Chapter 1: This World of Misery

Some days ago the respectable editor of the Allahabad Amṛta Bazaar Patrikā, greatly lamenting, wrote the following words at the head of his editorial: "The national week has begun. The memories of 'Jallian-wallah-Bagh' and political serfdom no longer trouble us. But our troubles are far from being at an end. In the dispensation of providence mankind cannot have any rest. If one kind of trouble goes, another quickly follows. India, politically free, is faced with difficulties that are no less serious than those troubled under a foreign rule…."

Upon opening and examining the account book of India's independence and dependence and seeing the situation through the vision of the scriptures, we find the following: the entire duration of the four ages, namely Satya, Tretā, Dvāpara, and Kali is 4,320,000 solar years. Among those four ages, the Kali-yuga lasts for a duration of 432,000 solar years. The Kali-yuga began from the time of the great king Mahārāja Parīkṣit's reign, in other words a little more than 5,000 years ago. Although India has been dependent for almost 1,000 of those 5,000 years, in other words from the time of the Mogul emperor Mohammad Ghori,* (1,050 A.D.) according to scriptural accounts the kings of India have ruled the earth with its seas for almost 3,772,000 years up to the period of Mahārāja Parīkṣit. In that comparison our learned thinkers did not in the past or do not at present consider that there is any reason for particular lamentaion as India was so-called dependent for only those 1,000 years. How much is the value of political independence or dependence; that the learned sages of India understood. How were the kings of India able to rule the entire earth with its seas until the time of Mahārāja Parīkṣit, and not for two-hundred or five-hundred years but for thousands and thousands of years, when their reasons for ruling were not at all political?

India's learned sages understood that we are in pain due to the threefold material miseries and that there is no means to allieviate the suffering by mere political independence or dependence. Regarding political independence and dependence in India, in ancient days the provincial battle of the 'Mahābhārata' was fought and that battle was finished in eighteen days. On the battlefield what is mankind's real happiness and sorrow and how is allieviation of misery possible? The answers to those questions were solved in the conversation of the Bhagavad-gītā on that battlefield of Kurukṣetra.

The respectable editor of the Amṛta Bazaar Patrikā, sadly grieving, has written the following: "After one misery goes, another quickly follows." Long, long ago this point was discussed the Bhagavad-gītā as follows:

The Lord's daivī māyā or material energy consists of the three modes of material nature namely goodness, passion and ignorance, and escaping from her hands is a very difficlut affair. This daivī māyā, in modern terms, is called nature's law. Nature's laws are very complex and although after much writing in the newspapers and passing of many proposals and propositions in large commitees and conventions, there will never come a day when we will be able to surpass the laws of material nature. However, we execute scientific research for escaping from the clutches of daivī māyā or for overcoming nature’s laws but all those scientific theories are subordinate principles to the material energy. For this reason, on the strength of material science we try to create something good to control over the material energy. Now, due to scientific plan-making for bringing about happiness and driving away the miseries of the world, we have become situated in the atomic age. Due to the atomic process the entire world is able to be destroyed. Seeing the future of the atomic age, the Western thinkers have become filled with anxieties. Some people are speaking with consoling words that, 'we will make use of the atomic energy for bringing about the happiness of the world'; but this is just one more puzzling illusion of māyā. We do not possess the power to surpass the two-fold energy of the material nature, namely the covering potency and the throwing potency. As much as we are exhibiting the prowess of Mahiṣāsura before daivī māyā, we will devour ourselves, and to that extent, that māyā, throwing us into confusion, shaken by the mode of passion and piercing us by the pains of the three-fold miseries, is subordinating us to the snake of time. In this way the battle of daivī māyā with Mahiṣāsura** is constantly going on and not being able to understand that, we are lamenting. …in the dispensation of providence mankind cannot have any rest.'

All the living beings in this material world who are like Mahiṣāsura, being bewildered in many ways by the material energy or daivī māyā, are not able to understand how mankind can have any rest.

Lord Kṛṣṇa, having spoken this sentence and cautioning all those souls who are compared to Mahiṣāsura in the second part of this verse has explained as follows how deliverance is obtained from the clutches of this daivī māyā:

or in other words, those souls who accept the shelter of the lotus feet of the Supreme Lord, obtain deliverence from the clutches of the material energy.

The following footnote is handwritten:

Footnote

*Mohammad Ghori was a Mogul emperor who conquered India in the year 1,050 A.D. and brought India under the control of the Mogul empire.

**In the Markandeya Purāṇa there is the narration of Durgā and Mahiṣāsura. Mahiṣāsura was a Demon who was half man half bull. By his demoniac prowess he conquered all the demigods. The demigods were freed from his control by Durgā, the powerful personification of the material energy. There was a great fight between Durgā and Mahiṣāsura which ended with Durgā piercing the chest of the Demon with her trident, the three points of which represent the threefold material miseries. Herein the struggle of the materialist with material nature is compared to this battle described in the Markandeya Purāṇa.

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