Self and Consciousness XVIII: Visions in Trance

What Vyāsa Saw

Great conversations bring great truths into play. The teachings of Jesus Christ when he walked among his disciples near the Sea of Galilea were told in parables to fishermen and carpenters and yet revealed great truths. Farther back in time were the dialogues between Socrates and his friends and students, recorded by Plato. Their conversations are still celebrated as among the great moments in philosophy.

In ancient times another great conversation was recorded in India, in the forest of Naimisharanya. These were not mere fishermen, or carpenters. Nor were they the sons of the elite merchants and politicians of Athens.

The men who gathered in the forest of Naimisharanya were truth-seekers. Most of them had dedicated their life to understanding the nature of transcendental reality. Collectively they had spent decades in meditation, study, and prayer. They led austere lives. They were known as kind to everyone and, while they were expert in debate, had no enemies.  They were truthful and equal to everyone.

80,000 such saints were assembled there at that holy place. 80,000 may seem like a grand number, but today it is a good crowd for an important sports event. 

Music festivals are often attended by more than 80,000 people today. 

80,000 is not really an exaggerated number. In India today if 80,000 people attended a political rally it would be considered a great failure.

More than 100,000 Hindoos and Moslems gathered on the banks of the Sabarmati River, at Ahmedabad, India, to hear their hero, Mahatma Gandhi, speak in 1931, Newspaper Photo 

But this was neither a sports event nor a music festival, nor a political rally but a great conversation, perhaps the greatest conversation ever. 

This conversation would eclipse all others for thousands of years. Even the dialogues of Plato and the parables of Christ pale by comparison with the exchange between the 80,000 saints headed by Śaunaka and Suta, the humble teacher of Vyāsa's message.

All these saints and yogis, erudite Vedic scholars and austere hermits had gathered to hear the conversation between Suta and Śaunaka.

Suta Goswami at the great sacrifice in Naimisharanya

Suta was a great teacher. He had been trained in the Vedas and Upanishads by Vyāsa himself. Eager to hear, the truth-seekers sat in silence as Suta spoke the entire Mahābharata of his guru Vyāsa. These saints and scholars sat quietly and listened with great respect to the entire saga. After all, Suta had been trained in that esoteric literature by the composer, Vyāsa himself.

Now, the sages had gathered there to conduct a great sacrifice, concerned that the coming age would be one of strife and quarrel. They foresaw that the time ahead would be one of genocidal war, corruption, and suffering. They wanted a spiritual message. What they got in the Mahābhārata had many spiritual moments, but left them wanting.

These truth-seekers had elected the wise Śaunaka as their leader, to represent their questions in the great conversation with Suta.

And Śaunaka had put serious questions to Suta.

When he had been pressed to go deeper, Suta revealed that there was indeed a new composition by Vyāsa, one even more comprehensive than Mahābharata.

Suta revealed that even Vyāsa had experienced misgivings. Even after composing Mahābharata for the benefit of humanity, he felt that he had not gone far enough.

The sages were quiet again and listened as Suta described how Vyāsa had retired to the forest for inspiration. He talked of the mysterious visitation of Nārada. When Vyāsa had sat in meditation, searching his soul for a clue as to his despondency, Nārada had appeared before him.

Nārada

And Nārada had explained to Vyāsa what was lacking: he had failed to properly describe the nature of the Personal Godhead. The Bhagavad-Gita alluded to Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme, but Vyāsa had been too subtle: he had not gone far enough to describe the personal qualities of the Godhead.

Vyāsa accepted Nārada as his guru. He took the instructions of his guru to heart and began to think of how he might go further. Vyāsa was a writer. His gift was his ability to compose in Sanskrit; his gift was his poetry and his power to see the truth. He set about his new mission.

Suta was Vyāsa’s disciple, empowered to represent perfectly his point of view. So, at this point, Ṛṣi Śaunaka interrupted.

Śaunaka asked, “O Sūta, Vyāsa was your guru. He was so empowered by God to write the scriptures that we may respectfully refer to Vyāsa as ‘Bhagavan.’ And he had heard everything from Śrī Nārada Muni. So after Nārada’s departure, what did Bhagavan Śrī Vyāsadeva, also known as Badarayana, the author of Vedānta do?”

Many of the sages there nodded in agreement. They had chosen well. Śaunaka certainly represented their own inquiries. This was their own question. They wanted to know how Vyāsa responded to the instruction given him by Nārada.

Sūta smiled. He was honored to have been chosen to represent his gurudeva. Sitting in the shade of a great banyan tree, surrounded by thousands of sages he glanced up as a ray of light pierced the canopy of broad leaves.

Suta smiled as a leaf fell from the heights.

He said: “The ancient river Saraswatī, which is intimately related with the Vedas, has always been a place of pilgrimage. Since time immemorial saints and sages like yourselves have traveled there for peaceful meditation. There, at Śamyāprāsa there is an ashram. There are certain berry trees there called Badari.

In that place, Śrīla Vyāsadeva, made his cottage for meditation. For this reason he became known as Badarinarayan.

Suta explained to the crowd how Nārada advised Śrīla Vyāsadeva to become absorbed in transcendental meditation on the Personality of Godhead and His activities.

“And so it was,” Suta said, “that at that ashram, Vyāsa sat down to meditate after touching water for purification. He fixed his mind, in bhakti-yoga and had a clear vision of the Personal Godhead,Bhagavan Śrī Kṛṣṇa with His eternal associates in the spiritual sky, his personal expansions, his marginal potency as well as the external material energy and its manifestation as the material cosmos. In this way, before he began to compose that great treatise, the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Śrī Vyāsadeva realized the whole truth. He saw the divine nature in a kind of mystical devotional.

Nārada had explained to Vyāsa that the material miseries of the living entity, which are superfluous to him, can be directly mitigated by the linking process of devotional service. But the Mahābharata had not fully divulged this esoteric secret, so the mass of people could not know this.

Nārada had instructed Vyāsa to create a new transcendental literature which would reveal this divine truth and therefore the learned Vyāsadeva composed the Bhagavata, or Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Nārada told him, “I am giving this knowledge to you. You meditate on it. It will reveal itself to you and then you can give full Kṛṣṇa consciousness to others through your writings and teachings. You know how to compose this properly into a suitable treatise. This will be realized by you through bhakti-yoga.”

The Bhagavata was not a new Vedic literature, Suta explained, but a new revelation of divine reality.

Suta said, “In his mediation, Vedavyāsa saw Kṛṣṇa; he saw his cit-śākti, by which he performs His pastimes. In this way, Śrīla Vyāsadeva saw the all-perfect Personality of Godhead. Not only did he see Kṛṣṇa, but His different energies. Kṛṣṇa is not alone. A king is always present with his entourage, his great establishment. Krishna is always surrounded by a big hierarchy, namely the internal energy, the marginal energy and the external energy.”

“In this way, Vyāsa had a divine revelation. In his meditation He not only beheld the Personality of Godhead, but his entire entourage. He could clearly see Rādhā and Krishna and their pastimes in Vrindavan with the vrajabāsīs, the gopīs and knew that this constituted a highly confidential truth. He saw Krishna in Mathura and later in Kurukshetra driving the chariot of Arjuna during the Great War. He saw Krishna speaking the Bhagavad-Gita and revealing the Universal Form to Arjuna. He saw the entire spiritual worlds in infinite manifestations and revelations. He saw the Vaikuntha planets where Vishnu presides in various forms over those who are captivated by divine service in majesty. He saw all the different plenary portions of the Godhead and understood their heirarchy in divinity.”

Suta continued, “In this way, Vyāsa saw the parts of the divine in their plenary portions and expansion. He saw the divine avataras of Godhead revealed before him in that divine vision. and he specifically observed the unwanted miseries of the conditioned souls, who are bewildered by the external energy.”

Suta watched as two golden birds soared and played in the branches of the banyan tree far above the collected saints and sages. They carried twigs to the their nests. He remembered the teachings of Vyāsa, where one bird eats the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree, yet the other, avoiding such enjoyment, is greater in strength and glory for it knows the Self. He looked out over the gathered saints who were so intent in listening, and reflected on the compassion of his master, Vyāsa. He thought he saw his master seated in the crowd and tried to remember his words.

Suta said, “And at last Vyāsa understood his purpose. He knew what he had to write. He saw the remedial measure for the conditioned souls, namely the process of devotional service and realized that he would have to explain it in great detail with examples from the lives of kings, princes, and saints--even demons. And as he came out of his divine trance, Vyāsa began to understand what he would compose and how to write.

He envisioned the scope and sequence of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. He took the Gayatri mantra as his inspiration and began: janmādy asya yataḥ...satyam param dhimahi. Vyāsa knew that the entire Bhagavatam would unfold as a commentary on the inner meaning of the Gayatri, and so he states this in his first verse.

Suta continued, “Vyāsa knew that this would be a much greater achievement than the Mahābhārata, for simply by hearing the message of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam one gets attachment for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. His meditation was complete. He thought, ‘now I am in full Kṛṣṇa consciousness and I shall impart this knowledge through the Bhāgavatam. I shall not contradict or minimize what I have said before. Vedānta is important. But I shall give a fuller explanation here. I shall rectify whatever mistaken ideas I have given.'"

"Vyāsa thought, 'The Upanishads are condensed into aphorisms. But sometimes they are difficult to understand. People get the wrong idea. The Vedānta is supposed to explain all these things, and yet erudite scholars invent twisted meanings. This Bhagavatam will be the authorized explanation of the Brahma-sūtra, and a further explanation of the Mahābhārata. It shall be the explanation of the Gāyatrī-mantra and the essence of all Vedic knowledge. And one who hears it will experience a change in their materialistic mentality. They will develop a taste for Kṛṣṇa: And as soon as this is effected all the symptoms of the material disease of exploitation begin to disappear.'"

Suta said,  "In this way, Śrīla Vyāsadeva emerged from his divine trance and understood how he would confirm this vision of the Godhead in his writings.”

Suta Goswāmī paused.

“And so it was that the great sage Vyāsadeva, after compiling the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and revising it, taught it to his own son, Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī, who was highly evolved in in self-realization.”

Śrī Śaunaka asked Sūta Gosvāmī: “Śrī Śukadeva Gosvāmī was already on the path of self-realization, and thus he was pleased with his own self. So why did he take the trouble to undergo the study of such a vast literature?”

Suta replied: आत्मारामाश् च मुनयो निर्ग्रन्था अप्य् उरुक्रमे कुर्वन्त्य् अहैतुकीं भक्तिम् इत्थम्-भूत-गुणो हरिः

ātmārāmāś ca munayo

 nirgranthā apy urukrame

kurvanty ahaitukīṁ bhaktim

 ittham-bhūta-guṇo hariḥ