King Chitraketu was a pious king and had everything at his disposal be it youth, vigour, health luxuries, wealth of all kinds, numerous queens and a kingdom that spanned the entire earth. After the blessings from Narad Muni and Rishi Angira he had an experience which opened his bondages of the world.
He became dedicated to the service of the Lord and wanted only merger with Lord Vishnu. He lived at Mount Meru for a long time fulfilling numerous sankalps. Once he was crossing over from the sky when he saw Lord Shiv presiding over a gathering of evolved beings with his consort Ma Shakti in his lap embracing her. Chitraketu stopped by, laughed and commented that even normal humans indulge with their women in private and Lord Shiv being the Supreme Guru was doing so in a gathering. Lord Shiv was sthir and did not react but Ma Shakti seeing such disrespect cursed Chitraketu to be an asur, as one who is a bhakt of Lord and having his gaze fixed, can’t have such viewpoints. For such a person nothing else should exist. The fact that he equated Lord Shiv and Ma Shakti to ordinary men and women evidenced adulteration in his thoughts and focus, for else he would have had the darshan of the Ultimate in their form.
One who is sthir on the path of Divinity has only one desire, one thought, and that is, the final merger, the path of course is shown by the Guru. When a man and woman are seen embracing each other, the interpretation of the embrace reflect s the state of mind of the seer. Anybody who is completely tuned into the physical world and physical pleasures would see the embrace as a sexual embrace (nothing wrong with sexual embrace), but he would interpret it as a sinful act because he pretends to be what he is not.
A person who is focussed on the Divine sees this as a merger of Shiv and Shakti and is concerned only about his journey and equates the act with the Divine act as he is all the time thinking of the Divine only. In short, the interpretation of any act is a direct indicator of your state of mind.
Chitraketu felt sorry for his behaviour and apologised for his act. He not even once requested Ma Shakti to pardon him from the curse and was thankful to her for correcting him and sung praises of Lord Shiv and Ma Shakti.
Ma Shakti and all the Maharishis at the gathering were astonished that this man did not even once request her to pardon him from the curse and quietly left submitting his apology. They asked Lord Shiv for the reason. Lord Shiv replied that Chitraketu’s only desire is for the Lord and he does not want anything else. This incident had made him firm in his intent and to such people nothing affects, be it curses or boons and his comment was due to an imperfection in him and that led to dissolving of that imperfection. For this very reason Chitraketu did not insist on being pardoned from the curse..
Chiraketu became Vritrasura, a dreaded asur in his next birth, but remembered his Lord and knew he was there to fulfil the log of his karma and firmly believed that he would meet an apt fate in the end.
In the war between devtas and asurs, Lord Indra killed Vritrasura. A light then came out from the body of Vritrasura and merged with the Supreme Lord in the witness of all the devtas and other evolved beings.
Author: Mohit Somani
