Text 26] Maharaja Prthu’s Going Back Home 1007

TRANSLATION

The wives of the demigods continued: Just see how this chaste lady,
Arci, by dint of her inconceivable pious activities, is still following her
husband upwards, as far as we can see.

PURPORT

Both Prthu Maharaja’s airplane and the airplane carrying Queen Arci
were passing out of the vision of the ladies of the higher planetary
systems. These ladies were simply astonished to see how Prthu Maharaja
and his wife achieved such an exalted position. Although they were the
wives of the denizens of the higher planetary system and Prthu Maharaja
was an inhabitant of an inferior planetary system (the Earth), the King,
along with his wife, passed beyond the realms of the demigods and went
upward to Vaikunthaloka. The word urdhvam (upwards) is significant
here, for the ladies speaking were from the higher planetary systems,
which include the moon, sun and Venus up to Brahmaloka, or the
highest planet. Beyond Brahmaloka is the spiritual sky, and in that
spiritual sky there are innumerable Vaikunthalokas. Thus the word
irdhvam indicates that the Vaikuntha planets are beyond or above these
material planets, and it was to these Vaikuntha planets that Prthu
Maharaja and his wife were going. This also indicates that when Prthu
Maharaja and his wife, Arci, abandoned their material bodies in the
material fire, they immediately developed their spiritual bodies and
entered into spiritual airplanes which could penetrate the material
elements and reach the spiritual sky. Since they were carried by two
separate airplanes, it may be concluded that even after being burnt in the
funeral pyre they remained separate individual persons. In other words,
they never lost their identity or became void, as imagined by the
impersonalists.

The ladies in the higher planetary systems were capable of seeing both
downwards and upwards. When they looked down they could see that
the body of Prthu Maharaja was being burnt and that his wife, Arci, was
entering into the fire, and when they looked upwards they could see how
they were being carried in two airplanes to the Vaikunthalokas. All of this
is possible simply by durvibhavyena karmana, inconceivable activity.
Prthu Maharaja was a pure devotee, and his wife, Queen Arci, simply
followed her husband. Thus they can both be considered pure devotees,
and thus they are capable of performing inconceivable activities. Such
activities are not possible for ordinary men. Indeed, ordinary men cannot
even take to the devotional service of the Lord, nor can ordinary women
