhakti yoga sometimes may seem a very external process. We dance, we go to temples, we go to pilgrimages.
But the purpose of these externals is to take us on an internal journey. Krishna is in our heart and that same Krishna manifests externally as the deities. That same Krishna manifests in the holy places.
That same Krishna manifests when we come for satsang programmes. And the purpose of connecting our consciousness with these external manifestations of Krishna is to enable us to connect internally with him. So, Brahmaji, there are no, at this time, there are no external manifestations of Krishna.
So, tam bhakti yoga paribhavit prutsaroja. As he’s praying over here, you, O Lord, become manifest through the practise of bhakti yoga. So, when we turn inwards, we experience our own unchanging spiritual side.
We experience Krishna. We experience the shelter, the strength, the solace that comes by remembering Krishna. And then, having experienced that security, then when we emerge outwards to face the problems, we are calmer, our head is clearer and we can deal with the problem more effectively.
Now, often when a problem comes, either we may become overwhelmed and depressed, oh, I can’t deal with this problem. Or we may go, that happens when we are in tamo guna. Tamo guna means, we just see, there is this sattva guna, rajo guna, tamo guna.
Sattva guna is characterised by knowledge, by contemplation followed by action. We think calmly and then we act. Whereas in rajo guna, there is action without contemplation.
We don’t think, we just act. We often become panicky. And in tamo guna, there is neither action nor contemplation.
There is simply paralysis. Sometimes when people face problems, they just get so depressed, dejected. I can’t do anything.
Everything is wrong. I am wrong. The world is rotten.
People just get depressed. So either way, what is happening is that the two problematic responses to problems are action without contemplation or paralysis without action or contemplation. Just panic.
Both are undesirable. Quite often, when a problem comes on us externally, suppose we are fighting a war. So just every day, I write an article on the Bhagavad Gita on gitaadily.com. Just today morning before I came, I wrote an article talking about how to beat problems.
We need to beat down the problematic mind first. Suppose two armies are fighting a war and say, now this army, army A wants to know how strong the army B is. Then they can decide, make a strategy about how we should fight the war.
But if, now they have some intelligence, they have some spies, some espionage by which they can come to know how strong this army is. But sometimes there are agents who are double spies. They spy for this side also, that side also.
So suppose their intelligence sources have been compromised. And then the opposite side has say 1,000 army, but that compromised source informed that they were 10,000 forces. Then that exaggeration of the opposite forces will demoralise this.
Oh, we are only a thousand and they are 10,000. How will we be able to fight with them? So if people, if this army gets misled by like this, then they will be demoralised even before the fight starts. And that way they’ll be defeated mentally before even they start fighting physically.
So same way, the mind is like that compromised agent within us. And what the mind does is, it exaggerates the magnitude of the problem. There is a problem and we need to deal with it.
But the mind exaggerates the magnitude of the problem. And one problem, yes, if we look at our life and the problems have come, problems have gone. But when a present problem is there, the mind makes us think, oh, if I don’t solve this problem, the whole world is going to come down.
No, when the mind exaggerates the magnitude of the problem and by that it paralyses us. So if we just rush out to deal with the problem, whenever the problem comes up, quite often we complicate the problem because we don’t think properly and we do things which further aggravate the problem. But instead, if we turn inwards, connect with Krishna through Bhakti Yoga, then we understand, okay, this problem may be very big, but bigger than that is Krishna.
He’s the biggest reality. And he is by my side all the time. Krishna is the guide by our side all the time.
And when we become Krishna consciousness in this way, then we are not consumed by problem consciousness. This problem is so big, this problem is so big. So by consciousness of Krishna, first of all, we remove from the mind the passion by which it exaggerates the magnitude of the problem.
And secondly, we also understand Krishna is a bigger reality than the problem. And then we can deal with the problem better. So this is the essence of austerity.
Austerity is not just that we have to mortify our body by fasting. Austerity is not that we have to neglect our necessities. The essence of austerity is to check the mind, check the default outflow of our consciousness and to make our consciousness flow inwards.
Now, we can make our flow of consciousness flow inwards in various ways. And the most powerful way is Shuddha Ikshita Patha Na Tapam Saam. Shuddha Ikshita Patha.
Our consciousness can move inwards towards Krishna through the process of spiritual sound vibration. Spiritual sound vibration is not just the Hare Krishna Mahamantra. It is the verses of the Bhagavatam, the verses of the Bhagavad Gita and it is the study and the hearing of the message based on these books.
So this acts like a pathway for our consciousness to move inwards. Suppose there is a mountain here, there is a mountain here and I have to go from this mountain to this mountain. There is no easy way.
Either I have to climb down the whole way and I can climb up. But if there is a pathway, if there is a bridge, then you can easily go across. So our consciousness, one mountain is like material level of consciousness and the other mountain is spiritual level of consciousness.
And our consciousness is right now caught at the material level. We want to take it to the spiritual level. So how do we do that? Spiritual sound vibration acts like a bridge.
Spiritual sound vibration bridges the gap between material level of consciousness and spiritual level of consciousness. What this means is when we chant the holy names, when we recite scriptural verses, when we hear Krishna Katha, basically when we expose our consciousness to spiritual sound vibration, at that time our consciousness becomes, gets a pathway. To the extent our consciousness becomes absorbed in that spiritual sound vibration, we will get elevated.
So now rather than looking at these two mountains, we can look at that as another way. Instead of horizontally, we can make it vertical. So there is a ground floor and there is a fifth floor.
Now there is an elevator. The elevator, if we get into the elevator, we will go up from the ground floor to the fifth floor. So the spiritual sound vibration is like that elevator.
Now the spiritual sound vibration is the elevator which can elevate our consciousness. But the important thing is we have to get into the elevator. You know if we enter the elevator, press button five and come out.
The elevator will go up to five but we will not go up. So like that, if we, when we chant the holy names or when we hear Krishna Katha, the point is not just to expose ourselves to sound vibration. It is to actually be attentive to the sound vibration.
So if we are just ritualistically chanting the holy name, if we are just ritualistically hearing Krishna Katha, ritualistically studying scripture, then that is like just pressing the button for the fifth floor and then coming out. Because that means externally, see what happens when we hear classes, our body sits for the class, our mind goes for walks. It goes here, goes there.
And then sometimes if there is a joke in the class, we don’t want to miss the joke. So mind comes, hey what was the joke? What was the joke? And we ask our neighbours, what was the joke? So quite often, if we find that the process of spiritual sound vibration is not elevating our consciousness, then the reason for that is we are not situating ourselves in that consciousness. We are having the elevator, we are pressing the button of the elevator, but we are not staying in the elevator.
So when we expose ourselves to spiritual sound vibration, it is not just lip deep, it has to be heart deep. So Shrut Ikshit Patha. So it is said, Rt Sarojya.
So it is said that Rt, Krishna is manifest in the heart. Sarojya, the lotus of the heart. So the word lotus is often used, the metaphor of a lotus is frequently used to describe something which transcends its immediate reality.
We can recite this prayer from Kunti Maharani. I’ll recite this prayer, you can say after me. So here, Kunti Maharani is comparing various parts of Krishna’s body to a pankaja.
Pankaja is lotus, but pankaja actually means what ja is to be born of. Panka is mud. So pankaja is that which is born of mud.
Another name for lotus also Sarojya as I mentioned, Rt Sarojya as is used in this verse, that is born in water. So both are true. Lotus appears even in muddy water.
Sometimes if you see, go to a lake, because of sedimentation, the lake may be very dirty, but within that lake, beautiful lotuses are appearing. So like that, this world is a contaminated place. All of us are contaminated essentially by selfish desire.
Selfish desire can manifest as lust, anger, greed, envy, pride, illusion, but selfishness is the fundamental contamination. When Krishna comes to this world, his motive is completely selfless. He doesn’t need us.
He is self-satisfied in the spiritual world. Atmaram, self-satisfied. But he comes to elevate us, to liberate us.
So he is not affected by the selfishness that defines everyone in this, that characterises everyone, that contaminates everyone in this world. He is completely selfless and pure. So that way, this world is like a dirty lake, but within that, Krishna has appeared like the pure lotus.
So here, Kunti Maharani compares Krishna to a lotus. He says that your navel is like a lotus, your garland is made of lotuses, your eyes are of lotus, your lotus feet, your eyes are of lotus, are lotus-like and your feet are lotus-like. Your feet are lotus feet.
Your feet are lotus feet means that Krishna essentially is, just as a lotus, transcends its circumstances. Similarly, Krishna transcends his circumstances. So rtsaroja, that means in our heart, although there are many selfish emotions, when Krishna manifests, then even in our heart, selflessness, that is other-only, that is pure, that is transcendental.
So selfless love for Krishna and selfless love for others in relationship with Krishna, that will manifest in our heart. So now, how does this manifestation takes place? Shuddha Ikshitapatha. So we hear the sound vibration regularly.
And when we hear the sound vibration regularly, by that, we become purified. And when we become purified, then the misperception that is caused by the mind, that is removed. So I’ll conclude with one example that there are two kinds of blindness.
One is called congenital blindness and the other is adventitious blindness. Congenital means the person is born blind. Adventitious is the person was born with normal eyes, but because of some accident, the person lost the eyes.
Now suppose there are two people who are blind like this and both of them, some surgery is done, some medicine is provided, by some measure, both of them get their eyes back. Now the external sense, both of them have their eyes back. But the people who have been congenitally blind, they, even when the light and signals from the outer world come into their eyes and go through their eyes to the optic nerve, to the visual area of the brain, they don’t make any sense of things because they have no frame of reference in which to interpret things.
So for example, I saw a video of a person who is a carpenter, blind carpenter. And then he got eyes and he had the same knife which he was using all his life. Just look at it.
What is this? He couldn’t make any sense of it. And then asked when he touched it, this is knife, immediately started picking and using it. So what this means is we don’t just see with our eyes, we see with our intelligence that enables us to make sense of what we see.
And that intelligence, it’s not just the intelligence of the faculty, that intelligence must have a frame of reference in which we can make sense of what we see. So similarly, for us, even if Krishna came right in front of us, Duryodhana, Krishna came right in front of him. And not only did Krishna come in his samasundar form, two-handed form, but he also manifested the Vishwaroop.
But neither of them had any effect on Duryodhana. He just thought, Krishna, you showed some magic. Before the Kurukshetra war, Duryodhana was so arrogant and so foolishly confident that I am going to win the war.
So he thought that actually that my forces are so powerful that there will not even be a fight. My forces will easily crush them. So in order to at least we should have some fun of fighting, he actually sent a messenger, Shakuni’s son Uluka, to provoke the Pandavas.
He said, if they are provoked and they will fight, then we will have some fight. As I said, there will be no fight also. He was so arrogant and he goaded everyone.
He said, oh Arjuna, just see what I did. I made you into a eunuch. And oh Bheema, you think you are so proud? I reduced you to a mere cook.
And Yudhishthir, what, you think you are so virtuous? I made you gamble away your own wife. Where is your virtue now? So like that, he sent insulting messages to everyone. And then when it was Krishna, he said, Krishna, you dazzled everyone by doing some magic and showing some form in the assembly.
But you know, all this magic is not going to help in the war field. Let us see what forms you show there. I can also show many forms, but forms won’t matter.
I have got the forces here. So like that, he goaded everyone. So the point I am making is that although he saw the form of Krishna, still that did not have any effect.
Why? Because he did not have a frame of reference to understand Krishna’s Godhood. So we don’t see just with the eyes. We need to get the intelligence by which we can make sense of what we see.
So when it is said, shuddha ikshita patha, that means that when we hear the Bhagavatam systematically, understand the Bhagavatam’s message, which centres essentially on the glories of Krishna, then with that understanding, when we thereafter look at the world, and thereafter we look at Krishna, then when Krishna manifests, we understand Him. We actually understand that He is the supreme object of love for us. And we fall in love with Him.
Shuddha ikshita patha. So by exposing ourselves to spiritual sound vibration, and not just exposing ourselves, but by situating ourselves in spiritual sound vibration, our intelligence will develop and internally we will get a spiritual worldview, a frame of reference in which we can understand Krishna and relish Krishna’s love for us and express our love for Him and thus enter into a life of eternal love. I’ll summarise.
I started by talking about how here Brahma is offering prayers for creative energy. And he’s saying you manifest through the path of the heart in the form that the devotee desires to worship you. So I talked about how the Bhagavatam is history, but not in a historiographical sense.
That is coming from the Newtonian mechanistic worldview, where quantity is given a lot of importance. And that notion of historiography is primarily just a record of dead successful people, people who live and people who have died. And even news is nothing but… What is news? Old things happening to new people.
So that sort of just road fact keeping is not giving very much importance. Traditionally history means it was recollection for instruction. And the Bhagavatam describes history in that narrative.
And I discussed about how there are multiple conversations nested within each other. So this is the fourth level nesting. And all of them are exhibiting… are performing austerity by hearing.
So we have Parikshit… we have Sages performing… hearing from Suta Goswami and performing austerity and use for the benefit of people in Kali Yuga. We have Parikshit Maharaj fasting for seven days while hearing from Suta Goswami. Then we have Vidura… we have Vidura and Maitreya in the forest.
And there they are… Maitreya is hearing… Maitreya is speaking, Vidura is hearing. They’re putting aside everything else. So not Maitreya speaking to Vidura and Uddhava is also there at that time.
And then here Krishna is speaking to Brahma. That conversation will go on in which Brahma is offering prayers to Krishna. And Brahma we saw began by performing austerity.
And the essence of austerity is taking our consciousness inwards instead of letting it go in its default outward flow as Brahma did when he was externally alone in an unknown place in utter darkness having no sense of identity or purpose. Very scary situation. But through Tapa, he connected to the Supreme Lord and he became enlightened.
Similarly, life sometimes puts us in scary situations. And quite often if we face a problem, the mind makes the problem bigger than it is. Just like sometimes some compromised intelligence sources may give misinformation about the magnitude of the enemy forces and thus demoralise the army.
So rather than just acting immediately, so goodness is contemplation and action. Prajoguna is action without contemplation. And Tamoguna is paralysis.
Neither action nor contemplation. Just paralysis. So this is another way they put it.
Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen and some people wonder what happened. This is Sattva, Raja and Tama. Now, if we take time out to meditate, then we come at least to Sattva if not beyond.
And then we can act effectively. And then meditation or austerity, it is facilitated through spiritual sound vibration. Spiritual sound vibration acts like the elevator of our consciousness.
It lifts us from material level to spiritual level and enables us to go inwards and experience Krishna. But for that, the elevator may just automatically go up and come down. But we need to be situated in the elevator to go up.
Similarly, we need to situate our consciousness in the spiritual sound vibration. That means we need to be attentive, to be receptive. And then we will experience the elevating effect.
And then just our consciousness gets elevated, then our perception gets expanded, our perception gets deepened. And then we can perceive Krishna. I explained that how we don’t just see with the eyes, we see with the intelligence and the frame of reference that enables us to make sense of what we see.
It’s like a congenitally blind carpenter, even on seeing the same knife which he has used throughout his life, can’t understand what this is because there’s no frame of reference. So hearing the Bhagavatam gives us the frame of reference by which when we encounter Krishna through his various manifestations, we can actually appreciate his presence. Otherwise, even if Krishna comes in his own self-same form as he came before Duryodhana, Duryodhana did not recognise Krishna.
But by cherishing the spiritual sound vibration which enables us to experience Krishna and to make and gives us the intelligence by which to make sense of that experience, we can elevate our consciousness and ultimately become liberated. So Krishna manifests in the lotus of the heart. The lotus is transcendental.
Lotus transcends the dirty circumstances. Similarly, Krishna is selfless in the selfish world. To the extent we connect with Krishna, our life also becomes enlivened, energised with selfless spiritual love.
Thank you very much. Are there any questions?