Rudra said:
12. Listen to me, all of you, Devas, devarishis, brahmarishis, and you intelligent Agastya in particular.
13-14. He for whom sacrifices are to be performed is the great and omnipresent Lord Narayana from whom the entire universe has arisen and in whom it is dissolved along with Devas.
The Brahman is ontologically prior to everything. IT is, therefore, to be regarded as the origin of everything. The Vedanta Aphorisms define the Brahman as that to which the birth, maintenance and destruction of the world have to be attributed. The Brahman is, therefore, considered the creator, the sustainer and the destroyer of the world.
The world-appearance is said to have the Absolute Brahman as its cause, in the same way as the sky (space) is the cause of the growth of the tree, for the sky does not obstruct its growth. In fact, the Brahman is not an active causative factor.
15-16. That great Lord put himself to a three-fold transformation. With sattva predominating in Him, He associated Himself with rajas and tamas, and created out of His navel Brahma seated in the lotus. Brahma, associated himself with rajas and tamas, created me.
Prakrti has three attributes – Sattva (serenity, tendency to manifestation), Rajas (activity) and Tamas (inertia, obstruction to manifestation). Everything in the world is the product of these three attributes.
17-18. Lord Hari is sattva and He is the ultimate. Brahma, the four-faced god who arose from the lotus, is sattva and rajas. That, which is both rajas and tamas is, no doubt, me.
When the mind is transcended or ceases to be, purity and noble qualities arise. The existence of such purity in a liberated sage is known as sattva. This state of the mind is called ‘death of the mind where form remains’. Lord Hari is sattva embodied as He is Pure Consciousness.
19. There is the trio constituted of sattva, rajas and tamas. Sattva is of the nature of Narayana and all living beings are liberated by it.
20. By rajas associated with sattva arises this creation which has got rajas predominating. This is well known as the creation of Brahma.
Prakrti is considered to be in a state of dormancy when its three attributes are in perfect equilibrium. This is said to be the original state of Prakrti when there is no world of forms and names – objects. The Sankhya philosophy states that when the reflection of the Supreme Being (Purusa) is thrown in Prakrti, the latter is disturbed. This disturbance upsets the original equilibrium of the three attributes. As a result, any one attribute dominates the other two. Evolution ensues into the world of forms.
Ontologically, the attributes constituting Prakrti are ever active. But the stability of Prakrti like any other object or any society means that the forces inherent in it are in a state of equilibrium, none becoming dominant over the others, all being equally active and the activities of each force being harmonious with the activities of the others. Stability, then, does not mean inactivity, lethargy but harmony in activity. What is essentially and by nature force cannot but be active. What we call its in-activity may really be its pulsations of activity under the same conditions and in the same circumstances and pattern. In such an event, the change is not observable, though it always exists.
21. The actions not laid down in the Veda but are, however, based on Sastras are called Raudra (pertaining to Rudra) and it is not commended to people.
22. Actions not out of rajas, but purely out of tamas, lead people to ruin both in the present world and in the world beyond.
One who does not do actions out of ignorance is under the influence of the attribute of the Darkness (tamas). One who gives them up because of the difficulties they involve is under the influence of the attribute of the Active (rajas ). Either is wrong. The one who performs actions without any self-interest is under the influence of the attribute of the Transparent (sattva). He is the true renouncer of action, the true knower and the truly wise.
23. Sattva pertains to Narayana, and living beings have sattva as the means of liberation. And Narayana is considered as of the nature of sacrifice.
24. In the Krtayuga, Narayana is worshipped in His pure and minute form. In the Tretayuga, He is worshipped in the form of sacrifice and in the Dvaparayuga, according to pancaratra.
Three things prevent man from knowing that God is Spirit. The first is time, the second is corporeality and the third is multiplicity. These things must go out that God may come in. As long as God is thought of as being wholly in time, there is a tendency to regard Him as a numinous Being rather than a moral Being. The tendency is to treat Him as mere unmitigated Power rather than the Being of Power, Wisdom and Love. This leads to propitiating Him by sacrifices for temporal power rather than worshiping Him as Spirit in spirit.
Pancaratra is a system of worship of the Vaisnavas mainly practised for attaining various things like health, wealth, progeny, peace, regaining lost possessions, etc. The pancaratra system is claimed by the Vaisnavas as equal to the vaidika, and eulogized. The Vaisnavas claim that the follower of the pancaratra system is superior to all others.
25. In the Kaliyuga, Narayana is worshipped in the manner laid down by me in various tamasic forms, and with the motive of gain and animosity.
The Isvara form of God, which Arjuna witnesses in Bhagavad-Gita, which Krishna makes him, behold, is the terrible form of God of Time. God in time is normally worshipped by material means. The objective is to achieve temporal ends. God in time is manifestly the destroyer as well as the creator. Because of this nature, it has seemed proper to man to worship God by methods, which are as terrible as the destructions he himself inflicts. This accounts for the offer of sacrifices in the worship of deities for temporal gains. In all such cases, the divinity addressed is always a god in time or a personification of Nature. The deity is nothing but Time itself, the devourer of its own offspring. In all these cases, the purpose of the rite is to obtain a future benefit or to avoid an evil, which Time and Nature hold in store forever. History is replete with instances that where religions and philosophies take Time too seriously are correlated with political theories that inculcate and justify the use of large-scale violence.
