SB 6.9.36 – When God Reveals Himself

Giriraj Swami: 

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya

We read from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Canto Six, Chapter Nine: “The Appearance of the Demon Vṛtrāsura,” Text Thirty-six. It is in prose, so we will not recite the verse responsively but we will repeat each word.

TEXT 36

O Supreme Personality of Godhead, all contradictions can be reconciled in You. O Lord, since You are the Supreme Person, the reservoir of unlimited spiritual qualities, the supreme controller, Your unlimited glories are inconceivable to the conditioned souls. Many modern theologians argue about right and wrong without knowing what is actually right. Their arguments are always false and their judgments inconclusive because they have no authorized evidence with which to gain knowledge of You. Because their minds are agitated by scriptures containing false conclusions, they are unable to understand the truth concerning You. Furthermore, because of polluted eagerness to arrive at the right conclusion, their theories are incapable of revealing You, who are transcendental to their material conceptions. You are one without a second, and therefore in You, contradictions like doing and not doing, happiness and distress, are not contradictory. Your potency is so great that it can do and undo anything as You like. With the help of that potency, what is impossible for You? Since there is no duality in Your constitutional position, You can do everything by the influence of Your energy.

PURPORT by Srila Prabhupada

The Supreme Personality of Godhead, being self-sufficient, is full of transcendental bliss (ātmārāma). He enjoys bliss in two ways — when He appears happy and when He appears distressed. Distinctions and contradictions are impossible in Him because only from Him have they emanated. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is the reservoir of all knowledge, all potency, all strength, opulence, and influence. There is no limit to His powers. Since He is full in all transcendental attributes, nothing abominable from the material world can exist in Him. He is transcendental and spiritual, and therefore conceptions of material happiness and distress do not apply to Him.

We should not be astonished to find contradictions in the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Actually there are no contradictions. That is the meaning of His being supreme. Because He is all-powerful, He is not subject to the conditioned soul’s arguments regarding His existence or nonexistence. He is pleased to protect His devotees by killing their enemies. He enjoys both the killing and the protecting.

Such freedom from duality applies not only to the Lord but also to His devotees. In Vṛndāvana, the damsels of Vrajabhūmi enjoy transcendental bliss in the company of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, and they feel the same transcendental bliss in separation when Kṛṣṇa and Balarāma leave Vṛndāvana for Mathurā. There is no question of material pains or pleasures for either the Supreme Personality of Godhead or His pure devotees, although they are sometimes superficially said to be distressed or happy. One who is ātmārāma is blissful in both ways.

Nondevotees cannot understand the contradictions present in the Supreme Lord or His devotees. Therefore in Bhagavad-gītā the Lord says, bhaktyā mām abhijānāti: the transcendental pastimes can be understood through devotional service; to nondevotees they are inconceivable. Acintyāḥ khalu ye bhāvā na tāṁs tarkeṇa yojayet: the Supreme Lord and His form, name, pastimes, and paraphernalia are inconceivable to nondevotees, and one should not try to understand such realities simply by logical arguments. They will not bring one to the right conclusion about the Absolute Truth.

COMMENT

Hare Krishna.

So this verse, while glorifying the Supreme Personality of Godhead is very humbling for us insignificant living entities, because the Lord is so great, inconceivably great, with so many apparent contradictions that we cannot begin to understand Him with our limited and imperfect senses and mind and intelligence. We can only surrender and pray for His mercy, otherwise we have no access to the transcendental realm. In the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, Srila Rupa Gosvami quotes a verse about the transcendental nature of the holy name, form, qualities, and pastimes of the Lord; nāma cintāmaṇiḥ kṛṣṇaś caitanya-rasa-vigrahaḥ, and he concludes, ‘bhinnatvān nāma-nāminoḥ, that the name and the possessor of the name are the same, there is no difference between them. And in the next verse he says, ataḥ śrī-kṛṣṇa-nāmādi, atah means therefore, ataḥ śrī-kṛṣṇa-nāmādi, therefore the holy name and forms, qualities, past times, na bhaved grāhyam indriyaiḥ, they cannot be approached through our material senses. But sevonmukhe hi jihvādau, by serving the Lord, beginning with the tongue, svayam eva sphuraty adaḥ, He reveals Himself. So we can approach the Lord or understand the Lord, only through devotional service, sevonmukhe hi. 

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura remarks that, if one chants but does not have the mood of service, one will not get the result of the chanting. That chanting should be done in the mood of humble service. There was one incident in the life of Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, he went to spend the night in a particular place, in a temple. He arrived very late at night and he just spent the night in the temple. And in the morning, all the town’s people were astonished. “How could you have spent the night there?” Because there was a brahma rakshasa who lived there, and he would disturb anyone who came there, to the point of throwing stones and objects at them. And Bhaktivinoda Thakura said, “Well, I just chanted the holy name, of course he chanted completely purely, śuddha nāma, and the ghost went away.” So the town’s people were further astonished because that brahma rakshasa, it turns out he had been the pujari at that temple in his previous life, and he was always chanting the holy name. So they were astonished. How is it that chanting the holy name could have dispatched him, when he himself was always chanting the holy name. And Bhaktivinoda Thakura asked the people, what was his character? And they said, well actually although he was always chanting, he had a very bad character; he did many bad things. And Bhaktivinoda Thakura replied, “He never chanted the holy name, and when the pure holy name came, he had to leave the place.” So chanting should be done, sevonmukhe, in the mood of humble service. And then in that humble mood, we can begin to beg for the mercy of the holy name of the Lord, and He will begin to reveal Himself to us.

Now every conditioned soul is conditioned to trying to understand reality through the senses and through the mind. And therefore, when they come to the Supreme who is beyond the mind and senses, they become bewildered and disturbed, and they asked questions. I heard, even before I came to Krishna consciousness, people would ask questions like, “If God is all-powerful, if He can do anything, can He create an object that is so heavy that He cannot lift it? And the answer is yes, He can; but then He can lift it. He can also lift it because He can do things and undo things at will. He can make the object so heavy that He can’t lift it, and then He can increase His own strength or decrease the weight of the object so that He can lift it. But ordinary people, their minds are conditioned and they think in terms of these contradictions, and it is an excuse to reject the Lord and reject surrender to the Lord. “Oh, there are so many contradictions, who knows what the truth is? Might as well just enjoy the illusion.

Now another very interesting point here, is that the pure devotees have the same attribute. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura wrote an essay about how apparent contradictions are reconciled in the absolute, and he lists a hundred and eight or some number of contradictions that are reconciled in the absolute. And the Lord manifests Himself to us. He is far in a way, He is very far; but at the same time, He is very near, but He manifests Himself to us through His pure devotee. And so we can get a sense of what the Lord is like through the pure devotees, and also by reading about the Lord’s pastimes and loving reciprocation with His pure devotees. And these questions, especially about meeting and separation, and happiness and distress, immediately arise as soon as you become aware of the pastimes of the Lord and the devotees.

In India, Revatinandana Swami asked Srila Prabhupada that, if a pure devotee is always with Krishna, a pure devotee is always seeing Krishna, why does he appear to suffer in separation? And Srila Prabhupada replied that actually there is no separation, but externally it manifests itself as separation. And here Srila Prabhupada cites the example of Krishna and the gopīs. Actually, today is Ratha-yatra according to the Vaishnava calendar. In fact, it is about ten to nine in the evening in Jagannatha Puri, Ratha-yatra Day, and the whole pastime of the Ratha-yatra is filled with meeting and separation. Fifteen days prior to the Ratha-yatra is Snana-yatra, which is actually the appearance day of Lord Jagannatha, and the Lord is bathed publicly and then He is taken into His private quarters or Lakshmi Devi’s private quarters in the temple to, some people say, recover from the cold He caught during the bathing ceremony. And during that time, Lakshmi Devi serves Him different medicinal potions in the form of fruit juices, and at that time, repairs are made on the body of the Lord. So that is a time of great separation for the devotees; they cannot have darshan of the Lord. And no one felt the separation more acutely than Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. In fact, he was so upset that he couldn’t remain in Jagannatha Puri, but He would go to Allalanatha for those fourteen days. But then when the Lord would emerge again for Ratha-yatra, it was a great occasion of jubilation. The Lord was reunited with His devotees and they were reunited with Him.

Now this pulling of the Lord from the Jagannatha temple to the Gundica temple was experienced by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in the mood of the gopīs, when they met Krishna at Kurukshetra after long separation, and wanted to bring Him back to Vrindavan. And this is quite an elaborate and esoteric subject, but coming back a little earlier in the story, why did Krishna leave Vrindavan? It is the nature of everyone, including Krishna, to be in the place or with the people where he is most loved; it is just natural. And everyone knows, the scriptures tell us that the love of the residence for Krishna is the greatest of any devotee’s love. So it is contrary to the basic rule of love, for someone to leave the people who love him the most to be somewhere else. Now, everything that Krishna did, He did out of love for His devotees. And even when He left Vrindavan, He did it for the sake of His devotees. Of course there were many demons to be killed, but there are other reasons, more confidential reasons, which devotee scholars have traced back or related to a pastime of Radha and Krishna and Their devotees at Prema Sarovar. Radharani and Krishna were together there, and a bee, mistaking Srimati Radharani’s lotus feet for lotus flowers, was hovering around her lotus feet hoping to get some nectar. Anyway, this bee was disturbing Her and she just wanted that bee to go away. And Madhumangala, Krishna’s brahman friend, he saw that Srimati Radharani was being disturbed by the bee, so he shooed the bee away and came back and proclaimed that the Madhu, which is a name for bee and also a name for Krishna, that Madhu is gone and will not return. And Radha and Krishna were sitting right next to each other, but when Radharani heard that statement that Madhu is gone and will not return, in her mind She took it to be Krishna, and She was plunged into a state of extreme grief in separation. And Krishna, seeing Radharani’s grief in separation, He was also plunged into grief and their associates similarly, and their tears combined to form Prema Sarovara.

Now this is very mysterious. Talk about contradictions. They were right next to each other but they were feeling separation from each other. And Krishna thought that, “As long as I am in Vrindavan, My devotees will be so concerned about meeting Me and being separated from Me, that even in My presence they are fearing My separation. Whereas if I leave Vrindavan, they will feel separation but in that separation, they will feel My presence more,” and actually it is the case.

Of course, it was very pitiful scene when Krishna was leaving Vrindavan from Mathura. . . Krishna and Balarama, when Akura came to get them. And Krishna said, “Do not fear, I will return soon.” But Krishna did not return soon. And as Srila Prabhupada explains in the Kṛṣṇa Book, that many learned scholars have discussed this point; that Krishna said, “I will return,” but it appears that He did not return. So does it mean that Krishna is a liar or a cheater that He told them He would return but He didn’t? Or does it mean that He was sincere in making His promise but He was incapable of keeping His word? And Srila Prabhupada explains that although Krishna apparently left Vrindavan, He was present in His bhava expansion. And so there are these contradictory descriptions. When Krishna sent Uddhava to Vrindavan and there are descriptions of what Uddhava encountered when he first arrived in Vrindavan. There are contradictions; there are descriptions of the ladies churning the butter and singing songs in praise of Krishna, and the cows and the calves running through the pastures and frolicking and enjoying. There are verses that give that very joyful picture of Vrindavan, and there are also verses that give a completely different picture that Nanda Maharaja, Yasoda Ma, the cowherd men, the cowherd boys, the younger gopīs, they are in such agony of separation that they are not eating, they are not sleeping, they can hardly breathe, they are burning in the fire of separation, and just a most piteous condition. So what are these two contradictory types of verses? Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura and others, explain that the one set of verses refers to the external situation; that Krishna had left Vrindavan and the devotees are dying in separation. And the other describes another dimension of Vrindavan, where Krishna is present through His bhava expansion.

Now this mysterious and confidential topic of meeting of separation, has also been discussed in Śrī Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta, in which Srila Sanatana Gosvami says that the ecstasy of union and separation is even greater than the ecstasy of meeting in the external sense. And even though Krishna wasn’t that far from Vrindavan, in Mathura and even Dvaraka, but because the devotees were relishing that ecstasy internally, they didn’t want to give it up. And the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta gives the example of fire and ice; that when something is very cold it burns. There is dry ice; it is so cold that it burns. So Sanatana Gosvami explains that when the feelings of separation become so intense, it becomes meeting; because when something becomes so cold it becomes hot, it burns. And this is something that we can experience; not on the level or to the degree of the residents of Vrindavan, but it is something that we experience. That when we are feeling so much separation or so much anguish, and we so much want either the association or the answer. It may be that we are perturbed by some question and we need the answer; and we are desperate, “where will I get that answer?” And when we become completely desperate and give up all of our pretensions, and false ego, and false ideas of our own strength and intelligence, then Krishna reveals Himself. Our acharyas reveal themselves; the answers to our questions are revealed. But then the human nature, then we think, I am okay, I am fine, now everything is all right. And then we get puffed up again. But if we always remain in that mood of abject humility and helplessness, then the Lord will always be extending His help to us, His devotees. So we have to try hard. If we take it lightly, well then of course, we won’t experience these things, but if we take it seriously then we will. But that mood of taking things seriously, that also depends on association. That mood of sincerity, that mood of humility, we get that by association.

After many many years, decades, I visited the Jewish temple in my hometown in the northern suburbs, the north shore of Chicago, and I met the Rabbi who I hadn’t seen for thirty years, and somehow, he recognized me. So we had a talk, and I was explaining my path and guru and the importance of serving the guru and so on. And he told a little Jewish story about a student of the Rabbi who was very eager to serve the Rabbi; to be with the Rabbi and serve the Rabbi. And someone asked him,  “Why are you so eager to be with the Rabbi and serve the Rabbi? What is the big thing, doing all these menial chores?” And he replied, “I want to see how the Rabbi ties his boots.” And basically, the purport is, that you can learn from anything and everything that a great soul does. Because whatever they do is permeated by their devotion, by their love, by their bhakti. I am in that fortunate position now of sharing quarters with His Holiness Radhanath Swami, and if he comes out of his room and wants to chew on an apple, I want to be there. I want to see how someone with real love and devotion eats an apple, because whatever he does is filled with love and devotion. And it is like a disease; you can be infected. If someone has a disease, if they sneeze you can get it; if you eat some food that they have eaten you can get it, or if they breathe on you, depending on what the disease is, you can catch it. So we want to associate with some devotee who has that condition of love for Krishna, and we want to expose ourselves to that infection and hope that some of those germs will somehow enter us and give us that same condition.

So that association is so precious, so valuable, so important, we want to avail of every opportunity we have to get that association. But then, sometimes it happens that due to circumstances beyond our control, we are separated from that association. And then things are very difficult and then what do we do? Well, we are told, and we also can experience that by hearing the person’s instructions and remembering the instructions, and trying to follow the instructions, we can feel the person’s presence. Yesterday I met a man, he has a hair salon outside of Philadelphia and he seemed like a spiritual person, and I know two devotees in Texas who work in a hair salon, and they are very distressed. Because first of all, now they have learned they are not the body and all they do is deal with people’s bodies. And then the other thing is, especially in the economic climate, you have to go out to get business; it is not so easy, you have to promote yourself and they don’t feel comfortable. So I thought, let me speak with him. It turns out that he is a sort of devotee; that when he was a young man, he met Srila Prabhupada and I am not sure, it seems that actually he would frequently go to the temple and more than that, when the devotees would go on saṅkīrtana they would stay with him. He had, I think, a very small one-bedroom apartment and he would have like ten brahmacharis staying in his apartment with him. But once he had an encounter with Srila Prabhupada and he was thinking; he was perturbed, he was discussing with the devotees in the temple, he was thinking maybe he should just renounce everything and join the temple, even though, I think, the hair salon was a family business and he was expected to take it over. You know how those expectations are there. And he just didn’t know what to do. He spoke to the devotees; he still wasn’t sure.

So he met Srila Prabhupada. He didn’t really have a relationship in the normal sense, and Prabhupada just looked at him, he didn’t ask anything, Prabhupada just looked at him and said, “You don’t have to change anything; just keep chanting Hare Krishna and Krishna will make all arrangements.” Just like that, like he read his mind. And this person has kept those words from Srila Prabhupada in his heart for all these years, probably forty, forty-five years. And they have been his guidance in his life. So in the absence of the physical association of Krishna or the spiritual master, one can take guidance in their instructions and feel their presence by following their instructions. But of course, when we get their instructions plus them in person, that is the best. And, just to conclude, there is a verse naṣṭa-prāyeṣv abhadreṣu nityaṁ bhāgavata-sevayā, by serving the person, bhāgavata, or reading the book Bhāgavata one gets the same result. So one disciple asked Srila Prabhupada, “Well on the absolute platform, both are the same, but can we say that one is better than the other?” And Srila Prabhupada said, “Yes, serving the person bhāgavata is better because the person bhāgavata can catch you by the ear, which the book Bhāgavata won’t. So we do need that type of association; love, guidance, and correction. And so His Holiness Radhanath Swami and others, so many great souls, His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami is in the area. We should take full advantage. Hare Krishna.

And not to minimize our resident sadhus, Svavasa Prabhu and others, they are also very great souls worth emulating. Hare Krishna.

So I think we will end here and we will continue, we will be in more association in the days to come. Thank you very much.

Hare Krishna.
Srila Prabhupada ki jaya!
Gaura Bhakta Vrinda ki jaya!