SRI BRAHMA-SAMHITA

Verse 33

advaitam achyutam anadim anantarupam
adyam purana-purusam navayauvanan cha
vedesu durllabham adurllabham atmabhaktau
govindam adi purusam tam aham bhajami [33]

Translation: I adore that Primeval Lord Govinda, who is unapproachable by even the Vedas, yet attainable by the soul’s devotion; He is one without a second, the infallible, beginningless and endless; He is the beginning; and despite being the oldest personality He is the beautiful eternally adolescent male.

Purport: Advaita means the one without a second indivisible truth; although the effulgence of the infinite Brahman emanates from Him, and although He expands Himself in His portion of Paramatman, He is nonetheless indivisible. Achyuta means that although He expands Himself as myriads of avataras that are His plenary portions, and although infinite jivas emanate from Him as separated particles, He nonetheless remains as the supreme whole.

Despite manifesting His pastimes beginning with His birth, He is nonetheless anadi, beginningless. Despite withdrawing His manifest pastimes, He is ananta, endless. Despite being beginningless, He takes birth (adya) in His advent pastimes. And although He is in fact the eternal personality, He is nonetheless filled with eternally fresh youthfulness.

The underlying purport here is that although He possesses many types of contradictory qualities, they are all harmonised in every respect by His inconceivable potency. Such is the divine nature, or in other words, the clear distinction of the divine from the mundane.

His beautiful triple-curved feature, holding the flute, is forever imbued with pristine youthfulness—He is completely transcendental to the unwholesomeness of the limited time and space that is present in the mundane sphere. He is ever refulgent in His divine abode in the pure present tense devoid of past and future. The estrangement between an object and its qualities that is found in the fluctuating mundane plane is completely absent in the divine realm. Therefore, all the qualities that seem to be contradictory in the estimation of a conception crippled by mundane time and space are ever harmoniously and charmingly resplendent in the spiritual world.

How can the jiva experience such a sublime existence? The mundane perceptual faculty of the jiva is always contaminated by the imperfection of time and space, and so he is helpless to abandon his mundane conception. If the perceptual faculty does not approach transcendental realization, what faculty can ever approach it?

In reply, Brahma says that the divine realm is unapproachable by the Vedas; the basis of the Vedas is sound, and sound is a product of material nature. Thus, the Vedas cannot directly show us the supramundane Goloka. Only when the Vedas are infused with the divine potency can they somewhat indicate that realm. Still, every jiva can receive the revelation of Goloka when that same divine potency influences them with divine cognition (samvit) as a result of the concentrated essence of the potency of divine ecstasy (hladini-sakti-sara) (which is the awakening of the current of devotion in the soul).

The ecstatic current of devotion is unlimited; it is the substance of pure divine consciousness. Such perception is the heart of devotion: without asserting itself separately as any form of ‘knowledge,’ it is the direct symptom of exclusive devotion; and it is this that reveals the realm of Goloka.

• 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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