This is a special webpage I wrote to honor Lord Nrsimha for His birthday which was May 4th, 2023.
Previously, a newsletter about Lord Nrsimaha was written back in May 2000 and is available from our main website: KSI May 2000 Newsletter. The past times of Lord Nrsimhadeva and how he protected Prahlada Maharaja and killed Hiranyakasipu are explained in detail in the 7th Canto of Srimad-Bhagavatam.
Scriptures are deductive knowledge as explained in our KSI 2022 Newsletter so everything stated in the scriptures is necessarily true for everyone everywhere. Being God's words, they are the Absolute Truth. The entire universe follows His laws inexorably just like a movie flows exactly under the supervision of the director. However, better than a director, The Supreme Director of the universe is unlimited and infinite and His actions, words, etc. is REALITY (not a movie reserved for some cult or sect). Therefore it follows that the field of mathematics and philosophy is also in-line with His words and actions. Let's look at how the field of mathematics and philosophy are affected by what Lord Nrsimha did in killing Hiranyakasipu while maintaining Lord Brahma's boons given to Hiranyakasipu. So although one can read the pastimes of Lord Nrsimha like a devotional story, one can also analyze it mathematically and logically and see that it is philosophically consistent, coherent, rational and not violating any mathematical facts. Some people find it's paradoxical or even self-contradictory that these events could take place because of all the seemingly "opposites" being combined in the boons given to Hiranyakasipu. Even Hiranyakasipu thought it was impossible for him to be killed and he was not some ordinary man. So lets first look at the boons given to Hiranyakasipu; Hiranyakasipu asked Lord Brahma that he not meet death in any of the following conditions:
Each boon can be considered like an equation in a set of equations to be solved simultaneously. For example, I have only a 3 quart and 5 quart container and a customer comes to buy milk in any number of quarts then I have to work with those constraints to give the amount he wants:
If customer wants one quart, I use the 3 quart container twice to fill up the 5 quart container as much as possible and I am left with 1 quart.
If customer wants two quarts, I use the 5 quart container and fill up the 3 quart container with the 5 quart container and I am left with 2 quarts.
So there's atleast one solution for every possible value of quarts that the customer wants. There can be more than one solution but we just want to show mathematically that there's at least one solution to fulfill the boons of Hiranyakasipu.
For example, x*x*x-2*x*x-49*x+98 = 0 has 3 solutions and is easy to solve but x*x*x-x*x-x-1 seems like it has no solutions but it also has 3 solutions. The latter is similar to Hiranyakasipu's thinking that there is no solution; i.e., that there is no way of killing him.
So let's see how many solutions we can find of killing Hiranyakasipu given his boons. The first boon (a) is easily understood as Lord Nrsimha is not created nor from this material world; He is eternally existing and all avatars descend to the material world for their pastimes but are not subject to the laws of the material world. Lord Brahma himself is subject to death but the avatars are not subject to birth, death, old age, and disease nor are they affected by time. Nothing paradoxical nor self-contradictory here. Another easy one is to not be killed by any weapon (e) which is entirely possible since there are other ways to be killed besides by weapons. The other boons require understanding what I call "Borderline" math and philosophy. Here Lord Nrsimha has introduced us to this new type of math and the philosophical basis behind it is what we call the "essence" of something. If a man is still a man if you replace his arms with metal ones or cut them off, then the essence of being a man is not the arms. Similarly if you replace the hair of a man with hair of a lion or remove his hair completely, is he still a man? Yes, so the hair by itself has nothing to do with the essense of what is a man's body. And so on. We can present this mathematically with the example of integerizing a real number-- if you want to integerize any number say x between 1..2 then if x=1.2 it becomes 1; if x=1.8 then it becomes 2. This is one way of rounding off numbers -- Round(x,0) if you are familiar with Excel spreadsheet. There is also int(x) or Floor(x,1) which will round down so 1.8 would get rounded to 1 and so will 1.2 as well. There is also rounding up using Ceiling(x,1) in Excel (or Roof() in some other math software) which will round up so 1.2 and 1.8 will become 2. However, regardless of the rouding method we use, there exists a borderline where the number can NOT be rounded off in either direction. I have written up mathamatical proof of how the borderline exists for real and cannot be rounded off. I will take picture of my notes showing the proof and post it soon...as once again like my newsletters we are using text-based editors only and they will not allow mathematical symbols; the notes will be posted as multiple pages corresponding to multiple pages of the notes.
For item (g), Lord Nrsimha like all visnu-tattva (avatars) are neither demigods, nor demons, but they are beyond those created by Lord Brahma. However, Hiranyakasipu thought Lord Visnu and His avatars were killable and subject to the laws of the material world (creation/destruction). Hiranyakasipu's brother Hiranyaksa tried to kill Lord Visnu who appeared in the form of boar incarnation (Lord Varaha). Hiranyaksa fought with Lord Varaha in a battle in the water. However, Lord Visnu and His avatars do not lose to anyone so Lord Varaha easily won that battle. Hiranyakasipu tried to prevent the similar fate that his brother met so he made sure to ask for the boons that he would not be killed by Lord Visnu in his man or animal form nor by His invincible Sudarsana cakra weapon nor on the land, water, or sky. So item (g) is true since as mentioned for item (a), Lord Nrsimha is not created nor from this material world. He was an original unique entity as far as Hiranyakasipu and his boons were concerned since it was beyond the imagination of Hiranyakasipu; everything in the spiritual world (Vaikuntha) is eternal (sac-cid-ananda) and not subject to birth, death, old age, and disease. People in the material world are conditioned to think in terms of the time factor so when an avatar appears, they think He took birth at a certain time so we find some people claiming Lord Krishna is 8th avatar of Lord Visnu because He appeared after Lord Vararha, Lord Nrsimha, etc. There's math proof behind this as well to prove that Lord Nrsimha is not subject to birth nor death so more on this later after I post the math notes. For item (d), Lord Nrsimha killed Hiranyakasipu on His lap which is neither on the land nor in the sky nor on water. There's another solution here as well. There are five gross elements of the material world-- earth, water, fire, air, and ether. So it's possible that Hiranyakasipu could have been killed by fire on a bed of air above the ground and not in the sky. I'll let you think about this solution and continue this article in the future...
You can also think of or sing Madonna's song "borderline" as another example of the existence of in-between states. A person is undecided until he goes over the borderline. If the Madonna "material girl" followers can think of Lord Nrsimhadeva when singing the "borderline" song they can gradually raise their consciousness to becoming "spiritual girl"s living in the material world just like people chant God's glories to purify themselves or remember His pastimes.
Another example of borderline is nirvana which is the ultimate goal for the Buddists. This state of desirelessness is where you neither have desire for material things nor for the spiritual things (God, bhakti, and things that can be dovetailed for bhakti). This is a borderline state that is hard to maintain and ultimately people who have attained it end up going over the borderline.
For Lord Krishna and His avatars, there's no restrictions of time and space. You cannot apply restrictions that apply to us to God. If there's a road like route 80 that only goes East and West and someone is traveling (moving) on that route that does not mean there's only 1 bit of information (2 combinations) needed to present the state of the moving objectg say "0" means you are traveling East and "1" means you are traveling West. There are actually 2 bits of information needed or 4 combinations-- "01" means you are going East, "10" means you are going West, "11" means you are going in both directions, and "00" means you are going in neither direction. Lord Krishna can move the earth (as He is already doing) with route 80 on it so that's your "00". Heck, even Hanuman carried the entire mountain rather than figure out the herb he needed to heal Laxman. Even Hiranyaksa (a demon) moved the earth out of orbit. The combination of "11" is possible as shown by Lord Krishna in His rasa dance-- where He expanded Himself into 16108 Lord Krishnas which were all exact Lord Krishnas. Here we just need 2 Krishnas-- one that travels East and one that travels West simultaneously!
Whenever Lord Krishna (or His avatars) does something in the pastimes, there's always something wonderful, new and unique as stated in the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is: "Behold the many wonderful things which no one has ever seen or heard of before." BG(11.6). So maintaining or even introducing a borderline between two opposites is no big deal for the Supreme Lord as He is the origin of everything (inventor of everything).
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--------------------Misc. Proof of Reincarnation------------------------------------------------------
Subject claims he recalls the 1897 penny from his previous life or it reminds him of things in his previous life. Story by C. P. Taylor. He has not submitted his full story to me yet.
All I can say is there is "7" in there which some people claim is lucky:
1897 = 7*271 so we have the "lucky" 7 3X times-- two in the factors and one in the number itself.
Also, 41*1897 = 77,777
Of course, there's some reasoning behind "luck". There's no such thing as chance, but there IS such thing as luck based on math/philosophy.
We see that even the reciprocal of 7 has multiples of 7: 1/7 = Sum[(7*2^(x+1))/(10^(2*x+2))] where x goes from 0 to infinity.
This story was written on the same page that I was writing paper on Lord Nrsimha above which is in 7th Canto!
Equation I used above has absolute lucky 7s as 2 of 3 solutions: x*x*x-2*x*x-49x+98 = 0
You can try substituting values or you can factor the equation like:
x*x*(x-2)-49(x-2) = 0
(x-2)*(x*x-49) = 0
(x-2)*(x-7)*(x+7) = 0
...
So +7 or -7 or absolute(x)=7 are two solutions for x to the equation above.
C. P. Taylor has not yet given full story so I can verify it and publish it on my website.