Mindpower and reading

Reading the Bhagavat

by Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi

Through the curious form of mental telepath known as reading we may traverse the physical universe and enter into the minds of great seers and wise men who lived and wrote thousands of years ago.

An eminence of oracles appear in the pages of the Bhagavat: There is Shaunaka, president of the forest sages; Suta whose edition of Mahābharata was learned from Vyāsa and amplified by Vaishampayana at the snake sacrifice of Janamejaya. Suta heard the Bhagavat from Shukadeva when that son of Vyāsa spoke the Bhagavat before Mahārāja Pariksit, the grandson of Arjun when that great king had less than a week to live, condemned to die from snakebite. Shukadev is compared to a parrot who picks only the finest, ripest fruit, for he picked the juiciest essence of Vedic truth to include in his edition of Bhagavat.

The pantheon of prophets who preach the Bhagavat includes not only Vyāsa and his sons and disciples but Nārada, acharya to the gods, and his transcendental conversations with Lord Brahma, the universal creator.

No other scripture makes the claim that the creator of the universe himself is involved in the conversation. The Koran cites the Angel Gabriel and the Bible has prophets like Ezekiel. But the Bhagavat’s truths include conversations with the universal creator Himself.

In the beginning Cantos Shukadev answers Maharaj Pariksit’s questions by referring to older dialogues between revered and saintly brahmins. When Vidura, elder statesmen and advisor to both Kurus and Pandavas at the time of the great Kurukshetra war had doubts that troubled his spiritual conscience he sought help from Uddhava. Uddhava had received instruction from Krishna Himself in the Uddhava-Gita which occupies the 11th Canto of the Bhagavat. But with typical humility Uddhava recommends that Vidura study with Maitreya.

The great Maitreya reminds Vidura of the teachings given by Lord Kapila to his mother Devahuti. The names of Kapila and Maitreya resound in Indian lore; this Kapila is not the atheist founder of the Sankhya analytic school of philosophy, but an incarnation of God Himself.

In this way, Shukadev and later Suta make reference to a fellowship of prophets, seers, mentors, and adepts on the spiritual path. They describe the teachings of rishis, gurus, munis, and wise men, even conjuring their words from former lives, ancient incarnations and distant kalpas explaining the essence of teachings that have come down from other worlds, parallel universes, different bardos of consciousness, and former creations.

It must be remembered that the Bhagavat is the natural commentary on the Vedanta Sutra--and so it is dangerous and impossible to summarize the Bhagavat. If the Bhagavat is the commentary on Vedanta, then the most appropriate summary of the Bhagavat would be the terse sutras of the Vedānta. If we could write the message of the Bhāgavat in short, haiku-like phrases we would have the sutras of the Vedānta or the syllables of the Gayatri mantra.

The best summary of the intent of the Bhagavat is the Brihad-Bhagavatamrita of Sanātana Goswāmi which has been summarized in the Search for Sri Krishna by His Divine Grace Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar dev Goswami. Shridhar Mahārāja explains that the proper answer to our inquiry athāto-brahma-jijñāsa is achieved through the search for Śrī Kṛṣṇa which is revealed in the 18,000 verses of the Bhagavat and and uncovered in the glorious pastimes of the Personal Godhead, Bhagavan Śrī Kṛṣṇa as Gopijanavallabha, the Lord of the Dance. Surrender to Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the true meaning of the Bhagavat.

This should color our reading of the book. If surrender to Krishna is the internal purport of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, then all the other ideas, suggestions, recommendations, tales and mythological digressions, cosmology, geography and measurements found in that book are to serve this meaning. All else is superficial.