The Glory of God: A Summary of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana: ( 04/04/2013. )

=========================================================== Swami Sivananda Asramam. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Friday, May 22, 2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-3. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Here is a little departure in the story of the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana. There is the vast ocean, the vast Earth, the entire physical universe before us—sun, moon, stars, all things. God created vegetation first. The plant kingdom manifested itself in the process of evolution. In this context, a question arises: Did God create all things at one stoke with a fiat of His will, or did He allow things to grow gradually from lower to higher species in a systematic manner? Both seem to be a valid answer in this connection. It is something like what goes on in the dream world. Do we suddenly dream mountains, rivers and things in our perception of dre...

================================================ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25/04/2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation-2 ------------------------------------------------------ 1. But having said all these things, Suka concludes by giving his final opinion: akāmaḥ sarva-kāmo vā mokṣa-kāma udāra-dhīḥ, tīvreṇa bhakti-yogena yajeta puruṣaṁ param (S.B. 2.3.10). Infinite desires can be fulfilled by infinite adorations of different varieties, summoning the angels in heaven in different ways, which are the upasanas as mentioned; but if you want nothing or want all things at the same time, then your heart should be devoted to the Supreme Narayana who is the mokshadata—the giver of liberation. ----------------------------------------------------------- 2. The condition to attain Narayana is that we want nothing or we want everything at the same time, because wanting everything is equal to wanting nothing. The trouble is ...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 02/03/2020. Chapter 2: The Process of Creation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ #The Srimad Bhagavata Mahapuranam consists of twelve books.   In the earlier sections—the first nine books—we have a cosmology of the whole of creation, and practically the history of mankind as conceived from the point of view of a religious interpretation of the process of creation. ##Suka Maharishi placed before Raja Parikshit a picture of the Cosmic Being, through whose Being, through whose Person run all the levels of existence—seven realms above and seven realms below, from Patala to Brahmaloka. ###Having described this wondrous structure of creation through every level which one has to pass in the proces...

======================================================================= ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29/01/2020. Chapter -1. King Parikshit’s Question to Suka Maharishi -10. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. So, ignorance is at the back of the so-called joys of life. If we know the cause, we will be disappointed in one second. There is a thief behind this joy that we appear to have in this world. That thief is trying to rob us of whatever energy we have. Sankaracharya, in one of his verses, tells us that there are many thieves in this world, and they are ready to rob us of all the treasures that we have in the form of energy. Our energy becomes depleted through every form of sense contact, and we become old and weak, and then perish due to a total exhaustion of the energy quantum of our pe...

======================================================================= ======================================================================== 11/12/2019. Chapter -1. King Parikshit’s Question to Suka Maharishi -9. ======================================================================== But the senses also tell us that this world is not all by the dissatisfaction that follows from every kind of so-called satisfaction provided to us by the sense organs. Because the contact of the senses with objects gives satisfaction, it may bring us to the conclusion that this world is wonderful and it is good in itself, but the bitter consequence that follows from this so-called ‘goodness’ of the satisfaction gained through these sense organs, is also indicative of the fact that this is not really good. So the senses are our teachers in a way, apart from their being what people generally call deceivers. They are pointers to two levels of reality at the same time. If we want t...

======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11/11/2019. Chapter -1. King Parikshit’s Question to Suka Maharishi -8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Though the rise from one level to another level is usually gradual, as is described to us in the Srimad Bhagavata and the Puranas, it is also said that a sudden rise is possible. It is something like this. Suppose one thousand rose petals are kept one over the other and a needle is passed through them, we may say that the needle pierced all these petals at one stroke; whereas, in fact, the needle passed gradually through one petal to the other in spite of the impression that it was an instantaneous action. Similarly, by the force of the power of yoga and meditation, we may compress the total p...

======================================================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15/10/2019 Chapter -1. King Parikshit’s Question to Suka Maharishi -7. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is an incomparable scripture. Its eighteen skandhas represent the eighteen processes of the evolution of the cosmos. In Indian culture, the word ‘eighteen’ has been regarded as very sacred. The Bhagavata contains eighteen skandhas, the Mahabharata contains eighteen parvas, the war took place for eighteen days, the Bhagavadgita has eighteen chapters; it is a great mystery. According to the traditional belief in the computational meaning of numbers, eighteen represents victory. According to a traditional calculation in India especially, the word ‘eight’ is represented by the word ‘ja’, and the...