February 6, 2013 Sadhu-Sanga — Sripad Bhakti Vijnana Muni Maharaja read from Srimad Bhagavatam

Topic: Lord Brahma answers Narada’s question

Here is the recording of the February 6, 2013 sadhu-sanga.

• From the Personality of Godhead, all the universal globes and the universal form with all material elements, qualities and senses are generated. However, like the sun, which is separate from its rays and heat, the Lord stands aloof from such material manifestations. Simultaneously personal and impersonal by His inconceivable potency, He displays complete unity in a diversity of material and spiritual manifestations.
• Brahma, the original living being within the material world, taught us the way of sacrifice. “Sacrifice” suggests dedication of one’s own interests for satisfaction of a second person. Perfection of such sacrifices is attained when they are performed for the sake of the Supreme Person, Lord Krsna. However, to perform a sacrifice successfully, at least four expert priests are needed. Since such expert priests are very rare in this age of corruption and quarrel, only the yajna of chanting the Holy Name of the Lord is recommended.
• The One is Lord Vasudeva. By His different energies and expansions the different manifestations are maintained, both in the material and in the spiritual worlds. Thus, the conception of oneness is accepted by the devotee of the Lord. However, whereas the impersonalist denies personality in the ultimate issue, the devotee gives more importance to the Personality of Godhead.
• The Lord is omnipotent by three energies — internal, marginal and external. The external energy is displayed in the three modes of goodness, passion and ignorance. The internal potency is displayed in three spiritual modes — samvit (knowledge), sandhini (existence) and hladini (pleasure). The marginal energy, consisting of the living entities, is also spiritual, yet the living entities are never equal to the Lord.
• Everything, either permanent or temporary, is working as cause and effect. Because the Lord is the primeval cause of all persons and all energies, He is called the cause of all causes. Even the impersonal spiritual effulgence, the brahmajyoti, is an effect of Lord Krsna.
• Lord Brahma declares that because he has caught hold of the lotus feet of the Supreme Personality of God, what He has said has never proven to be false. From time immemorial, such transcendental knowledge is being distributed all over the world by the process of disciplic succession. On the other hand, Lord Brahma declares in the very next sloka, that despite His vast learning, austerity, penance, mystic powers and self-realization, even He cannot understand the Supreme Lord. Only the devotee, solely by dint of his service mood (bhaktya), can gradually come to know the personality of Godhead.
• Lord Brahma thus advises us to surrender unto the lotus feet of the Lord in order to achieve all success, even up to the limit of being liberated from the miseries of material life and being endowed with all-auspicious spiritual existence. Anyone who denies this surrendering process will be forced to surrender unto the laws of material nature. Only those persons with a very poor fund of knowledge claim that they themselves are lords of all that they survey.
• The end of all suffering means surrendering unto the Lord because the surrendering process itself is bhava-cchidam (liberation from all material miseries), svasty-ayanam (perception of all happiness), and sumangalam (the source of everything auspicious).