Many stories related by Suka in the Bhagavata Purana carry the strong message about how the sense of I and Mine, the ahamkara that characterises every jivatma, is powerful and ties one to samsara, said Swami Paramasukananda in a discourse. Suka also shows that the only way to overcome this failing is to seek God’s feet. The case of Gajendra shows the consequences to be faced when one yields to ahamkara. In his previous birth he is a Pandya king named Indradyumna, who is a great devotee of the Lord. But when once Agastya visits him, he is engaged in worship and ignores the sage. This conduct provokes the sage’s anger who curses him to become an elephant immersed in the dullness of ignorance. The king is born as an elephant and lives in total oblivion of his past spiritual nature. As destiny would have it, he undergoes a trying period when a crocodile gets hold of his foot. He never imagines that he would have to struggle for a thousand years to free himself from the crocodile’s grip. He then is graced with the jnana of his past life and begins to seek God with fervent prayers. God appears on the Garuda and with His chakra cuts open the mouth of the crocodile to release the elephant. The crocodile is actually a Gandharva named Hu-Hu who is also freed by the Lord’s touch from the curse he has incurred from Sage Devala.
To get over ahamkara is the most difficult sadana for the spiritual aspirant. It is only natural that each one feels proud of one’s faculties and attainments. It requires atma jnana to know that one’s identity is not with these attributes of the body mind complex but with the soul which is undying and of the essence of sat-chit and ananda. This is the primordial ignorance which is the fate of every jivatma caught in the Lord’s Maya.