When we are reading philosophical material we have a tendency to skip over certain parts. For some it’s the difficult-to-pronounce Sanskrit prayers, while others will skip over the highly philosophical parts considering them to be beyond their level of understanding. But i would say that the most skipped over sections would be the ones on the Lord’s “universal form”.
i realize that even mentioning that this will be the subject of this weeks blog entry, i risk losing several readers immediately. But i hope that everyone will give me the benefit of the doubt and read on... i promise to keep it brief and entertaining.
There are quite a few descriptions of the virat-rupa throughout our sastras and i have heard several reasons for skipping over them from “it’s boring” to “it’s irrelevant” to “it has no flavor”. After all, it is referred to as a “godless display of opulence” and is usually more appealing to pantheists. The most convincing excuse that i have heard to justify skipping these descriptions is that in the Bhagavad-gita, even though Arjuna requested to see that form, he quickly asked Krsna to resume His original form because the universal form was incompatible with Arjuna’s rasa.
Similarly, when Mother Yasoda saw such a form within her divine child’s mouth she had to quickly forget about what she saw (with the help of yoga-maya of course) so that it would not sully her motherly relationship with Krsna.
So if the conclusion is that a pure devotee does not wish to see this aspect of the Supreme Lord, then why should we, as aspiring Vaisnavas, bother to read about it?
i have to admit that for several years i too was guilty of skipping over these sections for a lot of the above mentioned reasons.
But then, while studying the Srimad Bhagavatam in Sridhama Mayapur i came across this verse at the end of the fifth canto where Srila Sukadeva Goswami is addressing Maharaja Pariksit (5.26.38):
"… This vast form is considered the external body of the Lord, created by His energy and qualities. It is generally called the virāṭ-rūpa. If one reads the description of this external form of the Lord with great faith, or if one hears about it or explains it to others to propagate bhāgavata-dharma, or Kṛṣṇa consciousness, his faith and devotion in spiritual consciousness, Kṛṣṇa consciousness, will gradually increase. Although developing this consciousness is very difficult, by this process one can purify himself and gradually come to an awareness of the Supreme Absolute Truth."
In his purport, Srila Prabhupada writes:
“The Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is pushing forward the publication of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, as explained especially for the understanding of the modern civilized man, to awaken him to his original consciousness. Without this consciousness, one melts into complete darkness. Whether one goes to the upper planetary systems or the hellish planetary systems, he simply wastes his time. Therefore one should hear of the universal position of the virāṭ form of the Lord as described in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. That will help one save himself from material conditional life and gradually elevate him to the path of liberation so that he can go back home, back to Godhead.”
After reading this, my opinion of the universal form changed quite a bit.
Unfortunately, we conditioned souls are not attached to Krsna's sweet pastimes. Instead we are attached to making our own sweet pastimes independent from Him in this material world. No matter how vehemently we deny this fact, our actions show otherwise. Our daily habits show that we are more interested in attempting to keep ourselves entertained, happy, comfortable and/or satisfied through material manipulation than we are in reconnecting with our eternal position. So since our priorities currently lie more in self-aggrandizement than to Krsna's sweet pastimes, understanding the universal form would be a step in the right direction for us.
The process of Krsna consciousness is to take that which we are already attached to and dovetail it in Krsna's service. In this way the activity remains the same, but the consciousness is properly directed and the same activity that once facilitated our forgetfulness of Krsna now facilitates our remembrance of Him.
We all have attachments that we know are detrimental to our spiritual growth, and although these attachments are different for every person the process to become detached from them is the same. The way for us to overcome a material attachment is to understand its proper use. With our consciousness thus in its proper place, the material attachment dissolves away.
In the Bhagavad-gita Krsna says, "For one who sees Me everywhere and who sees everything in Me, to him I am never lost nor is he ever lost to Me". Our goal is to be able to see Krsna everywhere and understand how everything is a part of Him. That is the very definition of "Krsna consciousness". Although we cannot run away from our attachments, we can properly understand them and thus we can conquer them. That is our process. And since these descriptions of the virat rupa are intended to show how everything we know is merely a part of the Supreme Lord it is certainly pertinent to all of us.
The universal form gives us the opportunity to transform our fondness of the mundane to fondness of the Srupeme Lord. It is meant to show us that all of our attachments are actually attachments to Him. It is only because of our skewed vision that we cannot see the connection and thus we are unsatisfied. But when we see things as they truly are, as transformations of His divine energy, our vision is clear and we are no longer a servant of our senses.
This, like any instruction, can be used properly or improperly. i certainly am not claiming that we should drop all of our regular service and focus on the universal form. What i am saying is that we need to examine whatever attachments we have outside of our devotional lives and gradually learn how to see Krsna in all of them. The descriptions of the universal form help us to do this.
For example, in the descriptions of the universal form, Krsna says that the sun and moon are His eyes. Every form of light in the material world is a transformation of the sun’s energy whether it is from stored energy in wood, coal, oil, etc. or is reflected (off of other planets etc.) Without these forms of light, we could not see... our eyes would be useless. This means that our eyes only work because He has eyes.
Everything we take for granted is made possible by Him, and if we took the time to see Him in all of these things from time to time we would better understand Him and His unconditional love for us. And if we could better understand that, our hearts would quickly melt and we would naturally fall in love with Him and try to reciprocate His love by exclusively serving Him.
One day we will understand our deeply established relationship with Krsna, and when that happens the display of the universal form will be of no interest to us. But until then we should understand that the things we see everyday and use for our personal enjoyment is an exploitation of God and His energy and is thus a declaration of atheism.
The real reason we skip over these sections is because there is a part of us that does not want to see Him everywhere. We only want to see Him when it is convenient. Otherwise our guilt for turning our back on Him would be overwhelming. We are self-centered and there is no room for His presence in all of “our things”.
If we truly want to transform this selfish materialistic attitude to a spiritual one, it is in our best interest to learn to see the Lord everywhere.
Sometimes the things that we consider to be insignificant or impertinent are the very things that could potentially change our lives forever.
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