Bhagavagd Gita - Session 33- Track 3311

He has billions and billions of light rays, among them only one ray of light sustains the entire universe. If this is His mahata, His Vibhutis, this is His capacity, this is the supreme Lord.

Naturally therefore, we are now very anxious to see the Lord Himself, if one ray of light can be the sustainer of the whole universe. Therefore, Arjuna now will ask that Sri Krishna should manifest His divine form.

I think we shall take it up next time.

No, we finished the 10th chapter today.

Question: What is the sequence beside what you said in the beginning as to when Sri Krishna states the Vibhutis?

…sequence as I told you: that is the sequence.

“…The invisible, gods, super human beings, powers, the objects which are physical in character and among human beings Rishis, Munis, conquerors, leaders, kings and other human beings.”

Question: What is the relevance of the sarpāin reference to creation or the Gods?

sarpāis a special manifestation of the force of evolution. Normally sarpāis supposed to be the instigator among many myths. It is said that it was sarpā, the snake which tempted Eve to eat the fruit. That is in the story of Genesis: there were both living in paradise Adam and Eve, everything was wonderful but there was a tree of knowledge and it had a very beautiful fruit. They wouldn’t eat anything; there were forbidden actually to eat the fruit of knowledge, but it is the serpent which came and tempted Eve to eat this fruit. And Eve tempted the man, the woman tempted the man: this is the story.

Actually, this story is very significant. This paradise is the paradise of Para Prakriti. Adam and Eve are Purusha and Prakriti, the serpent is the force of evolution. There was as it were an intention to have the process of evolution as one of the plays of the Divine. It is not as if evolution was necessitated. One could have lived in Paraprakriti all the time, there was no need for this kind of evolutionary process, but this also was possible. As we had said earlier, the real freedom lies exactly here that when there are many possibles and all possibles are equally good and then you choose one of them, then it is completely free. Why you choose one instead of the other, there was no special reason. It was not as if that was better than this, remaining in the paradise was as good as struggling also in the evolutionary process: both are equally good. So, this evolutionary process happened.

Now, what is this process of evolution is symbolised by the power of the serpent. As a result of this, the fruit of knowledge was eaten (actually it was the fruit of ignorance that was eaten, not knowledge!). But if you distinguish between wisdom and knowledge, in Paraprakriti everything was wisdom, but now here was the tree of knowledge which was a kind of ignorance. In fact ignorance is not necessarily bad: ignorance is only covering of knowledge, hiding the knowledge that is all, ignoring the knowledge: a partial manifestation of knowledge is ignorance.

So, ‘Serpent’ told Eve that while everything is wonderful here, there is also another enjoyment you can have when you partially manifest this knowledge, so this is the fruit if you eat there will be another game possible for you. It is said she was tempted, and then in turn she tempted Adam. Now, this is a very bitter full story because if you examine how ignorance is the parent of evolutionary movement and how ignorance actually binds each one of us who was actually free in the Paraprakriti, we all become bound.

How does it happen? Purusha by Himself is the originator of Prakriti, it is therefore said in the Bible that woman was taken out of the rib of man: it is actually the relationship between Purusha and Prakriti. Purusha and Prakriti are one and the same basically, the being and becoming: Purusha is being and Prakriti is becoming. Without being there can’t be any becoming: it is out of the being that becoming is brought out. So you might say out of the rib of the Purusha, of the being, the movement was brought out. Then this Prakriti works out the intention of Purusha. The serpent which came is actually the result of the intention of Purusha. Purusha said: ‘I want to play the game’, so that intention was working upon Prakriti. It was the message of Purusha to Prakriti in the form of this desire for evolution.

So, it is said that woman tempted man, but actually it is not true: it is man himself who wanted the evolutionary process. He intended the evolutionary process, so Prakriti obediently worked it out. The intention was actually manifestation of Purusha’s consciousness. The serpent itself came out basically as a manifestation of the intention of Purusha; then Prakriti worked out.