When the source of liberation becomes the source of illusion 1 – Mohini-murti pastime analysis
[Congregation program at Charlotte, USA]
Video:
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What I spoke today, I spoke about how when the Lord, who is the source of illumination, of liberation, He becomes the source of illusion.
How does that happen? So the Bhagavatam confronts our normal conceptions of right and wrong, of good and bad. That the demons can sometimes be better than the gods if the demon is a devotee as happens in Vitrasol’s case. Something which is bad can be good, sometimes failure can be a success and success can be a failure.
So the Lord acts for the good of everyone. Normally people’s good is furthered by taking them out of illusion. But sometimes some people’s good may be furthered by putting them in illusion.
So the Lord does good for everyone. In this particular pastime of Mohini Murthy, He appears in a bewitching female form. And there is a cosmic battle in the universe which reflects the psychic battle within us between the people who are wise and the people who are otherwise.
And in this battle, based on Kaala, based on the influence of time, sometimes the gods may become weaker. At that time, strategically, they are told to make a peace pact and we talk about nectar as the means not for gaining immortality but for its not absolute immortality but relative immortality in terms of our life span there appears to be enormously long. But they also fear death and they try to avoid death by drinking nectar.
So the Asuras want that nectar and Vishnu tells the Devatas to tell them that we can get this nectar by churning the ocean. And when they get to the nectar eventually, after much trouble, then at the sight of the finishing line, shakes off the veneer of civilization that they have and they start fighting, they start pushing away the Devatas and start pushing away even the weaker Asuras to get all the nectar for themselves. We discussed the difference between civilized and uncivilized people is not based on dress but it’s based on self-restraint.
All of us have unhealthy impulses. But the virtuous people, in indulging in their impulses, they don’t go beyond ethical limits. Whereas the vicious people, the demonic people, they just transgress all limits in their mad pursuit of pleasure.
I discussed different degrees in which people may express their anger. From just becoming silent to picking up a gun and shooting others in the road rage. So civilization means that people need to be trained to restrain their impulses.
So when they start fighting amongst each other, at that time Lord Vishnu comes as the Mohini Murthy. The explicit description is given there not to agitate the mind but to fulfill the need for Shringar in Kavya and to give an explanation of how such a dramatic twist in the storyline can happen. Her beauty is what deludes and devastates the intelligence of the Asuras.
Then I talked about how our intelligence is not like a fixed deposit in a stock market. It can go down and go up very rapidly. And what causes the intelligence to go down is contemplation on the sense objects.
So contemplation acts like a force which drags our intelligence down. What does contemplation do? Within the reality that we are seeing, if we see a particular thing first, then other things get relegated in the background and other things are seen through the filter of this. So when Arjuna saw Bhishma and Drona first, then everybody else he saw with affection.
If he had seen Duryodhana first, he would have seen everybody with reservation, with the determination to fight. So we cannot change what is there in the outer world. But we can choose what we focus on in the outer world.
If we let the situation determine our vision, then our intention will be sabotaged. But if we let the intention determine our vision, then within the situation we look at the things which will help us move forward with our intention. And then the Asuras got bewildered.
They became bewildered because their vision shifted from the Nectar Pot to Mohini. And because they were so captivated by her, they wanted to get her now, that they just neglected everything else. And Mohini Murthy, she gracefully gave the nectar to the gods and then the Asuras were deluded by her.
Thus, the Asuras tried to fight but by that time they had been disempowered. The gods had been empowered because of having drunk the nectar and eventually the cosmic order was restored. So although Mohini Murthy deluded the Asuras, she deluded them for their own benefit.
If somebody has unhealthy impulses and then they have facilities to act on those impulses. If somebody is angry and they have a gun, it will cause havoc. So taking away the facilities from those who are deluded can ensure that they don’t do things which worsen the delusion.
So the Lord is the source of good for everyone. If somehow we become the source of illusion for someone, that is also for their good. That is to save them from illusion.
Tomorrow we will discuss how somebody is already good, they are not in illusion, the Lord puts them in illusion. What is the purpose of that? That we will discuss tomorrow. Thank you very much.