GITA - Glorification of Chapter Five

Lord Vishnu asked 

Lakshmi devi

 to listen carefully as He described the glories of the fifth chapter of the 

Bhagavad-gita.

  Once in a town named Puru-kutsapura there lived a brahmana called Pingala. Although well educated, he lacked interest in studying, and so when he reached youth he gave up his educational pursuits. Instead, he learned to play musical instruments and sing and dance. He became so skilled and famous that the king invited him to live in the palace. But his intimacy with the king made him proud, and he became fond of criticizing others; worse, he took up intoxication and adultery.

Despite his promiscuity, Pingala had a wife named Aruna, who had been born in a low-class family. She too was lusty and promiscuous, and when Pingala discovered this, Aruna murdered him.Thereafter she enjoyed life with many men, but she soon contracted a venereal disease. Her youthful body therefore became ugly, and before long she died. Both husband and wife fell into the deepest regions of hell and suffered tremendously. In their next lives, they both took birth as birds, Pingala a vulture and Aruna a parrot.

One day while the parrot searched for food, the vulture attacked her. The vulture could somehow remember his past life, and he understood that the parrot had been his wife. After a flurry of fighting, both birds fell down and drowned in a human skull filled with water. They were brought before 

Yamaraja, 

and because they vividly remembered their sins, they were frightened. But Yamaraja said, “You are now freed of all sinful reactions and may go to 

Vaikuntha.”

Dumbfounded, Pingala and Aruna asked Yamaraja how persons of their caliber had the right to enter Vaikuntha. Then Yamaraja told them about a pure devotee of Lord Vishnu who had daily recited the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita. When this devotee, who was completely free of lust, left his body, he went straight to Vaikuntha. Because of his recitations of Bhagavad-gita his body had also become pure. Therefore, when Pingala and Aruna, as birds, had touched his skull, both of them had achieved freedom from sinful reactions and attained the right to enter Vaikuntha.

After Pingala and Aruna heard the glories of the fifth chapter of the Bhagavad-gita they became overjoyed, and a flower airplane arrived to take them to the spiritual world.

source: ISKCON