The Five Toys and the Limitations of Human Perception

1. The Five Toys and the Limitations of Human Perception In this devotional couplet from Kripalu Bhakti Dhara, Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj reveals the reasons behind a mother’s tendency to give toys to her child. While she loves her child, she has many responsibilities to fulfil, and toys provide a temporary distraction for the child. Maharaj then extends this concept to the limitations of human perception, highlighting how the vastness of creation far exceeds our ability to fully comprehend it. Jagadguru Shri Kripalu Ji Maharaj , Devotion to God is the only means to complete purification of the heart. The mother and the toys

2. A worldly mother often turns her small child’s attention away from her by giving him toys. She actually goes to the market and purchases toys with the intention that the child may get caught up in them and forget her for a while. Wealthy people have entire rooms and halls filled with toys from different countries of the world. The question is, why does the mother give toys to her child? Does she not love her child? No, no, she does. But she has many household chores to perform. She has to take care of her mother-in-law, father-in-law, her husband, and her older children. A mother takes care of so many people. How difficult must be for her! Suppose the mother-in-law says, “Bring my glasses.” She gets up to get the glasses. Just then father-in-law says, “Pass me my towel.” Now she runs for his towel. Just then her husband asks, “Where’s my papers”, The woman becomes confused; whose work should do first? On the one hand, the scriptures say, For a woman, the husband is the most important; she should always obey him. But then, the father-in-law is the husband’s father. As such, her husband also obeys his father. Therefore, she concludes that she should serve her father-in-law first. But then, the mother’s place is even higher than the father’s. So she thinks that she should serve her mother-in-law! First. But then, the mother-in-law also serves her husband, i.e. the father-in-law. Thinking all this, the woman becomes very confused, flipping the pages of scriptures to make up her mind. It’s extremely difficult to please everyone. On top of everything else, her child starts crying. The older children also demand her attention. “Mother, give me some money for school .” I wonder how it is that these mothers don’t go crazy. They are going through all this not for just a couple of minutes a day, but twenty-four hours a day. It’s the same in every family. This is why Saint Tulsidas has said, The entanglements of a householder’s life are huge mountains. So the mother tries to solve some of the daily problems she faces. She keeps going which way she can. She brings toys to the child to make him forget her for a while. While he plays with toys, she performs her household duties towards her husband, in-laws, and her other children. Moreover, she has her personal work to do as well. She has to bathe, eat, and do many other things for herself. So the toys purchased by the mother are of five types. There cannot be a sixth type of toy. Why only five, you may ask. Because each individual has five sense organs through which we take in the objects of the senses. These five senses of perception are the eyes , ears, nose, tongue, and skin. We also have five senses of action, such as hands and feet. But these do not possess any knowledge. If you give your foot a toy, the foot will not become entangled in the toy or attached to the toy. On the other hand, the eyes see the rattle, and they like it. The ears hear

3. the sound of the rattle, and the mind becomes attracted. There are and can be only five types of toys. Now this great big world we are living in consists of five kinds of toys given to us by God. There exists in the world the subjects of the five senses of perception. You look at the world. Someone asks you, Tell me! Have you seen that? No. Oh, Then what have you seen? Have you been to New York? No. Oh, you haven’t seen anything then! The desire to see is so strong that you keep on seeing, and yet the desire to see is never satisfied. This creation is so vast that no one has been able to even understand it; what to speak of seeing it in its entirety! You have not even seen this planet earth, which is comprised of merely 200 countries Have you seen America? Yes, I have been there, What did you see there?1 saw a little bit of the country. But you didn’t see the entire country? Oh no! Who can see the whole of America? Who can see each and every city, each and every neighbourhood, each and every forest; each and every tree? Who can see all this? Who has the time to see all this? We live up to a maximum of 100 years. And then, this creation is so vast. The planet we are living on is very small. The sun that we see in the sky is much bigger than Earth. The planetary system is much bigger than the sun. There are three billion suns in one planetary system, and these suns are thousands of times bigger than the sun we know of. And there are billions of planetary systems and innumerable cosmic eggs created by God. How much can you see? How much will you see? There are some planets that are so far away that their light, travelling at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, takes millions of years to reach Earth. How far can you go, and how much will you see? And then, let’s suppose you have seen the entire creation, still, you will want to see the celestial abodes, Svargaloka. And then there are various levels of Svarga, the topmost being Brahmloka: Beyond that there is Vaikuntha. Beyond Vaikuntha is Goloka. There is no end to places you can see. The same can be said of objects you can hear, smell and taste. There are five senses, and each has unlimited subjects. A poor man may buy only three or four toys for his chip, whereas a rich man may purchase 100, 200, or even 500 toys for his child. God is the wealthiest and therefore His toy is so big that the person who plays with this toy gets so caught up with it that he is not able to get out of it. Alright) But Kripalu has a question for God: “O Lord! A worldly mother brings toys for her child because she has much) work to do. What household chores do You have to do that You have given us all these toys? You are sitting within! Everyone’s heart individually. Furthermore, You are the divine inspirer. You are all-pervading and You are ever blissful. Then why did You give us all these toys? First You! Give us toys and then You say to us. You are too caught up in these toys. Therefore, you will have to revolve in 8.4 million life forms after death. Don’t You know that Your toys are so powerful that with

4. Your exception there is no one in existence who will not become entangled in them?” These toys are collectively known as God’s maya shakti. Maya is extremely powerful. God declares in this verse from the Gita, “Only the individual who surrenders to Me and asks for My protection, can gain freedom from maya. Other than this, maya does not leave anyone alone, be it Brahma, Vishnu, or Shankara. Maya is so powerful that no one except God can conquer it. Now, is God going to answer? God is not here, so I shall answer on His behalf. God says, “I did not ask maya to delude you; I did not make you forget Me. Your forgetfulness is eternal, This verse from the Bhagavatam says that the individual soul has been turned away from God since eternity it’s not so that it turned away from God one day. Because of our eternal forgetfulness of God, maya has its control over us Maya will leave the moment the individual soul turns towards God. The individual soul must surrender to God and turn towards God by practicing devotion, In this way, we will be cured of our disease. As the verse says, guru devatatma, continue your devotional practice considering Guru and God equal. Recognise God’s presence in Guru. Once the child finds the real thing, he will no longer be attached to his toys. Small children play with dolls These dolls may be made of cloth or plastic and little children get the boy doll married to the girl doll. And children are very attached to these dolls. If someone snatches away their dolls, they scream and start kicking their hands and feet. But when the same child grows up, he searches for a real person to get married to. He no longer plays with toy dolls. Now he finds a beautiful girl, interviews her and marries her. Now that he has found the real thing he renounces the toys. In the very same way, when we also come to understand that we are the soul and that only Shyamasundara belongs to us, that He is everything to us-then we will automatically turn away from the five types of toys in the world. Thus, we must understand that we are eternally turned away from God, and to face Him we must practice devotion. We will attain Godly bliss through devotion. The world will then cease to attract us, and one day God will become ours and we will belong fully to God. This is the sixth mantra of Subala Shruti. It is also the seventh mantra from Gopalatapani Upanishad. And it is the third mantra from the eighth chapter of Nrisimhatapani Upanishad. The mantra says, “By surrendering fully to G od the individual soul will become eternally gratified.

5. Conclusion The devotional couplet of the Five Toys provides a powerful reminder of the limitations of our senses and our ability to perceive the world around us. Despite these limitations, we can still find beauty and wonder in the world, even if we cannot fully comprehend its vastness. Through a deepening of our spiritual understanding, we may come to realise that there is more to the universe than what meets the eye.