Re: Bhishma's death

Dear Mihir,

      Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances! I am sharing some realisations along with some nectar which great devotees have told me.

            We only have limited and conditioned vision and hence things don't seem right. We need some revelation from the Lord to tell us what is behind the scenes.  It is very mysterious the way in which the Lord and his devotees work.  They don't obey any logic whatsoever. Indeed if the Lord wants us to tell lies, we do, even though it is ethically incorrect. Bhaktisiddhanta Prabhupada states that morality or ethics are merely relative ways by which people come to accept ideas of right and wrong. However what the Lord wants us to do, that alone is right, the rest is wrong.

      You mention the Mahabharata. Yudhisthira's chariot always rode 5 fingers above the earth because of his dharmic nature. The pandavas had not stopped Draupadi's insult, so why did that chariot still stay above ground? Why did the Pandavas not fall to Vaisnava apradha but Bhishma did? One other thing is that when Lord Krishna wanted Yudhisthira to tell that Asvatthama was dead, he did not do it, but instead tried to say it was the elephant. At that point his chariot hit ground. Why is that? The answer is not because of the lie, it was because he had hesitated to act upon the Lord's order and tried to take shelter of mundane dharma at that point. He told a lie because he told something other than what Krishna wanted him to say. That was the real reason. It is very confidential and none of the mundane writers of the Mahabharata can understand such things.

        Why did Yudhisthira hesitate? One answer is that when Yudhisthira went to hell for a while, all the sinful suffering souls there were immediately delivered simply by that small amount of association with a pure devotee. So there was another reason behind that too. Another is to show us that surrending to the Lord's will is far superior to mundane morality.

         A great devotee like Bhishma is fully aware of right and wrong, being the authority on thousands of scriptures. Why did he not save Draupadi? As a matter of fact, why did he even stay with the Kauravas at all? There are many reasons. First of all Bhisma was actually playing his part in the Lord's pastimes as the Lord wanted. The pastime of Draupadi being rescued by Sri Krishna at the last minute is to show to the whole world how we must completely abandon our mundane ego and our sense of shame, honour and surrender to the Lord. The Lord in turn will never let his devotees be overpowered by demonaic forces. Thus the rascal Duhsana's attempt was utterly foiled. One very good reason for the whole Mahabharata war taking place is because of that one Vaisnava aparadha against Draupadi. The Kauravas were then doomed along with all their allies. Now the Lord had the best reason in the world to get rid of them. But he made them invite their own doom by letting them misuse their independence and he arranged for their annihilation by this type of circumstantial arrangement.  Similarly Hiranyakasipu was killed after he began to commit Vaisnava aparadha against Prahlada, but till then he was allowed to be let loose. Kamsa's fate was sealed after he committed numerous offenses against Vasudeva and Devaki and the residents of Vrindavana. That is one reason.

         Dhritarastra attained sayujya, but he failed to attain the Lord even though he was the first person to hear the Gita live as it occured. Why? Because of Vaisnava aparadha.

Another thing is that Bhishma and all the others had been stopped by yogamaya and made to watch silently. But actually they were getting the highest bliss out of the Lord coming and saving them. Actually a pure devotee experiences highest bliss in playing whatever his role is in the Lord's pastimes. The thing in the spiritual world is that if you are meant to be the Lord's pin cushion, then you get the highest bliss when he pokes pins into you. In Vrindavana sometimes the devotees are victims of Lord Krishna's endless pranks. But that is the highest bliss. If the Lord didn't come to their home, they would be lost in an ocean of sorrow.

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