SRI BRAHMA-SAMHITA

Verse 32

angani yasya sakalendriya-vrttimanti
pasyanti panti kalayanti chiram jaganti
ananda-chinmaya-sad-ujjvala-vigrahasya
govindam adi purusam tam aham bhajami [32]

Translation: I worship that Primeval Lord Govinda whose form is all-ecstatic, all-conscious and all-truth, and thus, full of the most dazzling splendour; every part of that transcendental form possesses the functions of all His senses, as He eternally sees, maintains and regulates infinite universes, both spiritual and mundane.

Purport: Due to their paucity of a taste for spirituality, a grave doubt wells up in the minds of persons bound by mundane knowledge. Hearing the descriptions of Krishna’s pastimes (lila) they conjecture that the Krishna conception has been conjured up by the fertile brains of some scholarly scribes inspired by mundane experiences. To dispel such a venomous doubt, in this and the following three verses Brahma distinguishes between material and spiritual elements in a scientific manner, and he attempts to give an understanding of Krsna-lila as perceived in the undivided attention of pure consciousness (suddha-samadhi).

Brahma’s aim is to establish that the form of Krishna is the entity of eternity, cognizance and bliss, while all mundane phenomena are of the nature of the darkness of ignorance. Beyond this specific distinction between the two, the basic principle to be realized is that the transcendental is the most fundamental or original—as He is the Original Person, differentiation and variegatedness are ever-present in Him. Thereby, Krishna’s divine abode, divine form, divine Name, quality and pastimes are established as tangible reality.

Those pastimes are to be tasted only by a person who is endowed with pure theistic intellect and full freedom from any relationship with mundanity. The holy abode, the place of pastimes made of divine wish-yielding gems manifest by divine potency, and Krishna’s form—all are transcendental.

As the Maya potency is a shadow of the chit, or transcendental potency, similarly, the variegatedness fashioned by Maya is also a contemptible reflection, or shadow, of the variegatedness in the transcendental plane. It is for this reason that some semblance of the transcendental variegatedness may be apparent in the mundane world. Despite that semblance, there is a gulf of distinction between the two. The loathsomeness of the mundane is its flaw, but there is variegatedness in the transcendental reality devoid of such a blemish.

There is no mutual distinction between Krishna and His body. The materially conditioned soul and his body are separate elements; in the intrinsic transcendental form there is not estrangement of the body and the embodied, the limbs and the body, the nature and its possessor—these differences are to be found only in the materially conditioned soul. Although Krishna is the owner of His limbs, each of His limbs is also Krishna in full; all His transcendental faculties are present in each of His limbs. Therefore, He is the indivisible, complete transcendental truth.

The spirit soul, or jivatma, and Krishna are both spiritual and thus of the same category. Yet the difference between the two is that all the transcendental qualities are present in the individual soul in an atomic proportion and are present in Krishna infinitely. When the jiva attains to his divine form, those qualities become openly revealed in atomic form. By the grace of Krishna, when the power of the transcendental hladini, or ecstasy, potency makes its descent in the heart of the soul, he attains to a perfection resembling the infinite; nonetheless, Krishna retains certain unique qualities that make Him worshippable by all. Those four qualities are not manifest in the Lord of Vaikuntha or the purusavatara expansions; they are also absent in the gods headed by Girisa (Lord Siva), not to mention the jiva.

• For Reader's Appreciation
• Feelings of Appreciation
• Prologue
• Translator's Note
• Illumination
• Verse 1
• Verse 2
• Verse 3
• Verse 4
• Verse 5
• Verse 6
• Verse 7
• Verse 8
• Verse 9

• Verse 11
• Verse 12
• Verse 13
• Verse 14
• Verse 15
• Verse 16
• Verse 17
• Verse 18
• Verse 19

• Verse 20
• Verse 21
• Verse 22
• Verse 23
• Verse 24
• Verse 25
• Verse 26
• Verse 27
• Verse 28
• Verse 29

• Verse 30
• Verse 31
• Verse 32
• Verse 33
• Verse 34
• Verse 35
• Verse 36
• Verse 37
• Verse 38
• Verse 39

• Verse 40
• Verse 41
• Verse 42
• Verse 43
• Verse 44
• Verse 45
• Verse 46
• Verse 47
• Verse 48
• Verse 49

• Verse 50
• Verse 51
• Verse 52
• Verse 53
• Verse 54
• Verse 55
• Verse 56
• Verse 57
• Verse 58
• Verse 59

• Verse 60
• Verse 61
• Verse 62

• Verse Contents

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