This is an article series. Please read all previous articles before reading this article. The URLs for all previous articles are located in the “SPECIAL THOUGHTS” section.
The previous article was about Veda. Veda is authorless and therefore unprejudiced. Another point to note here is that if someone had authored the Vedas, it would mean that the Veda had a beginning, and everything that has a beginning must have an end. Since the Vedas are authorless, it also means that they are timeless, i.e., eternal. The topic of the Vedas being eternal and authorless is a very elaborate topic of discussion among scholars and, therefore, is beyond the scope of my knowledge and of these articles.
Ok fine. Let’s say we accept that the Vedas are authorless, eternal, infinite, and are verses/sentences in praise of the infinite God. How do we use the knowledge that the Vedas bring to us? This is where the PuraaNas and the Itihaasas come into the picture. They have stories that serve as examples of how the Vedic knowledge was used. When we studied engineering, what we were shown were some problems that had been encountered in the past. We were also shown how they were solved. Thus, they served as examples for us to build up a knowledge base, which helps us come up with solutions for problems we face today. Similarly, the incidents and real/realistic stories + fables documented in Itihaasas and PuraaNas serve as examples of our daily lives.
The word Itihaasa means something happened. It is a documentation of incidents as they happened. They are a documentation of real stories. There are 3 itihaasas: moola raamaayaNa, paancharaatra, and mahaabhaarata.
Moola RaamaayaNa is 100 crore verses i.e., 1 billion verses long. In earlier times, before the invention of copying technology, the only way to make a copy of a scripture was to sit and write it down. The scripture would last only as long as the manuscript medium lasts. Commonly used media was palm leaf. These would last about 500 years, within which a copy would have to be made. And it takes an enormous amount of time to manually write down 1 billion verses. Thus, there are no manuscripts of Moola RaamaayaNa available today. However, what is available to us is Vaalmeeki RaamaayaNa. This is composed by Rishi Vaalmeeki, who was a contemporary of Shree Raama and therefore, is considered authentic. However, it is a much-abridged version of the history of Shree Raama, as it has only 24000 verses. Thus only 0.0024% of the original history of Shree Raama is available to us today.
Paancha Raatra is a collection of daily routines followed by our ancestors who pursued the spiritual path through living the Vedic way of life. It contains details on how our ancestors worshipped; spiritual thought associated with the various steps of worship; how they lived their lives connecting their daily routine with the divinities… thus serving the infinite God through the society and thus protecting dharma.
PuraaNas, on the other hand, are a collection of real stories, realistic stories, and fables. There are 18 PuraaNas. And they are categorized as Saatvika PuraaNas, Raajasa PuraaNas and Taamasa PuraaNas.
The 6 Saatvika PuraaNas are: Shreemad Bhagavata, Vishnu PuraaNa, Padma PuraaNa, Varaha PuraaNa, GaruDa PuraaNa, and Naradeeya PuraaNa.
The 6 Raajasa PuraaNas are: brahma puraaNa, brahmaanDa puraaNa, brahma vaivarta puraaNa, bhaviShyat puraaNa, maarkanDEya puraaNa, and vaamana puraaNa.
The 6 Taamasa PuraaNas are: matsya puraaNa, koorma puraaNa, shaiva puraaNa, lainga puraaNa, skaanda puraaNa, and agni puraaNa.
The biggest among the PuraaNas is Skaanda PuraaNa, with 81000 verses. Altogether, the PuraaNas are approximately 400,000 verses.
As mentioned in the previous article, a total of 1137 volumes of Vedas (Rig Veda = 24, Yajur Veda = 101; Saama Veda = 1000; Atharva Veda = 12) were given to us by Shree Vedavyaasa. The essence of these many volumes would need to be understood through the study of PuraaNas and Itihaasas, which total up to over 1 billion verses. This is A LOT of verses for any human to go through in one lifetime. Therefore, in order to capture the essence of this really vast study, Shree Vedavyaasa composed Shreemad Mahaabhaarata. It is said that any situation in our daily lives has a parallel in some way in one or the other story documented in the Mahaabhaarata.
However, the Mahabharata is also 100,000 verses long. Thus, in today’s age, even the Mahaabhaarata seems like a scripture too large to find any time to read, absorb, and soak in. Shree Vedavyaasa seems to have foreseen this. Therefore, he has offered the Shreemad-Bhagavad-Gita as the essence of the Mahaabhaarata. Well, the Bhagavad-Gita too is 700 verses. The gist of the entire Bhagavad-Gita has been captured in Chapter 15 of the Gita. This should explain why Shree Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, participated in the chanting of Chapter 15 in the recently concluded Gita chanting by 100,000 devotees at Udupi, in India.
And finally, the quintessence of the entire reality about the Vedic way of life is captured in the verses 15-18 of Chapter 15 of Shreemad-Bhagavad-Gita. These 4 verses i.e., Shreemad-Bhagavad-Gita, Chapter 15, Verses 15-18 are quintessentially absolutely final, definitive, and ultimately conclusive words about the realities about the Infinite God, who is the Creator, and his Creation. Any philosophical school of thought that goes against these 4 verses can be summarily rejected without any hesitation. Therefore, let us look at these 4 verses:
Chapter 15, Verse 15:
Shree KrishNa says that he, the Supreme Infinite God, is at the CORE of EVERYTHING. In other words, use a microscope, nanoscope, picoscope or any other scope to zoom into anything… There is no space where God does not exist. It is not like ‘God exists until we zoom into picometer level but doesn’t exist beyond that depth’… we can go to any depth, any level of magnification… God is there at that depth/magnification.
Further, Shree KrishNa says that one’s ability to remember is through the grace of God. Here, I’m understanding the word “remember” as remembering the past janma (birth). One who can remember his/her past janma knows that what Shree KrishNa has said in Gita is all true through his/her personal experience. In other words, many may’ve written commentaries on Gita. But the validity of any commentary depends on knowing about the Jeevaatma going through a cycle of birth/death, through personal experience. Therefore, commentaries by those who do not remember their past janma need not be considered worthwhile.
Further, Shree KrishNa says that jnyaana (correct knowledge) i.e., awareness of facts about the Creator and the Creation, can only come through his grace. An example is necessary to explain the term “Jnyaana”. Suppose, some random person believes that he is the president of the USA… And let’s say he believes so very, very, VERY strongly… so strongly… that he arrives at New Delhi Airport by flight and, as per protocol, expects a red-carpet welcome and guard of honor. But, he won’t see any red-carpet welcome or guard of honor. Now, he’s upset. He starts screaming at airport workers… smashing the walls, tables, chairs, computer monitors, phone, etc., urging for a red-carpet welcome. What do you think the authorities will do to him? Catch him and put him in jail, correct? Why? Because… there is a problem. His belief – that he is the President of the USA – is not aligned with reality. Taking from this example, it shouldn’t be too hard to conclude that we benefit only when our belief are aligned with reality. On the contrary, if our belief is not aligned with reality, the consequences are always devastating. Today, we have billions of people whose belief is not aligned with reality… and therefore, you see all kinds of problems everywhere around us. Jnyaana is basically knowing the facts about the Creator and the Creation. We should ascertain the facts we see/observe around us, and extrapolate it to base our beliefs about the unseeable. And if those extrapolations are indeed in alignment with realities, then we see good results. If not, we should be open to recalibrating our extrapolations. Jnyaana is a carefully guarded secret and can’t be exposed to the evil-minded. One has to deserve it… and only then will it be granted to him/her by the grace of Shree KrishNa. Until a Jeevaatma is found to be deserving, it keeps forgetting and this forgetfulness too is through Shree KrishNa.
Further, Shree KrishNa says that he alone is the one who is perceivable (or experienceable) through the entirety of Vedas; that he is the creator of Vedaanta; that he is the one who knows the Vedas. How I’m understanding this is… there are schools of philosophy within “Hinduism” which claim to be the oldest school of Vedaanta. Such claims are clearly ignoring Shree Krishna’s statement that he is the creator of Vedaanta and that his time period was older than any/all the prevalent schools of Vedaanta. Anyone who claims to know the Vedas should realize that the Vedas are infinite. And therefore, the only one who can know the infinite Vedas in entirety is the infinite God himself.
We’ll start to elaborate on verses 16-18 in the future articles.
