Take me to higher love

The Bhagavat Conception

by Michael Dolan/ B.V. Mahayogi

What sort of a book is the Bhagavata?

निगम-कल्प-तरोर् गलितं फलं शुक-मुखाद् अमृत-द्रव-संयुतम्

पिबत भागवतं रसम् आलयम् मुहुर् अहो रसिका भुवि भावुकाः

nigama-kalpa-taror galitaṁ phalaṁ śuka-mukhād amṛta-drava-saṁyutam

pibata bhāgavataṁ rasam ālayam muhur aho rasikā bhuvi bhāvukāḥ..

“The Bhagavat, O saints, is the fruit of the tree of thought mixed with the nectar of the speech of Śukadeva. It is the temple of spiritual love! Drink deep this nectar until you are taken from this mortal frame.”

The Bhagavat Purana gives a more complete commentary on Vedānta than any other book. This great treatise identifies the realization of ananda, eternal bliss, as the true birth-right of the human soul. The Bhagavat demonstrates throughout its 18,000 verses the path of complete and proper self-realization in transcendental bliss through active immortality. The passive immortality offered by the acolytes of the Shankar school pales before this understanding. Immersion in nondifferential one-ness is mere spiritual suicide compared to the harmonic ananda accessible to those who offer themselves in surrender to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa who is celebrated in every verse of the Bhagavat.

And the acharyas and teachers of the Bhagavata school have shown us both by precept and by example the proper path towards that higher and truer form of enlightenment. The Bhāgavata announces in its first verse that its only purpose is a deeper discussion of spiritual truth. Ordinary morality and mundane ethics are not a subject matter for the Bhagavata. The truths found in the Bhagavat flow from a discussion among a council of saints. These advanced spiritual adepts held the ordinary facets of morality and ethics as axiomatic truths.

While the Bible and other such books go to great lengths to prohibit killing and stealing, the Bhagavat has no such consideration, since it should be obvious to any civilized soul that killing and stealing are illegal, immoral, and sinful acts.

There is a provision in Sharia law that prohibits one from marrying the widows of one’s father. Women, according to that holy book, are chattel, that is to say property. Upon the death of one’s father one inherits his property according to Sharia law. As the son inherits his father’s property and is the heir to his riches and cattle, so by rights and means he would also inherit his wives. Since a son’s mother would be among the wives of his father, Sharia law forbids the practice of inheriting one’s father’s wives. This would seem to be self-evident, but things are written into law when there are misunderstandings. The fact that this is written into Sharia law means that it had been practiced and the need arose to write a law against it. The Bhagavata has no such considerations. It does not take up the question of whether one may practice incest with one’s own mother, since the sages at Naimisharanya felt no need to settle this question.

The Bhagavata is interested in Paramahamsa-dharma; that is what religious principles should be taken up by swanlike souls who have no interest in materialistic religion.

Every day I hear people talk about how “religion” is the root of all evils. “Look at all the wars that have been fought over religion,” they say. “The Spanish Inquisition, the Conquest of Mexico, and so many wars of genocide.” Of course they become uncomfortable when I point out that these wars were fought by and for the Catholic Church, which follows the Bible, not the Bhagavat.

The Bhagavat is not interested in enforcing morality but in promoting divine love for those who have already found their moral center. The Book of Krishna does not turn on issues of law, but of divine love and paramahamsa-dharma.

I remember a discussion I once had with a Rabbi. He truly felt that God gave Logos or Law to give meaning to the world. By understanding the Logos or the Law, we could understand the mind of God. To show me how exactly the law of the Torah may be interpreted, he gave me as an example the proscription against killing a goat.

I pointed out that here the Torah clearly prohibits meat-eating. He took the opportunity to explain that the expert Rabbis are capable of great subtlety in their interpretation of the law. The Hebrew word in question apparently had the sense of a “Red goat.” Therefore, one might conclude, he explained, that the proscription against sacrifice has to do with the killing of a red goat. Then again others would restrict their interpretation to the killing of any white goat with a red spot on their coat. Still others would say this applies to a white goat with one red hair. My Rabbi friend felt that the beauty of the Torah lay in the capacity of Rabbis like himself to interpret.

The Bhagavat has nothing to do with such “hair-splitting” over a practice like goat slaughter. The sages of Naimisharanya had nothing to do with goat slaughter, with incest and sexual abuse, or any number of other foul and immoral practices. They were as free of sin as forest-dwelling yogis could be, but they were in search of a higher path. Remember, they had already heard the Mahābharata from Suta Goswami. But they, as was Vyāsa before them, were not entirely satisfied with the message of the Mahābharata. They liked what they had heard in the Bhagavad-Gita which gives the outline of paramahamsa-dharma. But they were thirsty for more. They wanted to know what Śukadeva had said to the descendant of Arjuna, Parikṣita Mahārāja at the hour of his death. The Mahābharata comes from the tree of thought whose roots are the Vedas and whose branches are the Upanishads. But where is the fruit?

A mango is sweeter, tradition holds, when pecked by the beak of a parrot, a Śuka-bird. Perhaps this is because the Śuka selects only the finest, the perfectly ripened fruit. If the tree of thought bears fruit, what would the ripened fruit taste like? And how would it take shape in the words of Śuka, the son of Vyāsa? If Vyāsa himself composed the Bhagavat, how would it be interpreted and edited by his son Śuka? This was the question of the sages who gathered to hear the great Suta, the erudite narrator of the Mahābharata explain Śuka’s edition. The Mahābharata is the greatest epic poem in the history of India. How would Śukadeva’s version of the Bhagavat surpass Vyāsa’s powerful literary creation?

The Bhagavat begings by discarding “social dharma” as a useful practical matter but limited to mundane concerns and therefore a subject unworthy of discussion. The Bhāgavata is not a rule-book, unlike Sharia law which proscribes incest, or the Torah with its hair-splitting rules about goat-slaughter. There are plenty of other books filled with dietary do’s and don’ts, marital laws, and commandments about stealing and murder. While the Bhagavat may recapitulate the need for a proper morality, while the Bhagavat may touch on ethical principles or matters of sin, merely to avoid the need for consulting so many books, at its core is a treatise on the very nature of spiritual truth and practice for self-realized souls: paramahamsa-dharma

As the the Garuḍa-purāṇa, another ancient text says in reference to the Bhagavat Purana:

अर्थो ऽयं ब्रह्म-सूत्राणां भारतार्थ-विनिर्णयः गायत्री-भाष्य-रूपो ऽसौ वेदार्थ-परिबृंहितः पुराणानां साम-रूपः साक्षाद्-भगवतोदितः द्वादश-स्कन्ध-युक्तो ऽयं शत-विच्छेद-संयुतः ग्रन्थो ऽष्टादश-साहस्रः श्रीमद्-भागवताभिधः

artho 'yaṁ brahma-sūtrāṇāṁ bhāratārtha-vinirṇayaḥ gāyatrī-bhāṣya-rūpo 'sau vedārtha-paribṛṁhitaḥ purāṇānāṁ sāma-rūpaḥ sākṣād-bhagavatoditaḥ dvādaśa-skandha-yukto 'yaṁ śata-viccheda-saṁyutaḥ grantho 'ṣṭādaśa-sāhasraḥ śrīmad-bhāgavatābhidhaḥ

'The meaning of the Vedānta-sūtra is present in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The full purport of the Mahābhārata is also found there. The commentary of the Brahma-gāyatrī is also there and fully expanded with all Vedic knowledge. Śrīmad Bhāgavatam is the supreme Purāṇa, and it was compiled by the Supreme Personality of Godhead in His incarnation as Vyāsadeva. There are twelve cantos, 335 chapters and eighteen thousand verses. The Bhågavata is composed of 18,000 ślokas. It contains the best parts of the Vedas and the Vedānta. Whoever has tasted its sweet nectar, will never like to read any other religious book. (Garuda Purana)

Bhaktivinoda Ṭhakura says:

“The Bhāgavata is preeminently The Book in India. Once enter into it, and you are transplanted, as it were, into the spiritual world where gross matter has no existence. The true follower of the Bhāgavata is a spiritual man who has already cut his temporary connection with phenomenal nature, and has made himself the inhabitant of that region where God eternally exists and loves.”