| Listen to Prabhaata-rashmih Audio |
Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru. Jai Guru.
{This Prabhata-Rashmih talk starts with a conversation.}
“Did you read what I gave you? Were you able to place it properly in its relevance?”
“The context you understood.”
The context is when Pandavas where undertaking the vanavāsa, Duryodhana wanted to teasingly go there and see how they were suffering and their intentions were not good. Suddenly the higher level sensed it and made an arrangement to drive them away. Then how did this happen?
You know, after all this, Vyasa Deva is writing all these things. You may doubt many things that he has written. But you cannot doubt the author and the author, such a mastermind, when he is presenting all these propositions, there must be a fact and a compulsion or at least an indication of many things there. Whatever you may say, the visible world of which earth is a planet, in all these planets and celestial bodies normally there is no life. In the earth we have. Apparently there may be another earth also. We cannot say “no”.
But in the Earth, compared to the quantity, the quantum of the inert creations and the space, how much will be the living creatures and particularly the human? Very small. If this a part of the inert creation, is the creation inert? Or is it intelligent? If it was not intelligent, then we intelligent beings would not have been born. Do you understand? What is not in the cause cannot be in the effect. You cannot extract oil from sand or rock. You can extract oil from oil seeds because the oil seeds have the oil which you extract.
So, if the earth, water, air etc. are absolutely inert, then from the inert, the sentient would not have been born. So, there is sentience everywhere in the universe. If you split, go further and further into the causal region of matter, you will find ultimately you end up with sentience. That also I can prove, that we will end up (with sentience). So, that sentient is there everywhere. How it works and what happens, that we cannot say.
Normally the normal laws and orders and processes will work. But there are occasions when the normal orders and laws and processes are transcended and a higher occurrence takes place. Simply for instance, one thing - our Meera, the devotee Meera, legendary figure, her mother-in-law gave her poison to drink to kill her. Her devotion did not allow to resist it. So she simply took it and drank. But she did not die. The biochemical effect of the poison did not act on her biological body. Tell me how? This is a very naked fact. So this happened. Similarly many such things are happening but they are not daily occurrences because it is not necessary. This will happen in the case of minds which are very highly attuned and which have their own eccentricities. So, I am trying to speak of these matters, how it works etc.
So, Veda Vyasa has a purpose. The author has a purpose in bringing this instance. After all, the course of dharma, it is always intimidated, it is stifled and so many things are happening in this world. But the force of dharma is very subtle and it can preserve itself.
A few years back, there was something called an Ashtagrahayoga. Do you know about it? Eight celestial bodies were coming in one house and people were predicting the world will come to an end. But world did not end. They came together but they did not clash or collide with each other. In the same way they came together, they also got distant and that particular fate passed. But everybody was saying that the world will come to an end.
I went to Trichur to undertake a Namasañkīrtana procession to ward off danger. They wanted me to go, so I went. So, like that people will say many things and some of our mythological people will say, “How can anybody go to the moon? It is impossible.” That is because they don’t know. Moon is as much a celestial body as earth is. There is no oxygen. If you can take oxygen and manage to go and stay there for two days, you can stay. But you have to take very many precautions to see that you are able to stand the atmospheric pressure low or high and then you are able to manage. They have brought a piece of moon also. So like that, these are all very, very highly, highly intellectual. So, I am a person who appreciates it and tries to speak in defense of it. So I wrote like this. I am writing.
In the course of the writing, I am analyzing the different types of behavior of Karna. Karna is a very complex character, a very great person, very heroic, very valorous and charitable, dangerously charitable. Such a person is pictured by Vyasadeva and he says how the hollow aspects of his personality are there. So, yesterday at one point ‘A’ said, “I feel sympathetic to him.” So, I had mentioned a particular instance and commented upon it and evaluated. She said, “Pavam, pavam, pavam Karnan.” (Poor Karnan). So, I have to write a little more, a few more pages on him, how he behaved.
You know, this man, such a man who wanted to stand by Duryodhana all along, in the actual war he was out of the battlefield till Bhishma fell. How do you explain it? He was considering a lifelong friend Duryodhana and Duryodhana was banking on him and him alone. Now that man because of a personal dislike for Bhishma because Bhishma used to advise him and he was not able to tolerate it. So he said, “As long as you are in the battlefield, active, I will never come.” and he waited for ten days out of the eighteen days and after Bhishma fell, he came to the battlefield. He also became the Commander-in-Chief later.
Now, such a person who always wanted to support and be with Duryodhana, how can he take a decision not to come to the battlefield in the most crucial period? But, man is subject to a variety of emotions and sometimes the emotions are not able to, that wrench applied by the emotions is so much that he is not able to get away from it. Now Veda Vyasa wants to convey all these things through a character called Karna. Do you understand? How these emotions are strung, how they work and how a person is inescapably bound by them etc. So, when I start thinking about, all these points come to my mind, and I type. But I will not condemn or ridicule anything. But I will point out.
The language has to be good, very majestic, I used to tell ‘A’ that we should write in a very lofty manner. Even when critically evaluating something, we must be very lofty, very magnificent in our statements. It should be just like a pin being inserted to a plantain, ripe plantain. Do you understand? So, we should not hurt anybody. But we should present the propositions. Okay.
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