Srimad Mahabhagavatham : 3.6 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday, February 09,  2022. 06:00.

Chapter-3 : Kapila’s Instructions to Devahuti - 6.

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The main theme is concentration on the Mahapurusha, for which, first of all, we have to equip ourselves with the characteristic of feeling that we have had enough with everything in this world. If we feel that we have not had enough of this world, this Person cannot be an object of our meditation. A sense of ennui and a feeling that we do not require anything else should take possession of us. We had a surfeit of all things in the world. A person who is defeated by the world cannot go to God. We have to conquer the world first; it is a snare placed before us. We have to pass through that net that is placed before us, and overcome it. This is the battlefield, actually speaking, in which we are not to be defeated. We have to win victory in this field of battle of the Mahabharata, which is taking place in the form of this very Earth itself in front of us. So, unless we have conquered the temptations of life, we will not be able to have an attraction for God. This is also very marvellously described by Maharishi Kapila. I am not going through all the details of it, due to shortage of time.

There are obstacles which we cannot imagine in our life. I mentioned that there are levels of creation—Bhuloka, Bhuvarloka, Svarloka, Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka, Satyaloka—and while we pass through all these levels of creation, we have also to encounter the citizens of these various levels. We have to make friendship with them. The higher we go, the greater is the beauty that we see. The Earth has only crude beauty and a crude capacity to satisfy, whereas in the other levels there is subtle power everywhere; and as we move higher and higher, we will find the capacity to satisfy ourselves becomes more and more. The sense organs, which glut in the beauties of the world, will be engulfed by another beauty which they cannot contain, and the eyes may not be able to fully comprehend the grandeur of satisfaction that is available in the higher worlds.

These are described to us in great detail in an allegorical fashion as the Amrita Manthana, in another Skandha of the Srimad Bhagavata. Amrita Manthana is the churning of the ocean by the gods and the demons in order to acquire nectar. Both good people and bad people want to be immortal; they do not want to die. So is the case with the Devas and the Asuras who, in order to become immortal, wanted to drink the nectar which would rise when the ocean was churned. When they churned the ocean, at the very outset they found it brought forth the opposite of what they expected. What they expected was one thing, and what came was something else altogether. The expectation was for nectar, but poison came first.

To be continued ...

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