Avataras in the Mahabharat: How did they come?

Excerpts from Rishikesh Retreat 2015 Talks.

Asur­as lose their way

The asur­as lost their ish­warya or pros­per­i­ty and they start­ed falling on the earth. The asur­as are great beings. Now some­how peo­ple think that asur­as are bad char­ac­ters. Asur­as were accom­plished beings that had their own place in the uni­verse. They lost their pros­per­i­ty because they were not able to pro­tect their inter­ests. Is pro­tect­ing one’s inter­est a wrong thing? If you are the PM, you need to work real­ly hard to stay in that posi­tion. If you are a CEO, you need to put in effort to keep your com­pa­ny at the top. You close your eyes for a moment, the posi­tion is lost. That is how impor­tant a role is. Peo­ple do all sorts of things to pro­tect that posi­tion. That is part of polit­i­cal sci­ence. To stay in that posi­tion, you not only need to wor­ry about your inter­est but the inter­est and wel­fare of all con­nect­ed ones. Else the posi­tion is gone in a giffy. It so hap­pens that asur­as lose their ish­warya because they are not able to pro­tect their inter­ests, and hence they fall from swar­ga. If the qual­i­ties are not reflec­tive of the loka, then these beings are thrown out. Thats how the asur­as were sent to the earth.

Bhoomade­vi start­ed to feel very heavy. Bhoomade­vi is known for her patience but the asur­as were so many in num­ber that she had to take up the mat­ter with Brah­ma. Brah­ma directs Her to the devas and the devas approach Vish­nu. So Vish­nu and his entire team of devas are born on earth to elim­i­nate these asur­as. That is how Krish­na is born, the pan­davas and many oth­er peo­ple in the Mahab­hara­ta.

Mas­ter Plan

For these beings to be born, the entire plan has to be worked out. It is like recon­nais­sance, if you need to expand a busi­ness, there is an advanced team that does mar­ket sur­vey and the plat­form is built so that the fur­ther teams can come estab­lish the busi­ness and fur­ther growth can happen.That is how it is oper­at­ed out. Imag­ine at such a cos­mic lev­el. For an avatara purusha like Krish­na to hap­pen, who is con­sid­ered a Pur­na Avatara, phe­nom­e­nal amount of work goes in. And for an avatara purusha to descend the sit­u­a­tion should be so grave. For a tap water leak­ing you can­not peti­tion and sum­mon the prime min­is­ter. It is inap­pro­pri­ate and the prime min­is­ter will not be able to look at that. To deal with this, there is a prop­er chan­nel. If the Prime Min­is­ter has to step in, it needs to be a real­ly com­pli­cat­ed sit­u­a­tion that only he can han­dle. And hence the sit­u­a­tion in the Mahab­hara­ta is so com­plex and seri­ous plus the yuga about to change, astro­nom­i­cal­ly, and hence, Lord Krish­na descends onto earth. So it is worked out in great detail. Who has to be born where, what will be their life sit­u­a­tions, how they get con­nect­ed etc etc. The Cos­mos is very intel­li­gent and the cos­mic plan is way too intel­li­gent.

Degrees of Free­dom

Cer­tain things are flex­i­ble, cer­tain things are worked out in great detail. For exam­ple, Abhi­manyu is the putra of Chan­dra deva, and Chan­dra deva does not wish to part with him for too long. So the details of how he will get back is worked out, 16 years done, and he has to leave! It is worked out in detail, just that it is not vis­i­ble at this lev­el. And peo­ple go through vary­ing emo­tions. But not every­thing is worked out in such detail. If one has very spe­cif­ic require­ments, strin­gent require­ments, for them it is worked out in great detail. In some cas­es, the degree of free­dom is very high.

Do Avataras Hap­pen Now

Cur­rent prob­lems don’t mer­it so much, but there are avataras hap­pen­ing even now, but a poor­na avatara is not so very much required. Still there is suf­fi­cient progress, we are not in the dark age. So much activ­i­ty hap­pen­ing, inter­net mobi­liza­tion is hap­pen­ing. That we are able to do this pro­gram itself shows that it is progress. We are allowed to do this.If there were mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship then it would be a seri­ous thing. We don’t live in such cir­cum­stances, we have demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es, we have won­der­ful gov­er­nance. We even observe good gov­er­nance day. So much is already hap­pen­ing. Even if you look at the world, it is not so bad. We have a very lim­it­ed view based on the media pro­jec­tion, oth­er­wise the world is actu­al­ly a decent place to live in,not so bad. We our­selves can man­age, it is not a big deal. But still avatara purushas do happen.There are great per­son­ages being born, and are get­ting born, but for what pur­pos­es, it is very dif­fi­cult to make out intel­lec­tu­al­ly. What will the course of their life and so on, are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered param guhya, top secret, known to the devas, if they are avatara purushas.

So every­thing hap­pened for a rea­son in the Mahab­hara­ta. Our lives too fit into a much larg­er plan than we can imag­ine and under­stand through our intel­lect. Many many forces work to make things hap­pen and we eas­i­ly dis­miss them as fate. The more we align our­selves to this intel­li­gent plan, the more enrich­ing our lives would be.

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