God Is Lord Anantadeva - The Unlimited Śeṣa Nāga
Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the Supreme Personality of Godhead expands Himself in innumerable forms to manage the cosmic creation. One of His most prominent and powerful incarnations is Lord Anantadeva, or Śeṣa Nāga, who acts as both the supreme sustainer of the universes and the eternal servant of the Lord.
The Supreme Sustainer
Lord Anantadeva is directly invested with the inconceivable potency to uphold the material world. Śrīla Prabhupāda describes how this magnificent incarnation effortlessly balances millions of massive planets on His thousands of hoods, treating them as lightly as mustard seeds.
- Sri Sukadeva Gosvami said to Maharaja Pariksit: My dear King, approximately 240,000 miles beneath the planet Patala lives another incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is the expansion of Lord Visnu known as Lord Ananta or Lord Sankarsana.
- There (in Sri Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila, Chapter Five, verses 117-125) it is stated that Lord Visnu's incarnation as the serpentine Ananta Sesa Naga supports all the universes on His hoods.
- On His head, Anantadeva sustains the entire universe, with its millions of planets containing enormous oceans and mountains.
- He (Lord Anantadeva) is so large and powerful that this universe rests on one of His hoods just like a drop of water. He does not know where it is.
The Eternal Chanting of Glories
Although He is the Supreme Lord, Anantadeva adopts the mood of a pure devotee. Śrīla Prabhupāda emphasizes that He possesses thousands of mouths, which He uses to continuously chant the endless, unfathomable glories of Lord Kṛṣṇa and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
- Ananta, a direct incarnation of the Lord, has unlimited mouths, and with each mouth He has been trying to describe the glories of the Lord for an unlimited span of time, yet the glories of the Lord remain unlimited, and He therefore never finishes.
- Although Lord Anantadeva is always describing the pastimes of the Lord with His thousands of mouths, He cannot reach the end of even one of the Lord's pastimes.
- While bearing the universe on one of His hoods, Anantadeva chants the glories of Krsna with each of His thousands of mouths.
- To this very day, Lord Ananta continues to chant the glories of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, and still He finds no end to them.
The Cosmic Annihilator
The Lord patiently sustains the material world to give souls a chance to return back to Godhead. However, Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that when the time for dissolution arrives, Anantadeva exhibits His fierce anger to burn the universe into ashes.
- After the creation, they (the conditioned souls) again exercise their old propensity for lording it over the material world. These activities of the conditioned souls anger Anantadeva, and He desires to destroy the entire material world.
- Anantadeva's main mission is to dissolve this material creation, but He checks His anger and intolerance. This material world is created to give the conditioned souls another chance to go back home, back to Godhead.
- Because He (Anantadeva) is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He is kind toward us and checks His anger and intolerance. Only at certain times does He express His anger and destroy the material world.
- In Maharloka one can live even to the time of the partial annihilation of the universe. This annihilation begins when Anantadeva, from the lowest position in the universe, produces a great blazing fire.
Purification Through His Glories
The descriptions of Lord Anantadeva found in the Vedic literatures are not mythological. Śrīla Prabhupāda assures us that by simply hearing and chanting about His transcendental nature from an authorized source, the conditioned soul becomes liberated.
- None of these descriptions (in SB 5.25.6) of Lord Anantadeva are imaginary. They are all transcendentally blissful and full of actual knowledge.
- Unless one hears them (the descriptions of Lord Anantadeva) directly from a bona fide spiritual master in the line of disciplic succession, one cannot understand them.
- If we simply try to engage in the congregational chanting of the glories of Lord Anantadeva, the dirty things in our hearts, accumulated during many births, will immediately be washed away.
- Lord Anantadeva is known as Sesa (the unlimited end) because He ends our passage through this material world. Simply by chanting His glories, everyone can be liberated.
Conclusion
To understand the magnitude of the Supreme Lord's potencies, one must study the unlimited glories of Lord Anantadeva. Śrīla Prabhupāda reveals that as the ultimate sustainer, the fiery annihilator, and the most exalted pure devotee chanting the holy names, Śeṣa Nāga perfectly demonstrates the boundless, inconceivable nature of the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
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