Srila Prabhupada explains the amazing story of Sri Mula Rāma

“In the book known as Adhyātma-rāmāyaṇa, there are statements in Chapters Twelve to Fifteen about the worship of the Deities Śrī Rāmacandra and Sītā. There it is stated that during Lord Rāmacandra’s time there was a brāhmaṇa who took a vow refusing to accept breakfast until he saw Lord Rāmacandra. Sometimes, due to business, Lord Rāmacandra was absent from His capital for a full week and could not be seen by citizens during that time. Because of his vow, the brāhmaṇa could not take even a drop of water during that week. Later, after eight or nine days, when the brāhmaṇa could see Lord Rāmacandra personally, he would break his fast. Upon observing the brāhmaṇa’s rigid vow, Lord Śrī Rāmacandra ordered His younger brother Lakṣmaṇa to deliver a pair of Sītā-Rāma Deities to the brāhmaṇa. The brāhmaṇa received the Deities from Śrī Lakṣmaṇajī and worshiped Them faithfully as long as he lived.

At the time of his death, he delivered the Deities to Śrī Hanumānjī, who, for many years, hung Them around his neck and served Them with all devotion. After many years, when Hanumānjī departed on the hill known as Gandha-mādana, he delivered the Deities to Bhīmasena, one of the Pāṇḍavas, and Bhīmasena brought Them to his palace, where he kept Them very carefully. The last king of the Pāṇḍavas, Kṣemakānta, worshiped the Deities in that palace. Later, the same Deities were kept in the custody of the kings of Orissa known as Gajapatis. One of the ācāryas, known as Narahari Tīrtha, who was in the disciplic succession of Madhvācārya, received these Deities from the King of Orissa.

It may be noted that these particular Deities of Rāma and Sītā have been worshiped from the time of King Ikṣvāku. Indeed, they were worshiped by the royal princes even before the appearance of Lord Rāmacandra. Later, during Lord Rāmacandra’s presence, the Deities were worshiped by Lakṣmaṇa. It is said that just three months before his disappearance, Śrī Madhvācārya received these Deities and installed them in the Uḍupī temple. Since then the Deities have been worshiped by the Madhvācārya-sampradāya at that monastery.

As far as the Śrī Vaiṣṇavas are concerned, beginning with Rāmānujācārya, they also worshiped Deities of Sītā-Rāma. Sītā-Rāma Deities are also being worshiped in Tirupati and other places. From the Śrī Rāmānuja-sampradāya there is another branch known as Rāmānandī or Rāmāt, and the followers of that branch also worship Deities of Sītā-Rāma very rigidly. The Rāmānuja-sampradāya Vaiṣṇavas prefer the worship of Lord Rāmacandra to Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa.”

(Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta » Madhya-līlā 9.11 » Purport | 1975 Edition)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “[…] One feature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Rāmacandra is omnipotence. The Lord can act without regard to material impediments or inconveniences, but to prove that He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead and was not merely advertised as Godhead or elected by popular vote, He constructed a wonderful bridge over the ocean.

Nowadays it has become fashionable to create some artificial God who performs no uncommon activities; a little magic will bewilder a foolish person into selecting an artificial God because he does not understand how powerful God is. Lord Rāmacandra, however, constructed a bridge over the water with stone by making the stone float. This is proof of God’s uncommonly wonderful power.

Why should someone be accepted as God without displaying extraordinary potency by doing something never to be done by any common man? We accept Lord Rāmacandra as the Supreme Personality of Godhead because He constructed this bridge, and we accept Lord Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead because He lifted Govardhana Hill when He was only seven years old. We should not accept any rascal as God or an incarnation of God, for God displays special features in His various activities.

Therefore, the Lord Himself says in Bhagavad-gītā (4.9):

janma karma ca me divyam
evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ
tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma
naiti mām eti so ’rjuna

“One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna.” The activities of the Lord are not common; they are all transcendentally wonderful and not able to be performed by any other living being.

The symptoms of the Lord’s activities are all mentioned in the sastras, and after one understands them one can accept the Lord as He is.

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 9.10.15 » Purport | 1977 Edition)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “[…] Somehow or other, Rāvaṇa was raised to an exalted position as the king of a great kingdom with all material opulences, but because of his sinful act of kidnapping mother Sītā, all the results of his pious activities were destroyed.”

If one offends an exalted personality, especially the Supreme Personality of Godhead, one certainly becomes most abominable; bereft of the results of pious activities, one must fall down like Rāvaṇa and other demons.

It is therefore advised that one transcend both pious and impious activities and remain in the pure state of freedom from all designations (sarvopādhi-vinirmuktaṁ tat-paratvena nirmalam). When one is fixed in devotional service, he is above the material platform.

On the material platform there are higher and lower positions, but when one is above the material platform he is always fixed in a spiritual position (sa guṇān samatītyaitān brahma-bhūyāya kalpate).

Rāvaṇa or those like him may be very powerful and opulent in this material world, but theirs is not a secure position, because, after all, they are bound by the results of their karma (karmaṇā daiva-netreṇa).

We should not forget that we are completely dependent on the laws of nature.

prakṛteḥ kriyamāṇāni
guṇaiḥ karmāṇi sarvaśaḥ
ahaṅkāra-vimūḍhātmā
kartāham iti manyate

“The bewildered spirit soul, under the influence of the three modes of material nature, thinks himself the doer of activities that are in actuality carried out by nature.” (Bg. 3.27)

One should not be proud of one’s exalted position and act like Rāvaṇa, thinking oneself independent of material nature’s laws.

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 9.10.23 » Purport | 1977 Edition)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “[…] The material opulences a person obtains by offering prayers to the goddess Durgā are temporary. As described in Bhagavad-gītā (7.23), antavat tu phalaṁ teṣāṁ tad bhavaty alpa-medhasām: men of meager intelligence desire temporary happiness.

We have actually seen that one of the disciples of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura wanted to enjoy the property of his spiritual master, and the spiritual master, being merciful toward him, gave him the temporary property, but not the power to preach the cult of Caitanya Mahāprabhu all over the world. That special mercy of the power to preach is given to a devotee who does not want anything material from his spiritual master but wants only to serve him.

The story of the demon Rāvaṇa illustrates this point. Although Rāvaṇa tried to abduct the goddess of fortune Sītādevī from the custody of Lord Rāmacandra, he could not possibly do so. The Sītādevī he forcibly took with him was not the original Sītādevī, but an expansion of māyā, or Durgādevī. As a result, instead of winning the favor of the real goddess of fortune, Rāvaṇa and his whole family were vanquished by the power of Durgādevī (sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-sādhana-śaktir ekā ).”

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 5.18.22 » Purport | 1975 Edition)

by Haripada dasa

Each madman with his subject means that each person gets involved in life with the subjects according to his interest. In this world there are five themes, I will try to explain them,

First religion, in human society there are various religious concepts described as Hindu, Christian, Hebrew, Mohammedan, Buddhist, etc., hypocritical people need to put a label or stamp and say I belong to this religion or that one, but we see in practice that nobody obeys the precepts of their religion and thus they deceive themselves and others, true religion means knowing God and loving him, but people do not know what and who It is God, no one can love someone they do not know, from the very beginning of Srimad Bhagavatam those deceiving religions are rejected. Srila Prabhupada always said that what people like the most is to suffer and to be deceived, that is why those deceitful religions have so many followers, and they also fight among themselves saying that my religion is better than yours.

In deceitful religions God is asked for money, health, etc., in other words economic development, and for what…. To satisfy the third theme which is sense gratification, people use their intelligence to know which alcoholic beverage is best, which restaurant is the best, which nightclub is the best, etc., nowadays people achieve development economic without having to go to God, that’s why the fashion today is to be an atheist, and I live to the hole, and dead to the hole, nobody is interested in knowing God and loving him, people only believe in money and in power, the fourth theme is liberation, when the spirit soul tires of deceiving itself and others, of thinking that the purpose of life is to fill the belly, full belly, happy heart, to lead a life full of self-indulgence. the senses, there ignorance deceives you and you think you are God, and you want to merge with God, that is called spiritual suicide, it is like the prisoner who suffers a lot in jail and thinks that if I commit suicide this suffering will end.

But there is hope and that is where the fifth topic comes in, the fifth topic is knowing God and loving Him, and how only God and His energies exist, naturally when a person awakens their love for God they will love everyone and everything, because they will see it. everything in relation to God. Srila Prabhupada gave us 80 books of 400 pages each that describe the unlimited names of God or Krishna, His forms, His qualities and His pastimes, and there are all the spiritual instructions necessary to know God or Krishna and love Him.

I once saw a video of Nostradamus saying that an elderly person would come from the East who always goes with a cane to inaugurate the universal religion, the chant of the Holy Names of God The Maha-Mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare (H is read as J for jota), when Srila Prabhupada arrived in New York he sat in a park and chanted The Hare Krishna Maha-Mantra, and there began his movement.

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “[…] The separation of Lord Rāmacandra from Sītā is spiritually understood as vipralambha, which is an activity of the hlādinī potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead belonging to the śṛṅgāra-rasa, the mellow of conjugal love in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world the Supreme Personality of Godhead has all the dealings of love, displaying the symptoms called sāttvika, sañcārī, vilāpa, mūrcchā and unmāda. Thus when Lord Rāmacandra was separated from Sītā, all these spiritual symptoms were manifested. The Lord is neither impersonal nor impotent. Rather, He is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha [Bs. 5.1], the eternal form of knowledge and bliss. Thus He has all the symptoms of spiritual bliss.

Feeling separation from one’s beloved is also an item of spiritual bliss. As explained by Śrīla Svarūpa Dāmodara Gosvāmī, rādhā-kṛṣṇa-praṇaya-vikṛtir hlādinī-śaktiḥ: the dealings of love between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa are displayed as the pleasure potency of the Lord. The Lord is the original source of all pleasure, the reservoir of all pleasure. Lord Rāmacandra, therefore, manifested the truth both spiritually and materially. Materially those who are attached to women suffer, but spiritually when there are feelings of separation between the Lord and His pleasure potency the spiritual bliss of the Lord increases.[…]”

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 9.10.11 » Purport | 1977 Edition)

Śrīla Prabhupāda: “Modern Rākṣasas, posing as educationally advanced merely because they have doctorates, have tried to prove that Lord Rāmacandra is not the Supreme Personality of Godhead but an ordinary person. But those who are learned and spiritually advanced will never accept such notions; they will accept the descriptions of Lord Rāmacandra and His activities only as presented by tattva-darśīs, those who know the Absolute Truth. In Bhagavad-gītā (4.34) the Supreme Personality of Godhead advises:

tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā upadekṣyanti te jñānaṁ jñāninas tattva-darśinaḥ

‘Just try to learn the truth by approaching a spiritual master. Inquire from him submissively and render service unto him. The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth.’ Unless one is tattva-darśī, in complete knowledge of the Absolute Truth, one cannot describe the activities of the Personality of Godhead. Therefore although there are many so-called Rāmāyaṇas, or histories of Lord Rāmacandra’s activities, some of them are not actually authoritative. Sometimes Lord Rāmacandra’s activities are described in terms of one’s own imaginations, speculations or material sentiments. But the characteristics of Lord Rāmacandra should not be handled as something imaginary. While describing the history of Lord Rāmacandra, Śukadeva Gosvāmī told Mahārāja Parīkṣit, ‘You have already heard about the activities of Lord Rāmacandra.’ Apparently, therefore, five thousand years ago there were many Rāmāyaṇas, or histories of Lord Rāmacandra’s activities, and there are many still. But we must select only those books written by tattva-darśīs (jñāninas tattva-darśinaḥ), not the books of so-called scholars who claim knowledge only on the basis of a doctorate.This is a warning by Śukadeva Gosvāmī. Ṛṣibhis tattva-darśibhiḥ. Although the Rāmāyaṇa composed by Vālmīki is a huge literature, the same activities are summarized here by Śukadeva Gosvāmī in a few verses.”

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 9.10.3 >> Purport | 1977 Edition)

Srila Prabhupada…”Tṛṇād api sunīcena does not mean that if a Vaiṣṇava is insulted or Viṣṇu is defamed, you remain silent, “I am tṛṇād api sunīcena.” No. At that time you should become fire. That is the teaching of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Just like Hanumānjī, he’s Vaiṣṇava. But when there was need for the service of Lord Rāmacandra, he set fire in the Lanka. So when there is viṣṇu-vaiṣṇava-ninda, defamation, you should not remain tṛṇād api sunīcena. You should take steps. This is the instruction. Anyway, Vaiṣṇava is never angry, but that does not mean that you tolerate insult to Viṣṇu and Vaiṣṇava. No.”

Srila Prabhupada’s Lecture : Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.5.3 — Vrndavana, October 25, 1976

“[…] As stated in the Bhagavad-gītā (BG 4.7), the Lord appears when there are discrepancy in the discharge of factual religiousness and Lord Rāmacandra also appeared under the same circumstances, accompanied by His brothers, who are expansions of the Lord’s internal potency, and by Lakṣmījī Sītādevī.

Lord Rāmacandra was ordered by His father, Mahārāja Daśaratha, to leave home for the forest under awkward circumstances, and the Lord, as the ideal son of His father, carried out the order, even on the occasion of His being declared the King of Ayodhyā. One of His younger brothers, Lakṣmaṇajī, desired to go with Him, and so also His eternal wife, Sītājī, desired to go with Him. The Lord agreed to both of them, and all together they entered the Daṇḍakāraṇya Forest, to live there for fourteen years. During their stay in the forest, there was some quarrel between Rāmacandra and Rāvaṇa, and the latter kidnapped the Lord’s wife, Sītā. The quarrel ended in the vanquishing of the greatly powerful Rāvaṇa, along with all his kingdom and family.

Sītā is Lakṣmījī, or the goddess of fortune, but she is never to be enjoyed by any living being. She is meant for being worshiped by the living being along with her husband, Śrī Rāmacandra. A materialistic man like Rāvaṇa does not understand this great truth, but on the contrary he wants to snatch Sītādevī from the custody of Rāma and thus incurs great miseries. The materialists, who are after opulence and material prosperity, may take lessons from the Rāmāyaṇa that the policy of exploiting the nature of the Lord without acknowledging the supremacy of the Supreme Lord is the policy of Rāvaṇa. Rāvaṇa was very advanced materially, so much so that he turned his kingdom, Laṅkā, into pure gold, or full material wealth. But because he did not recognize the supremacy of Lord Rāmacandra and defied Him by stealing His wife, Sītā, Rāvaṇa was killed, and all his opulence and power destroyed.

Lord Rāmacandra is a full incarnation with six opulences in full, and He is therefore mentioned in this verse as kaleśaḥ, or master of all opulence.”

(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 2.7.23, Purport | 1972 Edition)