Krishna Jagadīśwara

The wives of Kaliya continued, “Using the attributes of goodness, passion and ignorance, You create, sustain and annihilate this universe”.

Merely with the touch of the Supreme Lord, merely with His gaze and merely with His blessing, these wives of Kaliya were blessed with Self-knowledge. All these snake-women had performed rigorous austerities in some past birth for them to be blessed with this ultimate knowledge. A curse had caused them to fall and obtain this lowly state as snakes. It was true that Kaliya had sinned horribly in this birth. Nevertheless, in some past birth he had undertaken intense penance. His merit from his past births caused him to be blessed with the dust from the Lord’s feet. The blessing received from the Lord caused Self-knowledge to spurt in them.

“O ever-compassionate Lord! Forgive this sinner. Redeem him from his sins. Simply by Your glance, You sportily cause the subtle tendencies of every living entity, which exist within You in seed form, to sprout”.

Through His glance the Lord causes the hidden tendencies of every living entity to come to the forefront. Happily He causes them to sprout and illumine. He is the one who created darkness and He alone dispels it. Only when we cultivate the feelings, ‘Everything is mine, this darkness belongs to me’ we turn into sinners.

Due to feelings of ‘I and mine’ Kaliya sinned. Due to this ego, he forgot the Lord. Instead of acknowledging that everything belongs to the Lord, he prided that everything belongs to him. Even by mistake a person should never boast. At every minute we should acknowledge that everything belongs to God. When such thinking is cultivated, we still continue to sin, albeit at a lower scale. Remember that inevitably one has to pay for his sins. If a person thinks, ‘I have already paid for most of my sins. If from today I acknowledge that everything belongs to Him, I will escape from future sufferings,’ he is wrong. He has to pay for all his past sins, present mistakes as well as for the thoughts in the mind.

Only when the thought, ‘I do not exist here. Everything is Him alone,’ the person will be blessed with liberation. Here the wives of Kaliya state that the Lord, through His glance, causes hidden tendencies to bloom fully in the living entities. He fills them with consciousness, causes them to bloom and appear in their original form. To the Lord this is an enjoyable sport. He is the Lord who causes the seed to sprout into a sapling. He is the one who causes it to flower. He is the one who then accepts that flower and wears it around His neck as an ornamentation.

“In all the three worlds, Devatas who are predominantly filled with saintly traits of goodness, the humans who are predominantly filled with the traits of passion (rajas) that causes agitation as well as the ignorant fools who are predominantly filled with the traits of ignorance (tamas) have all been created by You alone. All the different creations are nothing but Your forms. This is decisively true.”

The different births composed of the different traits are all His creations. All living entities irrespective of whether they are moving or non-moving, with life or lifeless, visible or invisible, are His creations. All the planets, the different galaxies, all the living entities starting from germs are nothing but His manifestations.

“With the intent of protecting the dharma of the saintly persons who abide by righteousness, You have presently incarnated on Earth. In this incarnation, You have taken a vow to protect all those who abide by righteousness. To You, who have determined to protect righteousness, only saintly people who are filled with peace bring happiness”.

Who are the people who bring happiness to Him? Since He has incarnated for the protection of righteousness, those who abide diligently by their righteous duties are extremely dear to Him. They bring Him joy. This is His creation. He now wants to clean it up. In this He derives great joy. He wants to pluck out unrighteousness completely from His creation and fill it with righteousness.

“O Lord whose mind overflows with peace! A master should forgive the mistake of his servant only once”.

When a servant commits a mistake, the master should forgive him once. ‘I have forgiven you this one time. Do not repeat it even in your dreams’- he warns the servant. The wives now point out the mistakes of Kaliya.

“Being filled with ignorance (tamas), this Kaliya could not understand Your greatness. He is enveloped completely by darkness.”

Ignorance did not spare even the creator Brahma. Similarly here Kaliya was enveloped by ignorance. Undoubtedly, he had abided by righteousness and participated in many meritorious deeds in the past. Nevertheless, as ignorance had enveloped him, he had turned into a sinner. These wives of Kaliya had performed limitless penance across many past births. It is impossible to understand the Lord with the efforts of just one birth. In every birth therefore you should undertake penance. You have to necessarily pay for the sins which, due to ignorance, you committed in the various past births.

After chanting the Lord’s name for a hundred thousand or a million times, people consider themselves ready for liberation. The truth is that even after a hundred million or hundred trillion births, you will not get liberated. You could be aghast that Swamiji is making such a terrifying statement. The truth however is that the route to liberation is extremely long. But you should continue on this path.

In this context, I remember a story for Dhruva’s life. When Dhruva was proceeding to the forests for penance, he met some kings on the way, who said to him, ‘It is truly admirable that you are proceeding to meet Mahavishnu. We are filled with happiness at this thought. However we are all going through real pitiable situations. For the past many births we are suffering. Although we are the rulers, we are agonizing that we still remain childless. Please enquire from the Lord whether we have the luck to obtain progeny or not. We shall wait for you here till you return’.

Dhruva was a boy of six. Yet the kings were sure that he would be successful in his mission of having darshan of the Supreme. This is because of the greatness of his Guru, Maharishi Narada. For having obtained such Guru, success was within reach. They knew that he would meet the Supreme Lord.

Similar to these kings, many other living entities put forth their problems to Dhruva and asked him to get answers for the same from Mahavishnu. Dhruva made a note of the questions that he had to obtain clarification from the Lord. Lastly he met an aged ascetic who appeared as if he was ready to kick the bucket in a day or two. The aged man offered obeisance to Dhruva and asked, “Please enquire from the Lord as to when I will obtain liberation”. Dhruva agreed to ask the Lord.

Narayana Narayana Krishna