The Supreme Destination
Just as the Lord has a transcendental form, He has also transcendental activities. When we become situated in the transcendental platform, with pure love, we can join these transcendental pastimes.
« The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad: An in-depth study
The Supreme Destination
One who follows the path of truth attains the Supreme destination. What is this Supreme destination? That's the Lord Himself, who is non-different from His abode.
The Lord is a person, and His form is fully transcendental, beyond the reach of the material senses or intelligence. We can first conceive this unlimited, perfect form through the descriptions of the scriptures, and later by direct perception using our spiritual senses, as our spiritual consciousness awakens.
Just as the Lord has a transcendental form, He has also transcendental activities. When we become situated in the transcendental platform, saturated with pure love, we can join these transcendental pastimes. Attaining this level of purity may appear inconceivable in our current state, but when the Lord is pleased by our service, we become endowed with all spiritual qualities. The Lord can take the soul out of material contamination and grant pure devotional service to anyone at any stage, but He does so only when one sincerely desires it. As long as this desire is not there, He respects the free will of the soul.
The Lord is the ultimate giver of all benedictions, therefore everyone should engage in devotional service, whether full of material desires, or completely free from them, desirous to be elevated to higher planets, attaining the impersonal brahmajyoti, or attaining the supreme goal of love of Godhead.
Text 3.1.7
bṛhac ca tad divyam acintya-rūpam
sūkṣmāc ca tat sūkṣmataram vibhāti
dūrāt sudūre tad ihāntike ca
paśyatsv ihaiva nihitam guhāyām
That Supreme Lord shines as great, divine, and inconceivable. He is subtler than the subtle, fully transcendental. He is very far, but at the same time very near. The self-realized transcendentalist can see Him inside the cave of the heart.
Commentary: The previous verse described that the ones who follow the path of truth, the path of devotional service, attain the Supreme destination. This verse describes the nature of this Supreme destination as the Lord Himself.
The verse clearly indicates that the Lord has a personal form (acintya-rūpam), although this form is transcendental, and thus not understandable by material intelligence. We can first conceive the transcendental form of the Lord from the descriptions of the scripture and later by direct realization, as our spiritual consciousness awakens.
Mayavadis accept the idea that Brahman has no material form and that he can't be conceived by using the mind or intellect. However, because of their dogma of Brahman being formless, they fail to understand that the Lord has a spiritual form that is fully transcendental and inconceivable, subtler than any material element or manifestation. In his commentary on this verse, Śaṅkarācārya emphasizes the other words of the verse, mentioning that Brahman is self-luminous and inconceivable to the senses, unthinkable, subletter than the subtlest, unapproachable to the ignorant, etc. but avoids the obvious reference to a personal form given in the verse. Just as in other passages, he gives an interpretation that is not incorrect but that hides the real meaning of the verse. His followers then further interpret his commentary, concluding that Brahman is formless, qualities, etc., and assumes a form only under the influence of illusion, and thus further contradict the verse, which mentions "acintya-rūpam" (the Lord has an inconceivable, spiritual form), and not maya-rupan (an illusory form, made of maya). This is exposed on Bg 9.11, where the Lord mentions:
avajānanti mām mūḍhā, mānuṣīm tanum āśritam
param bhāvam ajānanto, mama bhūta-maheśvaram
"Fools deride Me when I descend in the human form. They do not know My transcendental nature as the Supreme Lord of all that be."
In this verse, the Lord directly defines his form as transcendental (param bhāvam) and defines the attempt to qualify His form as material, manifested from the material modes as ajānantaḥ, the fruit of lack of spiritual knowledge. He then further emphasizes this point by referring to the persons who try to do so as "mūḍhāḥ", foolish men.
Śaṅkarācārya is not to blame because he just fulfilled his mission of explaining Vedic philosophy in a way that was attractive to the people of the time, rescuing them from atheism. His followers, however, failed to understand the real purpose of his teachings, becoming instead Mayavadis, the most blasphemous philosophy.
The Mayavada interpretation is further contradicted in the verse by the words "dūrāt sudūre" (very far, but at the same time very near) and "paśyatsv ihaiva nihitam guhāyām" (He can be seen inside the heart by the self-realized). The Lord is present in His eternal abode, beyond the coverings of the universe and the causal ocean, but at the same time He is present inside the heart, and can be directly seen by the self-realized transcendentalist. In this way, the verse makes clear that the Lord has a form (rūpam), He is present in His eternal abode (su-dūre) and at the same time inside the heart (antike). Not only that, but He can be seen by the self-realized transcendentalist.
Srila Prabhupada further explains these concepts in his commentary on verse five of Sri Isopanisad:
"Here is a description of some of the Supreme Lord's transcendental activities, executed by His inconceivable potencies. The contradictions given here prove the inconceivable potencies of the Lord. "He walks, and He does not walk." Ordinarily, if someone can walk, it is illogical to say he cannot walk. But in reference to God, such a contradiction simply serves to indicate His inconceivable power. With our limited fund of knowledge we cannot accommodate such contradictions, and therefore we conceive of the Lord in terms of our limited powers of understanding. For example, the impersonalist philosophers of the Māyāvāda school accept only the Lord's impersonal activities and reject His personal feature. But the members of the Bhāgavata school, adopting the perfect conception of the Lord, accept His inconceivable potencies and thus understand that He is both personal and impersonal. The bhāgavatas know that without inconceivable potencies there can be no meaning to the words "Supreme Lord."
We should not take it for granted that because we cannot see God with our eyes the Lord has no personal existence. Śrī Īśopaniṣad refutes this argument by declaring that the Lord is far away but very near also. The abode of the Lord is beyond the material sky, and we have no means to measure even this material sky. If the material sky extends so far, then what to speak of the spiritual sky, which is altogether beyond it? That the spiritual sky is situated far, far away from the material universe is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā (15.6). But despite the Lord's being so far away, He can at once, within less than a second, descend before us with a speed swifter than that of the mind or wind. He can also run so swiftly that no one can surpass Him. This has already been described in the previous verse."
Although the Lord's form is inconceivable (acintya), still He can be seen and served even by the neophyte in the form of the deity. This is just another display of His inconceivable spiritual potency. Although His form is transcendental, He can also appear in a form made of material elements to accept the service of His devotees who are living in the material world. This is possible because the so-called material elements are made from his spiritual energy (daivī hy eṣā guṇa-mayī). They appear to be material because, under the influence of illusion, the conditioned souls see them as objects of sense enjoyment. The Lord, however, can easily convert the material into spiritual, just like an electrician can produce both heat and cold out of the same electrical current.
Prabhupada comments on this point in the same purport:
"In our present state of imperfect material existence, we cannot see the Supreme Lord due to imperfect vision. Yet those devotees who want to see Him by means of material vision are favored by the Lord, who appears in a so-called material form to accept His devotees' service. One should not think that such devotees, who are in the lowest stage of devotional service, are worshiping an idol. They are factually worshiping the Lord, who has agreed to appear before them in an approachable way. Nor is the arcā form fashioned according to the whims of the worshiper. This form is eternally existent with all paraphernalia. This can be actually felt by a sincere devotee, but not by an atheist. In the Bhagavad-gītā (4.11) the Lord says that how He treats His devotee depends on the devotee's degree of surrender. The Lord reserves the right not to reveal Himself to anyone and everyone but to show Himself only to those souls who surrender unto Him. Thus for the surrendered soul He is always within reach, whereas for the unsurrendered soul He is far, far away and cannot be approached."
Text 3.1.8
na cakṣuṣā gṛhyate nāpi vācā
nānyair devais tapasā karmaṇā vā
jñāna-prasādena viśuddha-sattvas
tatas tu tam paśyate niṣkalam dhyāyamānaḥ
He can't be understood by the eyes, the speech, or by any other of the material senses. He can't be attained by austerity or pious actions. He can be seen only by the grace of transcendental knowledge, attained when one becomes completely free from the influence of passion and ignorance. Such a pure soul can see the Lord’s indivisible form inside his own heart by fixed meditation.
Commentary: The word "devaiḥ" in the verse refers to the senses, or more specifically the predominating deities of the senses, that allow us to see, hear, taste, etc. It is due to the help of these demigods that we can experience this world. However, they can't help us to understand the Lord, who is transcendental. The Lord can't be seen with the material eyes (na cakṣuṣā gṛhyate), or by any other of the material senses controlled by the different demigods (na anyaiḥ devaiḥ). The verse also mentions "na api vācā" (He can't be obtained by words).
Mayavadis hold the opinion that the Lord is inexpressible by words. This passage may appear to support it at first, but this is a topic explained in detail in the Vedanta-sutra, where Vyasadeva concludes: īkṣater nāśabdam. Brahman is not inexpressible in words, because it is seen He is vividly described in the scriptures.
When passages from the scriptures say that Brahman can't be described in words, the meaning is simply that the Lord can't be completely described, being unlimited. It's said that Lord Ananta is trying to describe the glories of the Lord for an unlimited span of time, using all of his unlimited mouths, yet because the glories of the Lord are unlimited, He never finishes. Words can describe the glories of the Lord only so far, but this doesn't mean they can't describe the Lord at all.
One example is that it is sometimes said that no one can see Mount Meru. This doesn't mean that no one sees the mountain (it's visible to most of the inhabitants of Jambūdvīpa, being situated right in the middle of the island) but no one can see the entire mountain at a time. Each sees just a part of it, according to his location, and part of the mountain is under the ground and thus not visible at all.
Without accepting the understanding that Brahman is not completely expressible by words or understandable by the mind, we can't properly understand scriptural statements such as "yato vaco nivartate" (words cannot describe Brahman), "aprapya manasa saha" (the mind cannot understand Brahman), and "yad vacanabhyuditam" (no one has the power to describe Brahman with words). These statements explain that Brahman cannot be completely described in words, but still, words can describe the Lord to a certain extent.
Because the Lord is absolute, His name, form, pastimes, etc. are all in the absolute plane. Therefore, words used to describe the Lord also become spiritualized and cease thus to be just ordinary material words, becoming fit to describe the Absolute Truth. All verses from the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad Bhagavatam are thus considered to be spiritual, as good as Vedic mantras. Through these words, one may understand the Lord as far as his level of realization allows. Different persons may get different levels of understanding from hearing the same verses and it is rare to find someone who completely knows the Lord in truth, as indicated in the Bhagavad-gita: "Out of many thousands among men, one may endeavor for perfection, and of those who have achieved perfection, hardly one knows Me in truth." (Bg 7.3). This is however not a defect in the scriptures, but the fruit of our own limitations.
The idea that Brahman can to some extent be described with words also does not contradict the fact that Brahman reveals Himself by His own wish. The Vedas are the incarnation of the Lord, and therefore non-different from Him. The Lord can thus reveal Himself to a sincere soul through the words of the scriptures.
To understand the Lord through the words of the scriptures, however, a certain qualification is necessary. One has to be situated in viśuddha-sattva, pure goodness, the purified state beyond the contamination of passion and ignorance. As long as we are under the influence of the lower modes, this influence covers our understanding, and as a result, we can't fully understand spiritual knowledge. Just as a person using glasses with red or blue lenses sees everything blue or red, one covered by the influence of rajas and tamas will see duality and contradictions in the words of the scriptures. To ascend to the platform of viśuddha-sattva, in turn, one has to be engaged in devotional service (even processes such as jñana and astanga-yoga are only effective when combined with bhakti), therefore devotional service is the only process that allows us to understand the scriptures and attain the Lord.
Text 3.1.9
eṣo ’ṇur ātmā cetasā veditavyo
yasmin prāṇaḥ pañcadhā samviveśa
prāṇaiś cittam sarvam otam prajānām
yasmin viśuddhe vibhavaty eṣa ātmā
The Lord is difficult to understand, but He can be realized by purified consciousness. The five vital airs take shelter in Him, as well as the mind and senses of all beings. When the Lord is pleased, the jiva becomes endowed with all spiritual qualities.
Commentary: Both Madhvācārya and Ranga Ramanuja interpret the word "ātmā" in this verse as the Supreme Lord. Following this interpretation, the Lord should be perceived by purified consciousness. The vital airs take shelter of Him, as well as the senses and the mind of all living beings. The Lord lives together with the soul inside the body and He becomes satisfied when the soul awakens to his original spiritual nature.
When the word ātmā is taken as meaning the Supreme Lord, the word aṇuḥ (subtle, minute) is used in the sense of the yogi meditating in the Lord in a small form inside his heart. The Lord can be simultaneously very big and very small. As Maha-Vishnu, He is so big that complete universes pass through the pores of his body, and as Paramatma, He can be so small that He enters even inside the atom. As Prabhupada mentions, to be very big is just partial perfection. To be perfect one should be able to also become very small. That's the case of the Lord. Another meaning of aṇuḥ is that the Lord is very subtle, being fully transcendental, as already defined in the previous verses.
The word "cittam" means consciousness, or mind, or consciousness perceived through the mind. In the third canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, Lord Kapila explains that the material consciousness of all beings is created by Maha-Vishnu at the beginning of the creation as a reflection of the original, spiritual consciousness of the soul. This original consciousness is almost pure, but it becomes contaminated by the three modes when expressed through the false ego, mind, and intelligence. Materialistic people think they are the body, but even when we hear we are not the body but the soul, we tend to think we are the consciousness. However, the consciousness we have now is still not "us", it is just the reflection of the original consciousness expressed through the contamination of the false ego, mind, and intelligence. It is still part of our material identity, just like the body. As souls, we are different from it, just like we are different from the gross body.
The real consciousness of the soul is Krsna Consciousness, the natural propensity to love and serve Krsna. This original, eternal, and intrinsical consciousness, can be perceived through the mind when it becomes sufficiently purified by the practice of hearing, chanting, remembering, etc. By meditating in the names, form, pastimes, etc. of the Lord, the mind becomes spiritualized, and through this spiritualized mind we can get in contact with our original spiritual consciousness, piercing through the covering of the false ego.
As Prabhupada mentions in his purport so SB 4.22.31:
"Our original consciousness is Kṛṣṇa consciousness because we are part and parcel of Kṛṣṇa. When this consciousness is misguided and one is put into the material atmosphere, which pollutes the original consciousness, one thinks that he is a product of the material elements. Thus one loses his real remembrance of his position as part and parcel of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, just as a man who sleeps forgets himself. In this way, when the activities of proper consciousness are checked, all the activities of the lost soul are performed on a false basis."
The Lord is eager to help us in this process but due to His respect for the free will of the soul, He helps only according to our desire. If we are sincere, however, He gives us all facilities. Being the eternal well-wisher of the soul, the Lord is very pleased when His eternal friend, the jiva, finally decides to return to Him, and He helps the soul to regain his original spiritual consciousness and become endowed with all auspicious spiritual qualities.
Srila Prabhupada offers an alternative interpretation of this verse in his purport to Bg 2.17, interpreting the word "ātmā" as referring to the individual soul. This reveals that, apart from describing the Lord, the verse also describes the characteristics of the soul, who lives with the Lord inside the heart. Both meanings are conveyed simultaneously in the words:
"In the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad (3.1.9) the measurement of the atomic spirit soul is further explained:
eṣo ’ṇur ātmā cetasā veditavyo
yasmin prāṇaḥ pañcadhā samviveśa
prāṇaiś cittam sarvam otam prajānām
yasmin viśuddhe vibhavaty eṣa ātmā
"The soul is atomic in size and can be perceived by perfect intelligence. This atomic soul is floating in the five kinds of air (prāṇa, apāna, vyāna, samāna and udāna), is situated within the heart, and spreads its influence all over the body of the embodied living entities. When the soul is purified from the contamination of the five kinds of material air, its spiritual influence is exhibited."
The verses of the Bhagavad-gita, and verses of the scriptures in general, have unlimited meaning. The reason is that they describe different aspects of the unlimited Lord. All the verses of the scriptures are connected with Krsna and describe some of His transcendental aspects or attributes. Because each aspect of Krsna is unlimited, each verse contains unlimited meaning. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura once lectured for a whole month on a single verse of the Srimad Bhagavatam and famously declared that each of the verses could be similarly explained.
One example of this is that Brahma received only four verses from the Lord (the catur-sloki Bhagavatam) and to explain these four verses, the whole Srimad Bhagavatam was composed. On our planet, the Bhagavatam was revealed by Srila Vyasadeva with 18,000 verses, but on the celestial planets the Bhagavatam is much more extensive, and in other universes even more.
Different acaryas may thus give different meanings to the verses, or sometimes the same author may interpret the same verse in different ways in different contexts. These are not contradictions but just the presentation of different meanings present in the verse. However, to be able to perfectly reconcile the different meanings, one has to be in viśuddha-sattva, as already defined in the previous verse, otherwise one will see contradictions everywhere. We can also only understand if we have firm faith in the conclusions of the scriptures received from the spiritual master.
Text 3.1.10
yam yam lokam manasā samvibhāti
viśuddha-sattvaḥ kāmayate yāmś ca kāmān
tam tam lokam jayate tāmś ca kāmāms
tasmād ātma-jñam hy arcayed bhūti-kāmaḥ
A purified person attains whatever planet he desires to attain, and any attractive object he desires. Therefore, let one who desires prosperity worship the Supreme Lord, the knower of all.
Commentary: The word ātma-jñam is normally translated as "the knower of the self", in the sense of a self-realized soul, but in this context, it describes the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the knower of all (as indicated by Ranga Ramanuja), who should be worshiped by everyone, both the ones who have no material desires and the ones who are full of material desires. Srimad Bhagavatam 2.3.10 confirms this point:
akāmaḥ sarva-kāmo vā, mokṣa-kāma udāra-dhīḥ
tīvreṇa bhakti-yogena, yajeta puruṣam param
"A person who has broader intelligence, whether he be full of all material desire, without any material desire, or desiring liberation, must by all means worship the supreme whole, the Personality of Godhead."
Whatever one is full of material desires, or completely free from them, whatever one desires to be elevated to higher planets, to the impersonal brahmajyoti, or attain the supreme goal of love of Godhead, he should engage in the devotional service of the Lord, since the Lord is the ultimate giver of all benedictions. Even when one worships demigods, any blessing they may give can be granted only with the permission of the Lord. Since in any case, all blessings come from the Lord, one who is intelligent will worship only the Lord and no one else, regardless of what his desires are. The Lord can grant any blessing very easily, but the ones who are truly intelligent will not ask for anything apart from pure devotional service to Him, understanding that all material blessings are temporary in nature.
Srila Prabhupada's purport in this verse is spotless:
"The Supreme Personality of Godhead Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is described in the Bhagavad-gītā as puruṣottama, or the Supreme Personality. It is He only who can award liberation to the impersonalists by absorbing such aspirants in the brahmajyoti, the bodily rays of the Lord. The brahmajyoti is not separate from the Lord, as the glowing sun ray is not independent of the sun disc. Therefore one who desires to merge into the supreme impersonal brahmajyoti must also worship the Lord by bhakti-yoga, as recommended here in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Bhakti-yoga is especially stressed here as the means of all perfection. In the previous chapters it has been stated that bhakti-yoga is the ultimate goal of both karma-yoga and jñāna-yoga, and in the same way in this chapter it is emphatically declared that bhakti-yoga is the ultimate goal of the different varieties of worship of the different demigods. Bhakti-yoga, thus being the supreme means of self-realization, is recommended here. Everyone must therefore seriously take up the methods of bhakti-yoga, even though one aspires for material enjoyment or liberation from material bondage.
Akāmaḥ is one who has no material desire. A living being, naturally being the part and parcel of the supreme whole puruṣam pūrṇam, has as his natural function to serve the Supreme Being, just as the parts and parcels of the body, or the limbs of the body, are naturally meant to serve the complete body. Desireless means, therefore, not to be inert like the stone, but to be conscious of one’s actual position and thus desire satisfaction only from the Supreme Lord. Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī has explained this desirelessness as bhajanīya-parama-puruṣa-sukha-mātra-sva-sukhatvam in his Sandarbha. This means that one should feel happy only by experiencing the happiness of the Supreme Lord. This intuition of the living being is sometimes manifested even during the conditioned stage of a living being in the material world, and such intuition is expressed in the manner of altruism, philanthropy, socialism, communism, etc., by the undeveloped minds of less intelligent persons. In the mundane field, such an outlook of doing good to others in the form of society, community, family, country or humanity is a partial manifestation of the same original feeling in which a pure living entity feels happiness by the happiness of the Supreme Lord. Such superb feelings were exhibited by the damsels of Vrajabhūmi for the happiness of the Lord. The gopīs loved the Lord without any return, and this is the perfect exhibition of the akāmaḥ spirit. Kāma spirit, or the desire for one’s own satisfaction, is fully exhibited in the material world, whereas the spirit of akāmaḥ is fully exhibited in the spiritual world.
Thoughts of becoming one with the Lord, or being merged in the brahmajyoti, can also be exhibitions of kāma spirit if they are desires for one’s own satisfaction to be free from material miseries. A pure devotee does not want liberation so that he may be relieved from the miseries of life. Even without so-called liberation, a pure devotee is an aspirant for the satisfaction of the Lord. Influenced by the kāma spirit, Arjuna declined to fight in the Kurukṣetra battlefield because he wanted to save his relatives for his own satisfaction. But being a pure devotee, he agreed to fight on the instruction of the Lord because he came to his senses and realized that satisfaction of the Lord at the cost of his own satisfaction was his prime duty. Thus he became akāma. That is the perfect stage of a perfect living being.
Udāra-dhīḥ means one who has a broader outlook. People with desires for material enjoyment worship small demigods, and such intelligence is condemned in the Bhagavad-gītā (7.20) as hṛta-jñāna, the intelligence of one who has lost his senses. One cannot obtain any result from demigods without getting sanction from the Supreme Lord. Therefore a person with a broader outlook can see that the ultimate authority is the Lord, even for material benefits. Under the circumstances, one with a broader outlook, even with the desire for material enjoyment or for liberation, should take to the worship of the Lord directly. And everyone, whether an akāma or sakāma or mokṣa-kāma, should worship the Lord with great expedience. This implies that bhakti-yoga may be perfectly administered without any mixture of karma and jñāna. As the unmixed sun ray is very forceful and is therefore called tīvra, similarly unmixed bhakti-yoga of hearing, chanting, etc., may be performed by one and all regardless of inner motive."