SRI HARI
At the time of creation, after the Supreme has been sleeping
for some time, the first productions from the breathing of Lord Maha-Vishnu are the
personified Vedas who serve Him by waking Him from His
mystic sleep. They begin to enthusiastically sing His glories, pastimes, and
praises, just as a King is awoken in the morning by poets who recite his heroic
deeds. This shows the eternal
nature of the Vedic literature. They are not merely the writings of men, but
they are spiritual vibrations that exist before and after the material creation,
and which originate from the Supreme Lord.
In
the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.87.50) when the personified Vedas are offering their prayers to Lord
Narayana [Maha-Vishnu], they relate His all-powerful position. “He is the Lord
who eternally watches over this universe, who exists before, during and after
its appearance. He is the master of both the ambiguous material energy and the
spirit soul. After sending forth the creation He enters within it, accompanying
each living entity. There He creates the material bodies and then remains as
their regulator. By surrendering to Him one can escape the embrace of illusion,
just as a dreaming person forgets his own body. One who wants liberation from
fear should constantly meditate upon Him, Lord Hari, who is always on the
platform of perfection and thus never subject to material birth.”
Once
the Lord is awoken, He casts His
glance upon the material energy of maya.
This glance is how the Supreme fills material nature with all the original
seeds of the living beings. Thus, the Lord does not personally touch the
material energy, but by His functional expansion He places the living entities
into the material nature by His glance. Then maya,
the material nature, becomes agitated. This
functional expansion of the Lord takes the form as Shiva,
known in this activity as Shambhu. It is Shambhu who carries the living entities in the
glance of the Lord into the material energy.
So
the Supreme Being in His feature as Maha-Vishnu fills the material nature by His glance.
Through this glance, which is the impregnation of consciousness, and by the
influence of the time element, the countless living beings appear. The Supreme Being then, out of His own
body, sowed the seeds of universal appearance within the mahat-tattva. In this way, the Lord, who is the
controller of all energies, by His own potency creates eternal time, the fate
of all living entities, and their particular nature. At the end of the cosmic
creation He again merges them back into Him.
The Srimad-Bhagavatam (11.9.16-18) relates that the Lord of
the universe, Narayana, Maha-Vishnu, is the worship able Lord of all beings.
With no other assistance, the Lord creates the universe by His own potency, and
at the time of total destruction He destroys the universe through His expansion
of time. He withdraws the complete universe and all materially conditioned
living beings into Himself. In this way, His unlimited Self is the shelter and
reservoir of all potencies. The Lord stands alone after the universal annihilation.
He is the supreme worship able object for all beings, such as liberated souls,
demigods, and ordinary conditioned souls. He is eternally free from the
material energy and constitutes the totality of spiritual bliss, which one can
experience by seeing the Lord’s spiritual form. Thus the Lord exhibits the full
meaning of liberation.
The
countless souls that appear within the material energy in the multicolored
species of life are all spiritual in nature, they are all spiritual beings.
However, they can also become fooled by material energy. When they are thus mistaken,
they long for material activities and attractions. In order to accommodate
this, the Supreme provides this material world as a playground in which they
can work out their material desires. This means that regardless of species,
whether it is Lord Brahma, or humans, animals, birds, or even tiny insects,
material nature is the mother and the Supreme Lord is the seed-giving,
universal Father.
After
agitating material nature into three qualities, which are the modes of nature in the form of
passion, goodness and ignorance, they become active and material nature begins
to give birth to the total material energy known as the hiranya-mahat-tattva. This is the
sum total of cosmic intelligence. Thus, material nature becomes agitated by the
destinations of the conditioned souls as determined by the influence of the
modes of nature. Simply by the
glance of Maha-Vishnu consciousness is created, which is known as the mahat-tattva. The predominating Deity of the mahat-tattva is Lord Vasudeva. This explains how
the material energy is like the mother of the living beings while the Lord is
the Supreme Father of everyone. Just as a woman cannot give birth without the
contact of a man, or at least his seed, so material nature cannot create
without the contact of the Supreme Being.
So
first the total material energy is obvious, and from this arises the three
types of egotism, which are the original sources of all the demigods [the minor
controlling deities], the senses, and material elements. By combining the
different elements, the Supreme Lord creates
all of the unlimited universes. Once the material elements have been established,
and the full potential for creating the universes has been established, the
innumerable universes begin to originate from the pores of the body of Maha-Vishnu,
and from His exhalations. They appear just like atomic particles that float in
sunshine and pass through a screen. When Maha-Vishnu inhales at the time of the
universal annihilation, they return to His body. In this way, Maha-Vishnu is the Super soul of all the
universes.
Brahma,
the demigods, and each universe remain alive for the duration of one of His
exhalations. However, there is no
limit to the exhalations of Maha-Vishnu.
Garbhodakashayi
Vishnu, who is known within the universe as Hiranyagarbha
and Antaryami, the Super soul, is glorified in the Vedic hymns. He is the master
of each and every universe and shelter of the external or material energy.
However, being inspirational, He is completely beyond the touch of the external
energy.
Next
is the third expansion of Vishnu, called Kshirodakashayi Vishnu, who is the incarnation of the quality of
goodness. He is the universal form of the Lord and expands Himself as the Super
soul within every living entity. He is known as Kshirodakashayi Vishnu because
He lies on the ocean of milk (kshira) on the island of Svetadvipa.
These are the three expansions of Lord Vishnu who oversee and make the creation
of the material worlds possible.
Before
the creation within the universe takes place and after the Lord enters the
universe, there is a period of non-activity for one thousand celestial years.
All of the living entities that have been injected into the mahat-tattva are divided among all the universes
with each incarnation of Garbhodakashayi
Vishnu, and all of them are as if asleep in the Lord until the birth of Lord
Brahma. From Brahma all other demigods and living entities are born.
Once
all of the universes are created, which are unlimited, Maha-Vishnu expands
Himself into unlimited forms and enters
each universe as Garbhodakashayi Vishnu. Once He is in each universe, He sees
that there is no place to reside. Then, after some consideration, He fills half
of the universe with water from His own perspiration.
On
that water He creates his own residence as an expansion of Vaikuntha and rests
in the waters on the bed of the great serpent, Lord Ananta, Seshanaga. Although He appears to be in inactive,
enjoying inspirational happiness in his internal potency, His eyes are slightly
open. When He is ready to begin the act of creation, a golden lotus springs
from his navel that becomes the birthplace of Lord Brahma. Within the stem of
that lotus are the fourteen planetary systems. Then Lord Brahma is shown as described
in the previous chapter.
Not
only do the creations and total destruction of the cosmos go on continually,
but the maintenance of the
universe also takes constant supervision. It is explained that as long as the
Supreme Being as Maha-Vishnu continues to glance upon nature, the material
world continues to exist. Thus, the multicolored flow of universal creation continually
reveals through reproduction. So,
we can see that time and natures have no power to act independently, but are
under the supervision of the Supreme.
However,
it is also described that it is not only the material nature that is
maintained, everyone in it is also given the ability to act and function
through the power of the Supreme in His form as the Super soul. He creates the
entire multicolored universe and then enters into it as the Supersoul. Through
this means He provides the life force and consciousness of everyone, and, thus,
maintains the creation. As Sri Krishna further explains, “As the mighty wind,
blowing everywhere, always rests in ethereal space, know that in the same
manner all beings rest in Me.” As
the Supersoul, He also enters
into each planet, and by His energy they maintain their orbits. Thus, the Lord’s energy enters each
planet, every living being, and even
each atom, by which everything is appropriately manifested and maintained.
Without this, everything would revert back to chaos and deterioration.
Another
way that the Lord maintains the
universe is by personally appearing within it, or by manifesting His plenary
expansions. The scriptures proclaim that Lord Krishna descends to take away the
burden of the earth. Lord Vishnu primarily engages in maintaining this
universe. It is Lord Vishnu who
makes the adjustments for the proper administration of the cosmic creation. In
this way, all other lila or pastime incarnations, the yuga-avataras, the manvantara incarnations, and as many other
incarnations as there are, even Lord Vishnu, all descend in the body of Sri
Krishna when He appears. Thus, He is the complete Supreme Personality and can
do whatever He likes to exhibit His power and maintain the universe when He
descends.
The
Supreme Being also sets up the universal demigods to continue overseeing the
maintenance of the universe. For example, it is explained that Indra, after
receiving approval from the Supreme Lord, maintains the living beings by
pouring sufficient rains all over the planets. Furthermore, in every yuga, the Supreme Lord assumes the
form of Siddhas, such as Sanaka-kumara, to preach transcendental knowledge. He
assumes the form of great saintly persons such as Yajnavalkya to teach the way
of karma. He assumes the form of great souls, such as Dattatreya, to teach the
system of mystic yoga. In the form of Prajapati Marici, the Supreme creates offspring;
becoming the king, He kills rogues and thieves; and in the form of time, He
annihilates everything. All of the different qualities of material existence
are aspects and a display of the energy of the Supreme Absolute Truth.
So
because of the blessing and power given by the Supreme to the demigods, they
can provide the living beings with all necessities. However, Lord Krishna
explains in the Bhagavad-gita (3.14-15) that all living entities survive
on food grains, which are produced from rains, which is manifest through the
performance of spiritual activities prescribed in the spiritual writings of the
Vedic scripture and the teachings of the Lord and great sages. Consequently,
the all-pervading Transcendence is eternally situated in acts of sacrifice.
This
is all a part of the process of how the Lord and His expansions of Vishnu
maintain the world. As mankind engages in acts of sacrifice or spirituality,
which simply means the worship of the Supreme, the Lord and the demigods are
automatically satisfied to supply everyone with all necessities of life. In
this way, there can be proper cooperation between man, nature and God so that
everyone can be peaceful and content with the facilities for living in this
world.
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