The Bhagavata Ethics part5

In the same way that we do not befriend or reject somebody just on the basis of the type of clothing he is wearing, we should not feel prejudice nor bigotry towards others just because of the type of body that they are wearing. We should know that we aren't our bodies and thus not relate with others according to their temporary bodies.
Science of Identity Foundation – Siddhaswarupananda
“Take, O Brahma! I am giving you the knowledge of my own self and of my relations and phases which is in itself difficult of access. You are a created being, so it is not easy for you to accept what I give you, but then I kindly give you the power to accept, so you are at liberty to understand my essence, my ideas, my form, my property and my action together with their various relations with imperfect knowledge. I was in the beginning before all spiritual and temporal things were created, and after they have been created I am in them all in the shape of their existence and truthfulness, and when they will be all gone I shall remain full as I was and as I am. Whatever appears to be true without being a real fact itself, and whatever is not perceived though it is true in itself are subjects of my illusory energy of creation, such as, light and darkness in the material world.”

It is difficult to explain the above in a short compass. You must read the whole Bhagavata for its explanation. When the great Vyasa had effected the arrangements of the Vedas and the Upanisads, the completion of the eighteen Puranas with facts gathered from the recorded and unrecorded tradition of ages, and the composition of the Vedanta and the large Mahabharata, an epic poem of great celebrity, he began to ruminate over his own theories and precepts, and found like Fauste of Goethe that he had up to that time gathered no real truth. He fell back into his own self and searched his own spiritual nature and then it was that the above truth was communicated to him for his own good and the good of the world. The sage immediately perceived that his former works required supercession in as much as they did not contain the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In his new idea he got the development of his former idea of religion. He commenced the Bhagavata in pursuance of this change. From this fact, our readers are expected to find out the position which the Bhagavata enjoys in the library of Hindu theological works.

The whole of this incomparable work teaches us, according to our Great Caitanya, the three great truths which compose the absolute religion of man. Our Nadia preacher calls them sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana, i.e., the relation between the Creator and the created, the duty of man to God and the prospects of humanity. In these three words is summed up the whole ocean of human knowledge as far as it has been explored up to this era of human progress. These are the cardinal points of religion and the whole Bhagavata is, as we are taught by Caitanya, an explanation both by precepts and example, of these three great points.

In all its twelve skandhas or divisions the Bhagavata teaches us that there is only one God without a second, Who was full in Himself and is and will remain the same. Time and space, which prescribe conditions to created objects are much below His Supreme Spiritual nature, which is unconditioned and absolute. Created objects are subject to the influence of time and space, which form the chief ingredients of that principle in creation which passes by the name of maya. Maya is a thing which is not easily understood by us who are subject to it, but God explains, as much as we can understand in our present constitution, this principle through our spiritual perception. The hasty critic starts like an unbroken horse at the name of maya and denounces it as a theory identical with that of Bishop Berkeley. “Be patient in your inquiry,” is our immediate reply. In the mind of God there were ideas of all that we perceive in eternal existence with him, or else God loses the epithet of omniscient so learnedly applied to Him. The imperfect part of nature implying want proceeded also from certain of those ideas, and what, but a principle of maya, eternally existing in God subject to His Omnipotence, could have a hand in the creation of the world as it is? This is styled as the maya-sakti of the omnipresent God. Cavil as much as you can. This is a truth in relation to the created universe.