Human life is valuable, neither random nor void of meaning. Our life is meant for gaining transcendental knowledge and being liberated from the material encasement to associate with the Supreme Soul of all souls in His world beyond material time and space. The following verse succinctly delivers this idea:
“Lord Brahmā said: My dear demigods, the human form of life is of such importance that we also desire to have such life, for in the human form one can attain perfect religious truth and knowledge. If one in this human form of life does not understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead and His abode, it is to be understood that he is very much affected by the influence of external nature. ”
(SB 3.15.24)
YET, WITHIN THIS SHORT VERSE are many concepts that collide with the modern conceptual frame of reference. Brahma the creator god is talking to the gods in charge of various departments in the universe (heat, light, wind, water, earth, etc). Then above them is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and there is also His abode which lies beyond this universe. Our little universe–created by the four-headed, lotus born Brahma, under the order of the Supreme Lord–is comprised of the external energy which operates in three modes of nature: sattva, rajas and tamas.. These modes are also called maya or illusion and they cover the true self in the same way a driver rides in a car. The human form of life is beloved by the Lord because this body composed of this illusory, external energy allows souls liberation if they take advantage of the loophole in the cycle of birth and death. Humans can gain this liberation and become free from illusion permanently by taking advantage of the system of Vedic knowledge which follows the teachings of the brahmanas who are disciples in the line of Brahma, the original preceptor.
For a person rooted in the modern ways of Western thought to accept this verse as true, they first must not reject the component truths that make up this statement. For a person who believes that ‘science’ has ‘put man on the moon’ and discovered that ‘there is no life out there in the vacuum of space’ and that furthermore, our earth was created from an initial ‘big bang’ and that our very conscious selves ‘evolved from random chemical combinations over eons’… well, a person that thinks in this way, cannot simultaneously accept this verse from the Srimad Bhagavatam as absolutely true.
Therefore, cosmology is the front line in the war for the mind of modern man. The importance of government sponsored space agencies and ‘science’ education cannot be underestimated as an obstacle to the enlightenment of conditioned souls in Kali yuga. There are a surprising number of ‘devotees of Krishna’ who attempt to accommodate these two incompatible world views without seeing the problem. Srila Prabhupada taught that direct acceptance of Srimad Bhagavatam as factual truth is essential in order to gain benefit from its teachings. “As It Is” can be said to be Srila Prabhupada’s only rule of interpretation.
There are eight stages of progress that a devotee passes on the path to pure love for Krishna (prema) and they begin with shraddha, unflinching faith. How do devotees expect to get Krishna prema and “Go Back to Godhead” when they don’t even believe the words of Sukadeva Goswami in the 5th canto? How can they relish the 10th canto when they have not assimilated the foundational understanding of the very world we inhabit given in the 5th canto?
The worldview learned from modern day secular educators must be tossed out! With a clean slate, one must hear the words of the mahajana, Sukadeva Goswami, as he describes bhu-mandala and our home island, jambudvipa. We must appreciate that we live on a non-moving, fixed earth plane with stars that revolve around Druvaloka (the north star) once a day over our heads. We must accept that there is an up and a down in this universe which is actually the expanded body of God. Seven realms above earth and seven below constitute the ‘fourteen worlds’. Each of these realms is governed by and populated densely with living beings that comprise 8.4 million body types. A non-material world exists beyond the walls of our covered spherical universe where uncountable numbers of pure liberated souls reside and enjoy unlimited bliss in the association of the Supreme Person, the source of all bliss. Without a fundamental acceptance of these direct teachings of the 5th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, where exactly is our faith?
“From the navel of the Personality of Godhead Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu sprouted a lotus flower effulgent like a thousand blazing suns. This lotus flower is the reservoir of all conditioned souls, and the first living entity who came out of the lotus flower was the omnipotent Brahmā” (SB 3.20.16)
Many devotees are comfortable with this description of the creation of the universe, however, at the same time they accept the information of a ‘void’ universe supposedly explored by space agencies funded by their taxes. An inventory of ideas that have come from the ascending method must be taken and those ideas rejected in favor of the primary evidence of Srimad Bhagavatam as it is.
“The planetary system known as Bhū–maṇḍala resembles a lotus flower, and its seven islands resemble the whorl of that flower. The length and breadth of the island known as Jambūdvīpa, which is situated in the middle of the whorl, are one million yojanas [eight million miles]. Jambūdvīpa is round like the leaf of a lotus flower.” SB 5.16.5
VEDASONIC 