Vamana pastime analysis 1 – When good people do good things at a heavy cost

[Talk at Charlotte, USA]

Video:

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
That’s even more irritating. That’s infuriating. That’s even more irritating.
But, that’s also a bad thing. Why is this person against me? What have I done to deserve this? But, that’s also a bad thing. You feel like that? But, that’s also a bad thing.
But, the worst situation is, where God is causing the distress. But, the worst situation is, where God is causing the distress. We normally think of God as the deliverer from distress.
And, if God himself causes the distress to us, where do we go? And, if God himself causes the distress to us, where do we go? In fact, this, what Bali Maharaj demonstrates, is actually demonstrated further in the 10th canto, So, what is, if God is causing us suffering, then where do we go? So, what is, if God is causing us suffering, then where do we go? If the world causes suffering, we go to God. If the world causes suffering, we go to God. If God causes suffering, where do we go to? sometimes if you don’t understand the context it can appear confusing.
The Mahabharata has the Vishnu Sahasranama, but the Mahabharata also has the Shiva Sahasranama. So when the context is the glory of Lord Shiva, even Lord Shiva will be glorified. So here the context is Bali Maharaja’s dynasty is being glorified and there’s a lot of glorification.
So the point here is Vamana is not here a teacher, at this point at least, he’s not a teacher of Shastra giving Siddhanta. So he is preparing the ground for a particular request. So then after that, then he glorifies Bali Maharaja’s father, Virochan, and then after that he comes to Bali Maharaja.
He says, no one in your dynasty has ever refused charity and I’m confident you also will not refuse charity. And then he makes his request. See normally if somebody starts praising us a lot, our mind starts working, you know.
If this person is speaking so nicely to me, you have to ask me something out of this. What do you want? And if somebody is praising us a lot, that means they are going to ask a lot from us. You need something like that.
So then after he glorifies him so much, then he makes the request. And he says, I want three steps of land. And significantly adds one condition.
I want three steps of land according to my steps. It’s like a request that is anti-climax. It’s a request that is anti-climax.
Prabhupada would tell the story of once the mountain was going to give birth. And mountain was going to give birth, a giant mountain. Everybody wondered, if the mountain is so big, what will he want from the mountain? So then everybody was waiting for the time, the time, and then the time came from the mountains and tiny mice came out.
So Prabhupada says sometimes like this, today we have big, big educational institutions, but from them the products that are coming out, they have very little self-mastery, they have very little spiritual knowledge. So it’s an anti-climax. So anyway, on hearing this Bali Maharaj is taken aback.
And he says, hey, what’s going on? He says, the words you have spoken are very wise, but the request you made doesn’t seem to be wise. Because you are still a child, probably you don’t understand the value of things. Anyone who comes to me and asks for charity, they needn’t have to go to ask for charity from anyone else after this.
Therefore, ask abundantly. And then, Vamana replies that, actually, as a Brahmana, if I ask for more than what I need, I lose my Brahminical dharma. And I’m satisfied with whatever, with three steps.
If somebody’s greedy, they will never be satisfied, no matter how much they have. This theme of greed is also a big theme, but I will not go into it today. Maybe tomorrow morning’s Bhagavatam class, we can talk about satisfaction, ambition and devotion, something like that.
But here, so he says, if somebody is not satisfied with what they have, because their senses and mind are uncontrolled, then they will never be satisfied. There’s one point I’ll make about this. Let’s see, normally, if we consider our situation, this is the things that we have, and things we have, and these are all the things we don’t have.
Often, we think that to become happy, we need to get the things that we don’t have. If we can move more things from the category of what I don’t have to what I have, then I will become happy. Or at least, I’ll become happier than what I am right now.
So, now, at one level, it is true. Especially, if the basic needs of life are not available. Many researchers have done a comparison of wealth and happiness.
So, if somebody is below the poverty line, where the basic needs are not met, then happiness is proportional to wealth. If I don’t have enough money to buy a meal, and then I get enough money to buy a meal, immediately, I get relief, I get happiness. So, up to the point where the basic needs are met, there’s a direct proportion between wealth and happiness.
But beyond that, it becomes very unpredictable. It’s erratic. After that, happiness depends not on how much money we are making, but on what we are making with our money.
What are the values with which we are living? If somebody is very, very super competitive, they want to get to the top in any profession, they work extremely hard to get to the top, but they have no time for their family, they have no time for friends, they are suspicious of everyone, and they may have a huge house. But then, the huge house only offers them the privilege of lot of space in which to feel lonely. So, making money is important, but what we are making with money is even more important.
So, the point here is that we all think that there are things which I don’t have, and if I get them, I’ll become happy. It is true up to a particular extent. But when he says that uncontrolled mind and senses, what it means is that if our mind is uncontrolled, it will always look at the things we don’t have.
And no matter how many things we bring into the category of what we don’t have, still there will be things which are in the category of what we don’t have. And we will keep looking at that. We’ll keep looking at that and we’ll never be satisfied.
So, he talks about contentment. Satisfaction comes by controlling the mind so that the mind looks at what one has and is satisfied with it. If the mind is uncontrolled, it will look at the things we don’t have and will still be satisfied.
So, when he speaks like this, Bali Maharaj accepts, okay, if you know what you’re doing, then go ahead, ask for three steps. And at this point, when he’s about to, with sanctified water, make a solemn promise, something unexpected happens. Shukracharya comes over there and says, stop, stop, stop.
He said, don’t, don’t honor this request, don’t make this promise. And Shukracharya says, this is not just an ordinary brahmana, this is Vishnu. And he has sided with your enemies, the gods.
Previous chapters have described how Bali Maharaj, by performing the yajna, the Vishvajit yajna, which Shukracharya asks him to do, he gets enough power by which he conquers the universe. Vishvajit, to conquer the universe, that is the yajna, which he has told him to do and it has been successful. So, he has been able to defeat the devatas.
He has been ruling even the heavens. And the point of this background is that Shukracharya’s advice has worked, worked big time for him. Not only that much, it’s even more than that.
That actually Bali Maharaj had been killed earlier in a war, but Shukracharya revived him. He restored his life and now has given him unparalleled universal prosperity. And at that time for him, he will take any advice seriously.
Say, if somebody invests in stocks and you have some dealer, some advisor, you have invested some, he says, invest over here. And his stock has multiplied enormously. And that person says, don’t invest over here.
He will take that advice very seriously, I don’t want to invest over here. So, he is a brahmana and he is telling, don’t give charity. Because it’s Vishnu and he actually gives a full description.
He is asking for three steps, but know that he has said, it’s my three steps. And he will expand his steps and with two steps only he will cover up the earth and the remaining planets. And thus, he will declare that there is no space for the third step.
And he will declare that you have failed to honor your promise and this way you will be dishonored. Therefore, do not. Do not listen to him.
Do not give him charity. And then he goes on further for justifying also. Even if you feel, you have said you will give charity, but in emergency situations, one should not honor one’s words.
And he gives various cases where there is apad dharma, emergency duty. Now, there is dharma, which is normal duty. There is apad dharma, which is emergency duty.
Now, the problem is that different people define emergency differently. So, I might say this is apati for me, I won’t do this. But whether that is really apad or not, that has to be carefully evaluated.
So, we will see that the definition of apad is different. So, he says that do not honor this request. And at that point, Bali Maharaj thinks deeply, what should I do? Now, for him, he has one brahmana who is visiting him and he has promised some charity to him.
There is another brahmana who has been with him for a long time. And a brahmana has actually done a lot of good to him. So, there is a saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
That is something which you have secure. It is better than something which is tentative. Maybe you will get it, you could say a brahmana with a proven track record.
And a brahmana looks attractive. So, endearing, he has spoken very sweetly, but still he is an untested commodity. So, he has to choose.
Now, at this point, by every, you could say, by every reasonable reasoning, he should listen to Shukracharya. Listen to Shukracharya and say, okay, I will not do this charity. But he doesn’t.
And he doesn’t and he gives a particular reasoning for that. And his reasoning is also very revealing. Why? He says that I will not give.
The main reason he says is, I have given my word. I am an honorable person. And as an honorable person, to dishonor my word is worse than that.
Actually, some people take their words very seriously. They promise something, they will do it. Some people take only words seriously.
That means they seriously speak words and they don’t do anything after that. They speak very earnestly, but when it comes to doing, when did I say that? Some people seem to have the ability to selectively delete their memory. So, sometimes they are just making it up and sometimes they genuinely forget it.
It’s different people’s minds work differently. Some people, they are more concerned about assuring people than helping people. When somebody is in trouble, they will assure that person, everything will be alright, I will help you.
So, at that time, they are not ill-intentioned. But what happens is, their concern is, you are in distress, I don’t want you to be in distress. They will assure, but when it comes time of actually helping, they forget it.
So, it’s not that they are ill-intentioned, it’s just the way their psychology works is, they will over promise and then when it comes the time of delivering, they become MIA, missing in action. They just disappear completely. So, like the politicians, yes, they are active in action before the elections.
And what did I say, the politician shakes your hand before the elections and shakes your faith after the elections. So, anyway, at this point, he says, I’m an honourable person. And as an honourable person, he gives multiple reasons.
He says, there are great souls who have even given up their lives for the sake of truth. He says, for me, if I can give up my life for serving a Brahmana, why should I not do that? It’s interesting. He’s saying I’m serving a Brahmana, but he’s not thinking of serving Shukracharya as a Brahmana.
So, then he says further that if what you say is true that this is Vishnu, then I am confident that just as I care for my honour, Vishnu also cares for his honour. And Vishnu will not kill me. Vishnu, if it is really Vishnu, if he’s so scared of me that he’s come in the garb of Brahmana to ask charity from me, then giving charity to him will enhance my honour.
If he’s Vishnu and if he’s going to remove this garb and fight against me, then I’m sure he’ll fight honourably. And either he will be killed by me or I’ll be killed by him. But either way, I will give charity.
So, at this point, there is nothing directly devotional in the approach of Bali Maharaj. What is there is, it’s honour. I will act honourably.
Now, honour to act honourably is very good. But he’s talking about honour, reputation, dynasty. He’s not thinking that Vishnu is everything and I am meant to offer everything to Vishnu.
This is not the thought for him at this time. There is a particular time when there’s a dramatic turn that happens in the lives of certain characters. And at this point, when he gives the charity, at that time, we’ll see how Vishnu expands.
But here, I would like to stop at this point. I will continue tomorrow. You can have some questions.
But what happened here, this point, the point I was making here is that I started by talking about what do good people do when bad things happen to them. So, through this discussion, what is being built up is how Bali Maharaj is such a good person. He’s such a good person that even when his own Guru tells him to do a bad thing, he says no.
He says no. So, for such a good person, he does such a good thing and then such a bad thing happens to him because of whom? Because of God, who is supposed to be all good. So, what kind of outrage is this? What kind of atrocity is this? So, at that point, how he responds and why he responds that way, that is very special.
So, there is a time in these great characters’ life, like Rutaasu’s life also, I’ll talk tomorrow, at a particular time, suddenly it changes. He’s acting like a Rakshasa up to a particular point and suddenly starts acting like a devotee. Here also, he’s acting like an honourable Kshatriya, but suddenly it will change.
But the change requires a great challenge. Usually, we don’t change till the price of changing becomes less than the cost of staying where we are. The price of changing becomes less or the cost of staying where we are becomes so much that we have to change.
So, sometimes Krishna does that, where we are living, he just increases the cost over there and then we are forced to change. So, when apparently a bad thing is happening to a good person, it is not so that God is dissatisfied with their being good and that they should become bad now. Why should He? Actually, God is happy with their being good, but He wants them to rise from goodness to excellence, goodness to transcendence.
And how various characters rise from goodness to transcendence when bad things happen to them, that is the overarching theme of the Bhagavatam. So, to summarize today’s class, I spoke on this theme of what do good people do when bad things happen to them. That is the overarching story, the mood of the Bhagavatam which is going to help Parikshit Maharaj to cope with the terrible thing that has happened to him for a small infraction, death sentence.
And we see that Dhruva Maharaj is insulted like that, Prahlad is attempted to be assassinated like that. But there are bad people doing bad things, that’s understandable. Good people doing bad things is a little more difficult to understand.
But God apparently doing a bad thing is almost unacceptable. So, that’s what happens to Bali Maharaj and that’s what happens to the Gopis. And through it all, how the great characters react, how do they respond, that’s what is described.
So, in this story I talked about how Bali Maharaj is doing Yajna and at that time he is given Dana and Vamana comes over there and Vamana wins by his effulgence and then he speaks counterfactually. Absolute truth doesn’t always speak the absolute truth because context is important. And then he gives a discourse on contentment by saying that for happiness how much our possessions are is not important, how much things we can move from what we don’t have to what I have is not important.
How much my mind is controlled so that I can learn to look at what I have, that is important. And then after that, Bali Maharaj says, okay, first you think this is a child who doesn’t know the value of things, but now if you know what you are doing, ask what you want. I will give you three steps of land as per your steps.
And then Shukracharya stops. He is Vishnu, you will steal everything. He has come on the behalf of your enemies.
And for Bali Maharaj, this is a Brahmana who has saved his life and has given him heavens. And this is an unknown Brahmana. But still, because he wants to be truthful, he says, I will give charity.
So he goes against reason to do good. There is no transcendence in his reasoning. But he wants to be virtuous in terms of being an honorable person.
And when he is ready to pay such a price for being good, instead of being rewarded, he will apparently be punished. And how he responds to that and why Brahmana does that, we will talk in tomorrow’s class. Thank you very much.
Are there any questions or comments? Yes. Yeah. Correct.
So, okay. If the absolute truth doesn’t speak the absolute truth, then it is always possible that people may take it out of context and then it can cause a lot of damage. Yes, that’s why it’s important that we learn how to learn scripture.
We don’t just learn scripture, but we learn how to learn scripture. That means that scripture was traditionally studied under a guru. And the guru, the idea of a guru is that the guru has assimilated the essence of scripture.
And then we learn it from them. And then we have opportunity to clarify, to get better understandings. And one of the, it’s very important that the context we see, so often we quote certain verses from scripture.
And it’s good to quote verses, but sometimes the verses come in a particular context. And if you don’t understand that context, then we can end up with getting some different meaning or some opposite meaning also. And in fact, there is a philosophy of language.
It’s a big subject that where do the meanings of words reside? Do they reside in the dictionary? You could say they reside in the dictionary. But in English, I think the word run has something like several hundred meanings. It’s like run means, I’m going to run in a marathon.
I’m going to run in an election. They do different kinds of running. The machine has stopped running.
That’s another kind of running. Isn’t it? So you can have run, the word run has so many meanings. And somebody only looks at the dictionary.
Then you will not understand which meaning to apply. So that’s why actually, if somebody only reads the dictionary to understand meanings, if somebody wants to improve their vocabulary, they say don’t just memorize the words, see how the words are used, memorize the meanings of the words, see how they are used in sentences. Because only then we come to know, okay, this word means this.
Sometimes you may look at this word and this word are synonymous. But certain words may have certain connotations, which may not be seen just by the dictionary meaning. So it happens so many times that if you just take one word in a different context, I was in London and I gave a class at a youth meeting.
I have a lot of question answers. And the question answers went quite well by Krishnamurti. And then the organizer came to me with a bright smile.
He says, you killed it. And what did I kill? I thought it was some insect, I sat on it. Or what? If I killed it, why are you smiling like this? So he was using it in a non-literal sense.
It’s a non-literal meaning derived from a hunting metaphor. Like say somebody goes for hunting and somebody shoots. You killed it.
That is just spot on. You are a target. You perform very well.
So if you killed it, if I take it the literal meaning, I’ll be alarmed. So similarly, this literal and metaphor, literal and non-literal meanings is one way. But context is extremely important to understand things.
And scripture is giving eternal truths. But eternal truths are spoken in a particular context. So we have to look at the context.
If you look at the context, the Bhagavad Gita’s spirituality, the Bhagavad Gita’s bhakti is very world affirming. Arjuna wants to renounce the world and Krishna says fight in the world. The Bhagavatam’s spirituality, Bhagavatam’s bhakti is very world renouncing.
Why? Because context is different. In the Bhagavad Gita’s analysis, the way Krishna analyzes it, it is like either you do bhakti yoga, if you can’t do bhakti yoga, you do karma yoga. But there is practically no verse in the Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna recommends Jnana Yoga.
Jnana Yoga is there, but he is not recommending Jnana Yoga. Whereas in the Uddhava Gita, actually Krishna recommends bhakti yoga. If bhakti yoga you can’t do, then do Jnana Yoga.
Why? Because the stress over there is renounce the world. Krishna himself is departing from the world, Parikshit Maharaj decided to leave the world. So the same essential principle for Arjuna at that time, before the Kurukshetra war, it was important for him to act in the world to establish dharma.
So if we look at the context, they are different. And that’s why all the bhakti principles are the same, but the emphasis is different. In the Bhagavad Gita, you do not see any description of bhakti as ecstatic.
Now we don’t hear Krishna telling any words that the devotee goes mad in ecstasy and dances in kirtans. There is no verse like that in the Bhagavad Gita. Why? It is there in the Bhagavatam, in some sections of the Gita, and Chaitanya Charitam is filled with that.
Because the point is, in Arjuna’s context, his emotions were coming in the way of dharma. And that’s why the whole stress of the Bhagavad Gita is like an unemotional, internalized, intellectualized kind of spirituality. Not intellectualized in the sense of only for brahmanas, but it’s more of an analytical kind of spirituality, where your focus is on duty, determination to duty, not on emotional effervescence.
So if you look at the teaching of bhakti itself, its stress is different in different books. And not to speak of other teachings. So we do need to look at context to understand things.
Prabhuji, in this, Mali Mara does not accept glorifying. In the other, in contrast, if you see, Prayagam accepted the instructions of Hiranyakasipu to give poison to her own son. And there is nothing said, anything against Prayagam in that matter.
So how do we understand that? Mali Maharaj is glorified because he is so thoughtful enough that he rejects the instruction of his guru. And he is glorified for that. But Kayadu, she gives poison on Hiranyakasipu’s instructions to Prahalad.
Where is this said? Bhagavatam doesn’t say that Kayadu gives the poison. Can you hear this somewhere specifically? He gives, at least I don’t remember it. Now that he was given poison, but mostly described the Rakshasas.
Rakshasas try to, they burn him, they try to pierce him with weapons. The Bhagavatam does not describe all the tortures very elaborately. Maybe it is in other Puranas.
But let’s assume for the sake that it is true. This answer, the role of women or the role of genders in society, that has varied differently at different times. And in the past, where men were primarily in leadership positions, women were leaders of homes, of course.
I’ll take after myself. I don’t need anything more. So generally the leaders are responsible for their actions.
And when Prabhupada sometimes makes certain statements about women, some people find it objectionable. But as Prabhupada compares, women are like children. So we see that in the scripture generally, even if a woman does something seriously wrong, she is not punished.
In Chitra Ketu Maharaj’s pastime, the queens, they poison a baby. But they are not punished. There is no description of them being punished for that.
Or for that matter, when Kaikeyi gets misled by Manthara, and she becomes the cause of her husband’s death. And she becomes the cause of Ram’s exile. There is no description that either Kaikeyi or Manthara were punished.
So the idea is that in that traditional cultural setting, because women were treated like children, this is not to demean women, but different times, people lived with different values at different times. And today the whole idea is, there is ultra-feminist narrative which says that throughout history, men have been exploiting women. And now women are gaining their rights.
And we are going to fight for our rights. Now, actually this is a very distorted understanding of history. Throughout history, there have been a few powerful men who have exploited women and exploited men.
There are some people who have become autocratic. And if you see, even if we say there was domestic violence or whatever, who fought in the wars primarily? It was men. Men who were killed.
So the point here is not to go into analysis of the role of women in traditional society or whatever. But the point is that life is tough. And throughout history, men and women have cooperated in the best way possible to face the challenges of life.
And so in the traditional society, women are generally expected to be guided by the men. And if a woman does something wrong, it is like a child doing something wrong. The child is not punished for that.
It is the parents who are considered responsible for that. So similarly, in general, if a woman does something wrong, she is not considered culpable, at least in a very serious sense. So assuming that if Kayadu did that, and it’s possible because Hiranyakashipu had told her, she might have done it.
Assuming that she did that, she would not be considered culpable because it was Hiranyakashipu’s responsibility to have guided her properly and not misguided her. It’s tough. It’s tough in the sense that for a wife to choose between her husband and her son in a traditional society is not easy.
And in fact, it’s like Ram also, you know, I talk about contextual morality. When Ram is with Kaikeyi, sorry not Kaikeyi, with Kaushalya, Kaushalya says, I will go with you to the forest. And he says, no.
He says, your wife’s duty is with her husband. And he says that, first he says, she’s a little, she’s very unhappy with what has happened. Not just unhappy, outraged.
Shocked, horrified, devastated. So then he says, she may not want to do any duty to her husband who was exiling her son away. He says, actually, at this point, the king has been grievously betrayed by his wife who was so dear to him.
If at that time you also reject him, it will be unbearable for him. So Ram expertly shifts the vision so that he doesn’t see that Dashrath is the victimizer and you are the victim. He says, he needs you right now.
And then he agrees. But that same Ram, when he comes back to Sita, he tells Sita, stay at home and take care of my parents. I’ll go to the forest.
So he doesn’t tell her, wife’s duty is to be with her husband. So the point over there is that he at one level doesn’t want Sita to go through all the discomfort. And he also wants to make sure that Sita really wants to come with him.
Eventually when Sita insists that I will come, he says, I’ll be very happy to have you with me. So in general, especially in a traditional society, for a woman to choose between her son and her husband, it’s not an easy choice. So I think we may feel that’s absolutely wrong.
How can you do that? But in that cultural context, it’s quite difficult. It’s a difficult choice. That she also had a trust, because she had heard the philosophy from Narada during her presidency.
She is trusting the Lord and surrendering to Adila? Yeah, it’s possible. It could be that Kayadubi surrendering to the Lord’s will and being a part of Adila. Yes, it could be.
Generally, characters in scripture and their actions can be understood in multiple ways. And we can always say that all the characters in the Lord’s pastimes are participating in his Leela and are orchestrated accordingly. And that is one way of understanding things.
The limitation with that way of looking at things is that there is nothing for us to learn from it. Everybody is doing God’s will. Which action is right? Which action is wrong? Should we act like this? Should we not act like this? There is nothing to learn in that.
So, you see, Prabhupada takes both approaches. For example, if you read the first chapter, the second chapter purports of the Bhagavad Gita, Prabhupada’s way of talking about Arjuna shifts drastically. In the first chapter, Prabhupada is glorifying Arjuna.
Even in the heat of a battle, he is not just impulsively doing things, he is thinking deeply. He is asking serious questions. And in the next chapter, suddenly he says he is attached to his body.
He is having the ignorance of the bodily conception. Everybody has skin disease. Lamentation is because of ignorance.
Don’t save the dress of a drowning person. Prabhupada’s attaching is complete. So, what is going on there? There is a commentator on the Bhagavad Gita, Madhusudana Saraswati.
He explains that the first chapter’s purpose is to demonstrate the patrata of Arjuna. That how Arjuna is qualified to acquire spiritual knowledge. What is his qualification? He is thoughtful.
He is contemplative. He is seriously thinking before acting. That is his qualification.
But then, in the second chapter onwards, yes, he is qualified to have knowledge. But he doesn’t have knowledge right now. So, that is stressed.
So, from that context, his ignorance is stressed. So, you could say that it’s all Krishna’s will. He is acting on Krishna’s will that he goes into illusion.
But then if you want to understand analytically, then looking at it from other perspectives is also helpful. Any other questions or comments? Yes. Yeah, you mentioned that to me in the afternoon.
So, the Bhagavatam is filled with unbelievable sounding sizes, sizes of people, sizes of universal objects, planets and everything. Actions of people can also seem sometimes unbelievable. So, how do we understand this? Firstly, the Bhagavatam is a kavya.
It’s a poetic work. And it has a particular artha. Artha can mean meaning.
Artha can also mean purpose. So, like the four purusharthas are there, the four purposes of living. The pancham purushartha, parmartha is there, supreme meaning.
So, artha means purpose also. The purpose of the Bhagavatam is to help Parikshit Maharaj fix his mind on Krishna. And we see the various stories in the Bhagavatam are meant to take us toward that purpose, to help.
In those stories also we see different characters are fixing their mind on the Lord. So, we need to make sure that that is the primary purpose that we focus on when we study the Bhagavatam. That we are able to fix our mind on the Lord.
That is the primary purpose of the Bhagavatam. Now, whatever extraordinary details are told in the Bhagavatam, if you consider the 5th canto cosmology for example, there are, I was a part of the cosmology team which is helping in making the planetarium at one time. So, if you consider 15 to 25 chapters in the Bhagavatam, that is where the cosmology is described.
But within that also, the number of verses that actually describe cosmic dimensions are very few. The main thing over there is, there is this loka over here, and in that loka the people are glorifying this form of the Lord. And in that particular planet, they are glorifying the form of the Lord over there.
The stress is not on describing the universe, the stress is on describing what is done throughout the universe. They are two different things. So, the emphasis is how everyone is glorifying the Lord everywhere.
That is the stress. And this is the stress, even if you look at the start and the end of the Bhagavatam, of the sections, it is by meditating on this, by understanding the cosmology of the universe, one will be able to fix the mind on the Lord better. By understanding how grand it is.
By understanding how everyone in the universe is worshipping the Lord, we will be able to become more fixed in worshipping the Lord, in fixing our mind on the Lord. So, that is the central purpose. So, now today, it could be that many scientists, at least the initial scientists, the founders of modern science, all of them were theists, and understanding the universe often deepened their appreciation of God.
It is Pascal who said that a little of science takes man away from God, but immersion in science brings man back to God. So, it could be that today’s scientific cosmology can also help some people to fix their mind on God. So, now, if somebody has grown up with today’s scientific cosmology, and the Bhagavatam’s cosmology seems very different, and does the person has to completely reject the scientific cosmology and completely accept the Bhagavatam cosmology to fix the mind on the Lord? Not necessarily.
It is the point is fix the mind on the Lord. It is, ultimately the cosmology is, it’s a model. A model is like a map.
There is some connection of the map with the reality, with the territory, but it’s not, the map is not the territory. Okay, to take this example further. So, sometimes there are different GPS apps.
Somebody might have this standard Google app, Google Maps, somebody might have Waze, somebody might have something else. Now, suppose these maps, they map the territory in different ways. Somebody uses a political map, somebody uses a topographical map or something like that.
Now, the maps may be different. Now, the important thing is, the map I am following is taking me to the destination. Now, if somebody can sit and try to compare both the maps and see, how do they two match? That’s fine.
If somebody wants to do it, they can do it. But the important thing is, not that two maps match, but that the map takes us to the destination. So, in our own tradition, it’s implicitly accepted that there are different maps.
Our own Acharyas, when they have talked about, say, the horoscope of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, or the horoscope of Krishna, or the horoscope of the great saints in our tradition, none of them has used the Bhagavatam’s cosmology to do astrology. There are two models of the cosmos in our tradition itself. There is the Bhagavatam cosmology, and there is the Jyotisha cosmology.
So, like Bhakti Sanskrit Akhada has studied Surya Siddhanta. Surya Siddhanta is the Jyotisha Shastra. And everybody uses this Siddhanta text for studying the Bhagavatam, for studying astrology.
And even our Acharyas who have commented on the Bhagavatam, while referring to astrology, have referred to the Siddhanta texts. So, one meaning of Achintya Bheda Bhed, it can have many different meanings, is that we are not uncomfortable with contradiction. Our philosophy is not that anything and everything is acceptable, but that we are comfortable with contradiction.
So, yes, there are two different models of the universe. And somebody who is very into the models can study and see what parts can be harmonized. Some devotees, Sadaputra was a prominent disciple of Prabhupada, a scientist.
He wrote a book on Vedic cosmography. And then he wrote another book on, what was the second book, does anyone remember? Not forbidden archaeology. That’s a recent book, that’s by another devotee.
Anyway, he wrote two books, by Dr. Richard L. Thompson, in which he is explaining, he is trying to bring two cosmological worldviews into a dialogue. So, that can be done. But the important thing is not to prove that they are literally right.
That has not been the passion of our Acharyas also. The emphasis is that this is used to meditate on the Lord. So now, if that meditational tool doesn’t help us to meditate, but causes us to agitate.
How is this true? तेर अनु कुले से संकल्प, पति कुले से बरुजिन. That we accept what is favorable. And even in the Bhagavatam commentaries of the 5th Canto, Prabhupada is not stressing on the literal dimensions.
He is giving principles of spiritual life. So we focus on those principles and we move on. And similarly, mystic powers, if we consider, are extraordinary dimensions.
Now, even in today’s world, I gave a class on mystic powers. I said that the mystic powers are different from ordinary powers in degree, not in category. That means, as I am saying, the sages could know what happens in another part of the world.
How do they know that? It is not possible to know. But science has found out to some extent that there are certain abilities which certain people have more than others. And people don’t know how they have it.
There is an experiment called the staring experiment. Staring experiment means that I am sitting here and somebody is sitting behind me. And that person stares at me.
And then they are either staring at me or they are not staring at me. And I have to guess. Are they staring at me or are they not staring at me? So almost everybody gets this right 60%.
More than, simply probability will be 50%. Almost everybody gets it right more than 60% or whatever. And most of us have that feeling, you know, we feel somebody staring at us and we look back.
And that person gets embarrassed and looks away or something like that. So, now, some people get this right 90%. Now, how do they get it right? There are no eyes in the back of the brain.
And you might say, oh, some waves come from somewhere. But what is it? In terms of reductionistic science, there is no explanation. So, there is much in the body of scientific knowledge where there is data, but there is no explanation for the data.
So that means there are observations, but there are no theories to explain the observations. So, the scientific worldview is very powerful in what it explains, but it doesn’t explain everything. And there could be more inclusive worldviews, which could explain things which the current scientific worldview doesn’t explain.
So, apparent mystical powers, they are just radical extensions of the powers which people have. So, that is something which is intelligible. And cosmic dimensions, the universe is very big.
You really don’t know what happens in other parts of the universe. Now, in fact, Carl Sagan, when he made his document in the cosmos, he was a atheist. He starts with cosmos.
It’s a celebrated documentary series. But he starts with an article of faith. And what is the article of faith? The cosmos is all that was, the cosmos is all that is, the cosmos is all that will be.
Now, this is not a scientific statement. This is an ideological statement. Because science can study what is.
Science can study material nature. Whether something exists beyond material nature, science can’t know that. Because science only makes material observations.
So, sometimes some scientists misuse the authority of science to propagate their ideology. So, science intrinsically will give us certain expressions of certain things. And certain things are not explainable in science.
So, we don’t have to necessarily put scripture and science in competition. They are actually scripture. If you put scripture and science in competition, we devalue scripture.
Because scripture gives us much higher knowledge. So, this can be a big subject, but I will quickly summarize with one last point. That science is the study of matter.
Scripture is the study of what matters. Study of matter, how functions work, how this works, how this works, how this works. But study of what matters.
What is important in life? What am I meant to do? Einstein said the same thing in a different way. He said, we can talk about the ethical foundations of science. But we can’t talk about the scientific foundation of ethics.
That means we can ask whether scientists are acting ethically or not. But ethics, now what is right, what is wrong? Science doesn’t tell us that. Science is not moral, science is not immoral, science is amoral.
Amoral means morality is not involved. Science will tell you if you press the trigger of this gun, the person over there will be shot. But should you press the trigger or not, science doesn’t tell you that.
It is something which you have to decide. And again, this is not to minimize science. This is to contextualize science.
Every body of knowledge has its own purpose. And that purpose, it will serve well. But when you extend it beyond its purpose, that’s when the problem comes up.
So I think we’ll stop here. Thank you very much.