Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis,
Please accept my humble obeisances! All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev!
We have been meditating on glorifying the Lord in the offering titled, "108 Ways of Glorifying the Lord". In the previous offering, we saw the below two glories.
a. The Lord is the proprietor of everything
b. The Lord is the controller of everything
We shall continue to meditate on the next glorification.
Glorification 5: - The words spoken by the Lord are apaurusheya:
Apaurusheya means transcendental or superior to material modes and not delivered by any mundane being. This means anything that the Lord speaks is apaurusheya or perfect. Since the Vedas were originally spoken by Lord Krishna, the Vedas are apaurusheya and hence it proves that the Vedas are not man-made. It is not manufactured or concocted by some mental speculator. It is coming from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and it was imparted first of all to Lord Brahma, not by personal presentation, but through the heart. In the purport of Srimad Bhagavatam verse 2.4.22, Srila Prabhupada nicely mentions that, "before the creation, the Lord was there (narayano paro 'vyaktat), and therefore the words spoken by the Lord are vibrations of transcendental sound. There is a gulf of difference between the two qualities of sound, namely prakata (manifested) and aprakata (unmanifested). The physicist can deal only with the prakata sound, or sound vibrated in the material sky, and therefore we must know that the Vedic sounds recorded in symbolic expressions cannot be understood by anyone within the universe unless and until one is inspired by the vibration of supernatural (aprakata) sound, which descends in the chain of disciplic succession from the Lord to Brahma, from Brahma to Narada, from Narada to Vyasa and so on. No mundane scholar can translate or reveal the true import of the Vedic mantras (hymns)."
Vedas are apaurusheya: Consequently, the followers of the Vedas accept Vedic knowledge to be complete and infallible. For example, cow dung is the stool of an animal, and according to Sruti or Vedic injunction, if one touches the stool of an animal he has to take a bath to purify himself. But in the Vedic scriptures cow dung is considered a purifying agent. One might consider this to be contradictory, but it is accepted because it is a Vedic injunction, and indeed by accepting this, one will not commit a mistake; subsequently it has been proved by modern science that cow dung contains antiseptic properties. So, Vedic knowledge is complete because it is above all doubts and mistakes.
All living beings in the material world are subject to 4 types of defects - tendency to cheat, propensity to make mistakes, is subject to illusion, and has imperfect senses. But the Lord is above the laws of material nature and hence is not affected by this. Whatever the Lord says or does is perfect. Whereas, ordinary human beings make all sorts of mistakes. For example, in 1930 the scientists discovered a new planet PLUTO and just after few years in 2006 the scientists changed their minds and said PLUTO is not a planet at all. This way, due to our imperfect senses our inventions and understanding keep changing all the time. But the texts mentioned in the Vedas never change, they have been constant since time immemorial. The siddhantic cosmology (part of Jyotisha-shastra) contains information similar to the information obtained from modern cosmology. For e.g. the Surya Siddhanta, one of the most important siddhanta shastras states:
1. The distance between the earth and the moon as 253,000 miles compared to modern scientific measurement of 252,710 miles.
2. The Earth's diameter is 7,840 miles, compared to the modern scientific measurements of 7,926.7 miles.
The very fact that cosmic distances are mentioned with such precision in Vedic scriptures long before the dawn of modern cosmology shows that the Vedas are really apauruseya.
The Lord keeps His promise: We promise to do a lot of things in our lives but aren't able to fulfill all of them. But, the Lord fulfills all His promises and doesn't fail on any. He goes to the extent of even fulfilling the promises made by His devotees.
When the demigods were harassed by the demons Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu, they prayed to Lord Vishnu to help them and deliver them from the miseries given by the two. The Lord promised to advent on Earth and deliver them from the two demons on two separate occasions. Having given the promise, the Lord did not forget his promise but He did advent as Lord Varaha and Lord Narasimha and killed both the demons and saved the demigods. Similarly, on several occasions the Lord promises His devotees to help them and He does keep His promise every time without fail. We all know the pastime of Narada muni and the two sons of Kubera, Nalakuvara and Manigrava. Narada muni once cursed the two to become trees since they did not have the etiquette of behaving in front of great personalities like him. But once the two asked for forgiveness, Narada muni out of compassion, forgives them and says that once Lord Krishna advents on the Earth in Vrindavan He will liberate you two and not only that, He will also give you darshan. In this instance, Narada muni did not consult the Lord before speaking those words. But out of love for Narada muni and just to fulfill his words, the Lord liberated Nalakuvara and Manigrava and also gave them splendid darshan. This shows that the Lord not only keeps his promise, but also helps the devotees to keep their word.
There is a real-life story about Banke Bihari (a famous Lord Krishna temple in Vrindavan), narrated to one the Goswamis in Vrindavan. There used to be a devotee named Gopal Das in Aligarh who took a loan from Seth Laxmi Chand and within few months repaid it. But since Gopal was a simple person, he didn't get any receipts from the Seth. The Seth being crooked, later sent a notice to Gopal to repay the loan or vacate his house. The matter was taken to court. Since there were no receipts of the repayment nor was there any witness, everybody including the judge was sure that the Seth will win the case. Upset by this incident, Gopal went to the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan. Banke Bihari is famous for being merciful and there have been a lot of real-life incidents where the Lord has personally saved devotees. Gopal prayed sincerely and with faith to Banke Bihari to help him out. While he dozed off in the temple premises, Banke Bihari came in his dream and promised him to be his witness in the court. During the day of the judgment, the judge asked Gopal whether there was any witness to which Gopal nodded and confidently told the name of Banke Bihari. After the judge called out the name, the Lord appeared in the court covered in a blanket and provided all the exact details about the repayment to the judge and also took the judge to the house of the Seth to show the exact records of each repayment which the Seth had hidden in his house. Having got the proof, the judge released the house back to Gopal. Impressed by the mercy of the Lord, the judge and Gopal devoted their lives fully to the service of the Lord.
Banke Bihari Lal ki Jai !!!
Krishna willing, we shall continue our journey of glorifying the Lord in the upcoming emails.
Thank you very much.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev,
Anand Patil,
Wellington, New Zealand
Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved.