Bhagavad-gita 7.27

Reading Bhagavad-gita seventh chapter verse twenty-seven

0:00So we will read today the twenty seventh verse of the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. Knowledge of the Absolute.

0:12समुतेना, द्वान्द्वामोहेना, भारताक, सर्वभूतानी, सम्मोहाम, सर्गे, यांति, परंतापा, इच्छा द्वेशा समुतेना, द्वांध्वामोहेना भारता, desire, dvesha, and hate, samutena, a reason from Sarva, all. Bhotani, living entities. Sammoham, into delusion. Into delusion. Sarge. Sarge. While taking birth. While taking birth. Yan ti. Yanti. Parantapa. Parantapa. O conqueror of enemies. O conqueror of enemies. Translation.

1:56O sign of Bharatha, o conqueror of the foe. The living entities are born into delusion, bewildered by dualities, arisen from desire and hate. Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda.

2:11The real constitutional position of the living entity is that of subordination to the supreme lord, who is pure knowledge.

2:19When one is deluded into separation from this pure knowledge, he becomes controlled by illusory energy and cannot understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

2:29The illusory energy is manifested in the duality of desire and hate. Due to desire and hate, the ignorant person wants to become one with the Supreme Lord and envious Krishna as the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

2:44Pure devotees who are not deluded or contaminated by desire and hate can understand that Lord Sri Krishna appears by His internal potencies.

2:54But those who are deluded by duality and nations think that the Supreme Lord is created by material energies. This is their misfortune.

3:03Such deluded persons symptomatically dwell in dualities of dishonor and honor, misery and happiness, woman and man, good and bad, pleasure and pain, etc.

3:15Thinking: This is my wife, this is my house, I am the master of this house, I am the husband of this wife.

3:23The These dualities of delusion. Those who are so deluded by dualities are completely foolish and therefore cannot understand the Supreme Personality of God.

Significance of Bhagavad-gita seventh chapter

3:37[Hiksadvesa samutena, dvandva moh hina bharatam sarva bhutani sammoham sarghyan tiparantapam. O sien of bharatam, o conqueror of the fall. All living entities are born into delusion, bewildered by dualities, arisen from desire and hate.

3:57So, this is one of the last verses of the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā.

4:02And seventh chapter is very significant because in the seventh chapter Krishna explains how He manifests in this world, how one can see Him, how literally He pervades everything, how He's everywhere, how He's in the taste of water, how He's the ability of man, how He, the source of everything, is everywhere.

4:27And knowing this, one can always be in his consciousness. One can always remember about him because this world is not created from nothing. It's created from something. And this something is the energy of the Lord.

4:42And the Lord is trying to stress this point that I'm everywhere. But at the same time, he also explains the reason why people don't see him.

4:52Even though it's obvious, even though you don't have to have a huge brain to understand that this is not really, you know, just by chance created like this.

5:02Know, some people, they're so strange when they think that this is just chance, you know. This earth was created by chance, the human body was created by chance, all the animals was created by chance. It's so ridiculous.

5:14It doesn't make any sense because nothing is created by chance. By chance everything is being destroyed. That's what chance does. Chance doesn't create anything.

5:26But still, Krishna explains in this particular chapter why even though it's obvious that Krishna is everywhere, that God is everywhere, that everything is created by Him and everything is maintained by Him.

5:39Even though you can see if you have the eyes His manifestation everywhere, still you don't see. Even though it's obvious. So Krishna explains it particularly in this verse.

5:50In the previous verse, in one of the previous verses he says that I reserve the right not to manifest myself to fools. Mūḍhāhaṁ nābhijānāti, they don't know me because this is my right, you know.

How material energy hides the Supreme Lord

6:04I don't want to be manifested in front of the fools because they will anyway not be able to appreciate me. Why should I do this? And sometimes people ask, show me God.

6:21But the point is that this world is created not to show God but to hide God. Actually, this is the nature of this world. This world is created in such a way that the Lord is not visible. It's hidden. Why?

6:36Because we want to enjoy. Because we want to enjoy independently on him and like, you know, children do. Sometimes when they want to do some mischief, what they do? They hide themselves.

6:48They, you know, they put something, some clothes over the head and they do mischief. So, you know, nobody knows I'm doing something, right?

6:59So this world is basically the same arrangement, you know, for mischievous living being who want to do to enjoy independently of the Lord.

7:07They're doing this and the Lord, he created this curtain, this close or curtain of material energy, three modes of material nature, which basically by the change and by all the permutation of these modes of material nature, of the qualities of material nature, they hide themselves.

7:30They hide the Lord. The Lord is hidden. Like in Al Quran it is said that God is hidden behind 40,000 curtains of light and darkness. You know, 40,000, not less than this. So he's pretty much hidden.

7:49He's not visible, but only for those who are fools. Because those who really want to understand him, those who want to really see him, they can see him.

8:02This is the difference because those who don't want to see him, he's not visible for them. And those who want to see him, they have the eyes to see him.

8:12It's very interestingly and graphically described in the Seventh Canto of Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam where Hiraṇyakaśipu, demon, who wants to enjoy this world, right? Aiccha-dvīṣa-samutthenaṁ, illusion of iccha-dvīṣa, desire and hate.

8:31He challenges his son Prahlāda. And he asks Prahlāda, where is your god? Where is your lord? You're saying he's everywhere. Is he there in the column? In the pillar of my palace.

8:43He challenges him and he takes the sword to smash the column, the pillar.

8:49And Prabhupāda, once he was giving a lecture, so he was describing this scene very graphically and he said that, you know, Prahlāda, when Hiraṇyakaśipu pointed out the pillar, asking, Where is your lord? Is he there?

9:03So Prahlāda Mahārāja, he looked at this pillar. Immediately he saw the lord and the lord saw him because he wanted to see him.

9:10And at this moment the lord twinkled, you know, he said, you know, I see and you see, he doesn't see. The fool doesn't see. We see each other, he doesn't see. From him I'm hidden.

Enjoying independently from the Supreme Lord

9:23So it basically, the question of our attitude.

9:28If we have the attitude of the teeth, because the teeth, you know, if you want to enjoy something which doesn't belong to you, you have to pretend that you don't know that it doesn't belong to you, right?

9:40If a car is standing by the road and you want to enjoy the car, you have to pretend that you don't know that somebody else is the owner of this car, right?

9:48So in a similar way, people who want to enjoy this world without admitting the fact that this world belongs to the Lord, they pretend that he's not there. Whereas those who want to see him, they can see him everywhere.

10:04And this is specifically what is being described here that this icchā-dveṣa constitute the basic duality of this world. This duality of desire and hate. And because this duality is there, this duality bewilders someone.

10:24And everyone is born into this duality. Everyone, like Prabhupāda explains, everyone dwells into this duality. And because he's so much absorbed into this duality, he doesn't see the Lord.

10:35He's always judging and he's always, you know, trying to squeeze out some enjoyment and because of this he doesn't see the Lord. There is a very interesting story in this regard. It's a true story.

10:46It happened in Bangladesh. Somebody from Bangladesh told me this story. So there was a very rich landlord in Bangladesh, and he had a big palace, and he had a very poor maid servant who would come cleaner lady.

11:04She would come and clean the house. And usually he was there and she was cleaning. She was from very poor background, very poor lady.

11:13But once he left her alone in the house and he said to her, you please clean this house and do whatever you know what to do. So this lady, she was cleaning the house but she had one obsession.

11:27She never slept in a soft mattress, you know, never in her life. Because for her, it's the pinnacle of opulence, you know. They usually they sleep on a on a hard floor.

11:41So she comes to the bedroom and she sees this soft, you know, nice bed of this man. And she thinks, you know, you know, he's not here. He doesn't see, you know.

11:53Let me just for a second I will just lay down and I feel how it is to lay on soft mat. Because this is this is real. I know one brahmacārī in Kṛṣṇa-Balarāma Mandir in Vṛndāvana.

12:08He's also from very poor family and he's from a village. And never in his life he has seen a mattress before he came to Kṛṣṇa-Balaram Mandir.

12:18When he saw the mattress, you know, for him it was, you know, something really opulent. So what he did, he he brought to his room 10 mattresses, you know.

12:26Somehow rather he managed to put put them one upon another, upon another, you know, just to enjoy. So this lady, she was in this condition, you know.

12:36She wanted to lay down just for a second how it feels, you know, just to to know, you know. And she let and she said, oh, this is far out. This is fantastic, you know. This is so nice.

12:48And she was laying there and sure enough, she fell asleep, you know, because it's so nice. She's laying there and she's dreaming about something.

12:57And in this very moment, the owner of the house came in and she saw this, you know, cleaner lady, dirty lady, laying in his bed. You know, he was really, you know, out of rage. You know, he's enraged because of this.

13:13Because especially in India there is this, you know, caste consciousness and, you know, somebody is laying on your bed. The bed is totally contaminated. So he is so enraged.

13:24He grabs this lady by the hair and starts beating her. And in the beginning she, she was, you know, she was bewildered and she started crying and saying, don't do this, don't do this.

13:34But after some time, all of a sudden, she started laughing. And the more he beats her, the more she laughs. And she's laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing, laughing. And this owner, she doesn't understand.

13:47Are you crazy? What happened with you? Why are you laughing? You know. She said, No, it's not me who is crazy. It's you who are crazy. He said, wait a second. Why, why all of a sudden am I crazy? Not you, you know.

14:01I'm beating you and you're laughing and I'm crazy. She said, yes, of course you're crazy. Why is it so?

14:07He said, she said, because look, I was laying on this soft bed only for twenty minutes and I got such a severe beating and you have been laying on this soft bed for the whole of your life, and I'm now imagining how much beating you will get for this. Therefore I'm so happy.

14:28So this is the situation, you know, where we're here and we're trying to kind of steal some enjoyment, you know, like this lady.

14:44But actually, you know, this desire is there, but we're doing it in a in a in this way, in this manner.