How to understand mixed reaction of God towards Bali?

Śrī PVNM Sharma asked: King Bali was suppressed to the lower world by God. At the same time, God became the watchman in the gate of the house of Bali. How to understand this mixed reaction of God?

Swāmi replied:- King Bali was the grandson of Prahlāda, who was the greatest devotee of God and was also trained by his grandfather in the line of devotion. At the same time, King Bali belongs to the dynasty of demons, who were highly selfish and very much egoistic and their influence on him also exists as the external atmosphere. Let us see both these contradicting aspects of Bali.

1) Devotion:- Even though the guru of Bali warned and even cursed Bali, who told Bali that the beggar for three feet of land was God Himself and further told that the God came as beggar to destroy king Bali, Bali replied that donating to God is the highest fortune and donated the land desired by the beggar-God. This shows the excellent devotion of Bali to God. As the result of this, God became the gatekeeper of king Bali in the lower world. The lower world to which king Bali was sent by God is called ‘Sutala’, which means good world. God also promised to king Bali that Bali will become the next Lord of heaven in future.

2) Ego:- Bali was a demon present in the atmosphere of demons and possessed lot of ego. His idea to perform the sacrifice was to throw Indra from heaven. God wanted to protect the angel Indra from the demon Bali. Hence, God suppressed Bali to the lower world.

Sutala is a good world, but, lower world. It is a mixed fruit, which is given by God for the mixed behaviour of Bali. The behaviour of any human being is also mixed because the human being stands between good angel and bad demon (Aniṣṭamiṣṭaṃ miśraṃ ca— Gītā). A human being is unable to get the fully good fruit from God due to this mixed behaviour of worldly fascination and divine fascination. The human being receives bad fruits for his sins and also good fruits for his devotion to God. If we take the case of Prahlāda, he transformed himself from demon to angel. Such transformation must be the goal of the devoted human being for his/her spiritual efforts.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★