BG 4.8 – Why the Lord Appears

Giriraj Swami: So now we shall read from The Bhagavad-gītā As It Is. Bhagavad-gītā is the literal record of God’s spoken words, or Krishna’s words, spoken five thousand years ago when He was on Earth. When we say Krishna, we refer to The Supreme personality of Godhead, or God. We do not refer to any sectarian concept of God limited to a particular place, a particular community or a particular nomenclature. God has different names, different cultures and different languages, but in Sanskrit, which is the most ancient language, He is called Krishna. Krishna literally means The All-Attractive One. In one sense, God has no name, but He can be referred to by names which describe His form, His attributes, His activities and so on. All of His forms, attributes and activities are attractive. Therefore the name “Krishna” which means “All Attractive”, includes every name of God which may refer to various pastimes and qualities of Krishna.

So Bhagavad-gītā does not describe a sectarian religion, but it presents a universal science. Just as we have material science, Bhagavad-gītā presents spiritual science–which also includes material science. It specifically describes the individual soul–which are us. We are all individual souls in our spiritual natures. It also describes the supreme soul or God, and the relationship between the individual soul and the supreme soul. This relationship is of service. The individual souls are the eternal servants by constitution of the supreme soul, and it is natural for the individual souls to be so. This is because the individual souls, as described in Bhagavad-gītā, are part and parcel of the supreme soul. It is the natural function of the part to serve the whole, just like it is the natural function of the hand to serve the body. If the hand does not serve the body, it is diseased or paralyzed. Similarly, because we are spiritually parts of the supreme soul—or the supreme whole—we are by nature, or by constitution, meant to serve the supreme soul. If we do not serve him, we are considered to be in a diseased condition. Actually, material existence is a diseased condition.

The material world is compared to a prison house within the entire kingdom of God, and we conditioned souls are the prisoners. We are bound by the stringent laws of nature, and we are punished by the repetition of birth, disease, old age and death. As long as we remain conditioned and bound to the material world, we are forced to suffer. No one can escape. No one can escape disease, old age or death. Bhagavad-gītā explains that for one who dies, birth is certain as long as we remain in the material world. So the purpose of the human form of life, according to the Vedic civilization, is to become liberated from the miserable repetition of birth and death in so many different species of life. The human form of life is meant to realize our eternal natures as souls, our eternal relationship with God as his servants and to become free and liberated from the prison house of material existence.

So now we have gathered here to observe the appearance day, or birthday, of Krishna. Of course, Krishna never takes birth like an ordinary human being. He appears within the world just like the sun appears over the horizon. The sun doesn’t take birth in the morning at sunrise, the sun is always there. The sun appears before our limited vision at the time of sunrise. Similarly, God is always there. Krishna is always there. But He advances Himself and He makes Himself visible to us once in thousands of years. He did so about five thousand years ago. We are celebrating the time of year at which he appeared about five thousand years ago. The question may be raised why does the Lord come into this world at all. He is certainly not obliged to, and it is certainly not a happy place for Him, especially compared to the spiritual abode. But he comes, just like how the governor may visit the prison house to show compassion to the prisoners. He comes specifically to explain to us who we are, what our actual identity is, who He is and how we can become freed from the prison house of material existence—which is by reviving our eternal relationship with him. He also fulfills other purposes at the same time.

The verse that is written on the board which we shall recite now, responsively, discusses why The Lord appears. So first we will recite one mantra, which is very easy, and you all can follow. Then we’ll recite the verse on the board. Please repeat. Of course, you’ll have to listen first in order to repeat. 

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

TEXT

paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ

vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām

dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya

sambhavāmi yuge yuge

COMMENT

Srila Prabhupada is our founder Acharya. He is our teacher, and our spiritual preceptor. He has explained the meaning of the verse with reference to other Vedic literatures and authorities.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

According to Bhagavad-gītā, a sādhu (holy man) is a man in Kṛṣṇa consciousness. A person may appear to be irreligious, but if he has the qualifications of Kṛṣṇa consciousness wholly and fully, he is to be understood to be a sādhu. And duṣkṛtām applies to those who do not care for Kṛṣṇa consciousness. Such miscreants, or duṣkṛtām, are described as foolish and the lowest of mankind, even though they may be decorated with mundane education, whereas a person who is one hundred percent engaged in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is accepted as a sādhu, even though such a person may be neither learned nor well cultured 

COMMENT

So, as we just read, demons are not necessarily monstrous creatures with ten heads, but they are persons who are against the supremacy of The Lord. They’re actually envious of The Lord and they are opposed to The Lord and His mission. In previous ages, both saintly persons and evil persons had mystic powers. Therefore the evil persons would misuse their mystic powers against God and against saintly persons. So they could actually have. . . ten heads, for an example. They would be very powerful— much more powerful than ordinary human beings. They would harass the ordinary human beings and torture the saintly devotees. The Lord, in order to protect His devotees, would come, and He would kill the powerful demons. 

Now, Srila Prabhupada is about to explain that The Lord does not really have to personally descend in order to kill the powerful demons, because, no matter how powerful they are, they can be destroyed by The Lord’s agents. The Lord, if He wishes, can arrange any natural calamity to destroy the demons. So He doesn’t really have to come personally to kill them. And, in the present age, there is so many demons that The Lord just arranges for them to kill each other—which they do every day. 

PURPORT (continued) 

As far as the atheistic are concerned, it is not necessary for the Supreme Lord to appear as He is to destroy them, as He did with the demons Rāvaṇa and Kaṁsa—

COMMENT

—who were extraordinarily powerful.

PURPORT (continued)

The Lord has many agents who are quite competent to vanquish demons. But the Lord especially descends to appease His unalloyed devotees, who are always harassed by the demoniac. The demon harasses the devotee, even though the latter may happen to be his kin.

COMMENT

In other words, a cruel father, if he becomes inimical to his son’s devotion to God, can harass his own son. He can even try to kill his own son.

PURPORT (continued)

Although Prahlāda Mahārāja was the son of Hiraṇyakaśipu, he was nonetheless persecuted by his father; although Devakī, the mother of Kṛṣṇa, was the sister of Kaṁsa, she and her husband Vasudeva were persecuted only because Kṛṣṇa was to be born of them.

COMMENT

So, this is part of the pastime of The Lord’s appearance. As described two verses earlier in Bhagavad-gītā, although The Lord is unborn, He never takes birth like an ordinary human being. So although The Lord is unborn and His nature is changeless and supreme, still He advanced himself millennium after millennium. Or in other words, to preserve the confidentiality of His pastimes, The Lord will choose some exalted devotees to play the part of His mother and father, and He appears to take birth from them, although he does not take birth as an ordinary human being by the combination of the father’s seed and the mother’s egg.

 So Devaki was such a pure devotee and Krishna chose her to play the part of His mother. Her brother Kamsa was an extremely powerful demon. I mean, the heads of state today even with all of their nuclear weapons and military might cannot compare to the power of Devaki’s brother five thousand years ago. Even though she was his sister, just because Krishna was going to appear as her son he was ready to try to kill her. Some people can just be so cruel. Sometimes, we see in the news that someone is accused of murdering his wife, or her husband, or their children.

PURPORT (continued) 

although Devakī, the mother of Kṛṣṇa, was the sister of Kaṁsa, she and her husband Vasudeva were persecuted only because Kṛṣṇa was to be born of them. So Lord Kṛṣṇa appeared primarily to deliver Devakī rather than kill Kaṁsa, but both were performed simultaneously. Therefore it is said here that to deliver the devotee and vanquish the demon miscreants, the Lord appears in different incarnations.

In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, the following verses (Madhya 20.263–264) summarize these principles of incarnation:

sṛṣṭi-hetu yei mūrti prapañce avatare

sei īśvara-mūrti ‘avatāra’ nāma dhare

māyātīta paravyome sabāra avasthāna

viśve avatari’ dhare ‘avatāra’ nāma

“The avatāra, or incarnation of Godhead, descends from the kingdom of God for material manifestation. And the particular form of the Personality of Godhead who so descends is called an incarnation, or avatāra. 

COMMENT

The word ‘avatara’ literally means ‘one who descends’. Our spiritual master’s teacher has opined that Jesus Christ was a shakty-avesha avatara, which means he is not God directly. Meaning, He is not god or The Father. But he does descend from the kingdom of God for a particular purpose. So just as Jesus Christ, the son of God or one of God’s sons, descended from the kingdom of God, God Himself, who is the supreme father of every living entity, can also descend. He is called a direct incarnation. When one of His parts and parcels descends, He is called shakty-avesha avatara, or an empowered incarnation.

PURPORT (continued)

Such incarnations are situated in the spiritual world, the kingdom of God. When they descend to the material creation, they assume the name avatāra.”

COMMENT

Of course, especially in India, where Vedic culture is current, there are pretenders who try to take advantage of people’s gullibility and say that they are incarnations. But that is sort of another subject.

PURPORT (continued)

There are various kinds of avatāras, such as puruṣāvatāras, guṇāvatāras, līlāvatāras, śakty-āveśa avatāras, manvantara-avatāras and yugāvatāras – all appearing on schedule all over the universe. But Lord Kṛṣṇa is the primeval Lord, the fountainhead of all avatāras. Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa descends for the specific purpose of mitigating the anxieties of the pure devotees, who are very anxious to see Him in His original Vṛndāvana pastimes. Therefore, the prime purpose of the Kṛṣṇa avatāra is to satisfy His unalloyed devotees.

COMMENT

Once, perhaps five hundred years ago during the Mughal empire in India, there was a powerful Muslim ruler named Akbar. Akbar was very wise and intelligent and he had many advisers who were Hindu. In fact, his prime minister, Birbal, was Hindu. Emperor Akbar himself was very interested in Vedic philosophy and culture. He had correspondence with some of our disciplic predecessors like Rupa Gosvami and Jiva Gosvami in Vrindavan, which is near Delhi. He was trying to understand The Lord’s descent just as we are discussing tonight and his prime minister explained that The Lord comes to deliver his beloved devotees. 

The emperor was very intelligent so he asked Birbal, “Why does the Lord have to come Himself? He has so many agents. Why does He have to come personally?” The prime minister said, “Well, just wait some time and you will understand.” 

So, one day, the emperor’s baby boy was being bathed in front of him. We are talking about five hundred years ago, when the method was that there was a royal tub, and a matron would hold the baby over the tub while they would pour water from a golden ornate cup on the baby. Meanwhile, the bath water would collect in the tub. So the prime minister arranged it so that when the tub was quite full of water, the person who was holding the baby dropped it into the water. The baby was under the water, so emperor Akbar immediately jumped up and rescued his child from the water. 

So the prime minister said, “Why did you do it yourself? Why didn’t you tell one of your ministers or secretaries to do it?” Then the emperor understood that The Lord has so much affection and concern for His devotees that He doesn’t wait, He comes Himself. And not just for the act of delivering, but to satisfy the heart’s desire of the devotees. If you’re drowning and someone else saves you, you’ll still want to run to your mother and father to be comforted. So that is why The Lord descends: to give comfort and pleasure to his devotees. 

PURPORT (continued) 

The Lord says that He incarnates Himself in every millennium. This indicates that He incarnates also in the Age of Kali.

COMMENT

Now The Vedic concept of millennium is longer than the one thousand years of human calculation. 

PURPORT (continued)

As stated in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the incarnation in the Age of Kali is Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who spread the worship of Kṛṣṇa by the saṅkīrtana movement (congregational chanting of the holy names) and spread Kṛṣṇa consciousness throughout India. He predicted that this culture of saṅkīrtana would be broadcast all over the world, from town to town and village to village. Lord Caitanya as the incarnation of Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead, is described secretly but not directly in the confidential parts of the revealed scriptures, such as the Upaniṣads, Mahābhārata and Bhāgavatam. The devotees of Lord Kṛṣṇa are very much attracted by the saṅkīrtana movement of Lord Caitanya. This avatāra of the Lord does not kill the miscreants, but delivers them by His causeless mercy.

Giriraj Swami: So, we are at present. by Vedic calculations, in Kali yuga or the modern age, just say the modern age or millennium, and as the Lord says, “He appears in every millennium,” so He also appears in the modern age and He did appear in the modern age about five thousand years ago and He did appear in the modern age about five hundred years years ago as Lord Chaitanya. As Lord Chaitanya, He did not physically kill the demons. As Krishna says here, He comes to annihilate the demons, but he killed their demonic mentality or, in other words, He transformed them into devotees, into saintly persons. And there are various examples of very demonic persons who were transformed by Lord Chaitanya through the chanting of Hare Krishna. By the chanting of Hare Krishna using a specific method, we can be delivered from the material world in the modern age of Kali and that is why we have chanted Hare Krishna and we request you to chant with us or by yourselves again and again. 

Hare Krishna.