In the previous episode, we had witnessed the deeper meaning behind Bhagawan Krishna taming the seven bulls, so as to marry Satya. We equated the seven bulls to be seven stages of human birth and just like how bulls have two horns, each of our life stages have two states – Happiness and sorrow. As human beings, we undergo both happiness and sorrow in each of our seven stages in different forms. It is only amidst all of this, we surrender to Bhagawan’s feet and thereby, with His divine grace, we reach the highest “Moksha”. Thus, we’re seeing the same thing here too – Satya is watching Bhagawan Krishna taming the seven bulls with two horns each, thereby signalling the fact that every “Jeevatma” should undergo these seven stages in life. Finally, once the seven bulls are tamed, Satya is free from the bondage of “Samsaara” and thus attains Bhagawan Krishna. This signifies that if we’re able to surrender ourselves completely to Bhagawan Krishna, even though we might have to cross through these seven stages and two states in each, we would still be able to attain Bhagawan’s divine “Vaikunta”. Once we attain this state, we’re not going to come back to this world again.
Thus, Bhagawan Krishna’s marriage with Satya sends us this divine message of Vedanta and we should understand this important message, rather than falsely assuming that Bhagawan Krishna is a womanizer and is a person who married so many women in His life. In fact, whomever Bhagawan Krishna had married, were all in the highest level of “Bhakti”, signalling the message that, if the “Jeevatma” is extremely devoted and focused on Bhagawan, He would definitely come and take him / her with Him. This should not be looked upon as a worldly marriage that all of us do today. All the women whom Bhagawan Krishna married, never had any physical relationship with Him. Their relationship with Bhagawan Krishna was at a different level of “Bhakti”. We’ve spoken about this before as well – Even the Gopikas were of the same state. When we witnessed the “Raasa-Leela” episodes of Little Krishna, the Gopikas wanted to dance around with Him, and with that, their levels of “Bhakti” were getting higher and higher. There was in fact, a stage wherein the Gopikas were falling on to the ground unconscious! In order to protect the Gopikas and to bring them back to their normal condition, Bhagawan Krishna used to disappear from that state, so that they return back to “ground zero”. We’ve also witnessed that the Gopikas were not ordinary women – They were the divine incarnation of the Devas (Celestial Beings), who wished to spend quality time with Bhagawan Vishnu. Since they were not able to do that at Vaikunta, they incarnated in this world as Gopikas, as per Bhagawan Vishnu’s instruction. Thus, when Bhagawan Vishnu incarnated as Bhagawan Krishna, they were able to get that quality time from Him.
Hence, the point here is that, when we’re seeing successive marriages that Bhagawan Krishna is doing, it is not to be mistaken or confused to be worldly marriages like how we do. These are Jeevatmas of a high level of “Bhakti” and with this, they were given an opportunity to spend quality time with Bhagawan Krishna, and thereby to reach the highest “Moksha”.
Moving on thus, so far we’ve witnessed Bhagawan Krishna’s six marriages, and now we’ll witness the seventh one – Bhadra. This Bhadra was the daughter of Shrutakeerti and Bhagawan Krishna married her. Finally, Bhagawan Krishna marries Lakshmana and with this, the eight marriages of Bhagawan Krishna come to an end. It is these eight women that we call as “Ashta-Kannikas” who are always with Bhagawan Krishna. As days progress by, one fine day, Indra was under a huge problem. Indra, being the leader of all the “Devas” came to meet Bhagawan Krishna and explained that he was facing so much of torture from a Raakshasa by name “Narakaasura”. It is this incident, which is very closely associated with our famous Indian festival called “Deepavali”, that is celebrated every year with lot of grandeur all across the country.
So what is the speciality of Deepavali? Why is it important? What is the background story behind celebrating this festival? Let’s wait for the next episode to find out! Stay tuned! 😊
The Indian Dharma 