The Glory of God : A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam : 3.7 - Swami Krishnananda.
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Sunday, January 16, 2022. 6:00. AM.
Chapter 3 : KAPILA’S INSTRUCTIONS TO DEVAHUTI - 7.
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At the beginning of the attempt of spiritual practice, the sense organs feel a deficiency and an incapacity of an incomparable nature. There is a dark cloud hanging in front of us, and light will not be there in the earlier stages. The reason for the darkness in front of us—the opposition of ugliness and terror at the very outset—is due to a reaction set up by the dissatisfied senses which have not been given their fill by the objects of sense. The poison, therefore, is created by a circumstance of repulsion between the sense organs and the actual things which exist in the world. That repulsion has to gradually cease by facing it completely. We have to face that condition.
Our attempt at spiritual practice is not a smooth movement as if on a paved road. There is opposition from the world. In the beginning, it will be opposition from human beings only. Afterwards, nature itself will oppose. That is the second stage of opposition, and it is much greater than the problems created by people in this world. When nature itself has a feeling that we are trying to overcome it, it will present a phenomenon which is difficult to describe. First it will be an arena of tremendous temptation, and then an arena of war, threat and terror, in various forms.
This dual feeling which the gods and the demons had when they churned the ocean is actually the churning of life itself; that itself the ocean. Our whole life is like a sea before us whose essence has to be extracted by the churning rod of our own mind in concentration. Within us are the gods as well as the demons—the Jekyll and Hyde, as they are called. They join together and want to have the best of things in the world; they churn life. The opposition from nature is the reason why there is a feeling of discomfiture in the beginning. A poisonous gas comes, as it were, which is all opposition from every source. There is body ache, mental ache, dissatisfaction, a feeling of distress in everything, and finally collapsing because of the power nature has, with which we have not properly acclimatised ourselves during our life in the world.
We have not only to be friendly with human beings, but we also have to be friendly with nature. We cannot oppose it under the impression that everything is well with us. There are laws of nature which are to be obeyed so that they become harmonised with the structure of our own being. If that has not been done, there is opposition one day or the other. Nature keeps quiet because our opposition to it is not very strong, but when we are bent upon it, it takes up its cudgels—and then we have poison before us.
However, briefly speaking, this churning of the ocean both by the Devas and the Asuras—the divine forces and the evil forces in us, both the positive and negative—find not the nectar. At least fourteen gems come up one after the other, each greater than the previous, so that in the attraction for these wonderful gems we may completely forget the very purpose of our churning. As I mentioned, the higher forces are more beautiful, more attractive than the lower ones, and these are actually the gems coming up. Fourteen obstacles from the fourteen levels of creation will come. Both forces want to drink the nectar that finally emerges, and so there is a war going on between the positive and negative forces in our own selves.
Until the end of time, we will find there is opposition between cosmic positivity and cosmic negativity. The grace of God is described here in the form of the descent of Mahavishnu in a form which fed the aspirations of the divine forces, and dispersed the evil forces. Nectar was drunk by the gods, who are the aspirations for the greatness of God in us. This is the allegorical story of the Amrita Manthana in the form of an epic poem described in the Srimad Bhagavata.
This is, of course, connected with our experience in meditation on the Supreme Mahapurusha, in which we have to persist day in and day out. We have to keep the picture of this Mahapurusha before us always. If the mind cannot visualise this picture, we should at least have a painted picture of the Virat Purusha in front of us. If we go on looking at it every day and concentrate our mind, we will be able to energise our mind to the capacity of concentrating even without a support such as a picture or a framework, and visualise the Cosmic Being Himself as the Great Person ready to bless us with all His glory at any moment of time. Such meditation is the theme of this wondrous description of Maharishi Kapila to Devahuti, who was his own mother.
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