A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam-3.28.



Chapter-3: Kapila’s Instructions to Devahuti - 28.

Thus, Maharishi Kapila takes us gradually from the various parts of the Supreme Person to every other part. We can look at His head, His eyes, His nose, His hands, His chest, His whole person. What do we see there? We see the whole cosmos embedded in Him. We are not looking at an extra-cosmic Person standing on the top of the world, with His feet on the Earth as if the Earth has no connection with Him. This Mighty Person, called the Visvarupa, includes all the creation that He is supposed to have made.

In the Visvarupa-darsana we find all the worlds rolled up in one mass.

Ihaikastham   jagat   krtsnam    pasyadya    sacaracaram (B.G. 11.7):

“You can see the whole universe here,” says Bhagavan in his Visvarupa.

Hence, the mind cannot feel the necessity to get distracted or to go in some other direction. We may not feel at that time, “I am contemplating an extra-cosmic Supreme Person seated in heaven, and I have left the Earth which also seems to have some value for me.” These values which are supposed to be in this world are included in this Supreme Magnificence, because God is not merely a transcendent creator, He is also an immanent material out of which the whole universe is created. Abhinna-nimitta-upadana-karanatva is the nature of God—that is, the unity of Being is the material cause as well the instrumental cause of creation.

A potter is only the instrumental cause, and not the material cause, of the pot because the material is the earth, the clay, out of which it is made. But here, the material cannot be outside God. The timber, the beams and the support of this world are made up of God’s Person Himself. In the great Skambha Sukta in the Atharva Veda, we have a question: What is the timber out of which the house of God is built? What are its beams; what are its pillars; what is the structure? The answer is that the pillar, the beams and the timber that are used are made of God only. That is the answer of this great Skambha Sukta: the structural pattern of God is the substance of the world also.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued ....


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