TEXT 33

advaitam acyutam anadim ananta-rupam
adyam purana-purusam nava-yauvanam ca
vedesu durlabham adurlabham atma-bhaktau
govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami

WORD FOR WORD

advaitam--without a second; acyutam--without decay; anadim--without a beginning; ananta-rupam--whose form is endless, or who possesses unlimited forms; adyam--the beginning; purana-purusam--the most ancient person; nava- yauvanam--a blooming youth; ca--also; vedesu--through the Vedas; durlabham--inaccessible; adurlabham--not difficult to obtain; atma-bhaktau--through pure devotion of the soul; govindam--Govinda; adi-purusam--the original person; tam--Him; aham--I; bhajami--worship.

TRANSLATION

I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, who is inaccessible to the Vedas, but obtainable by pure unalloyed devotion of the soul, who is without a second, who is not subject to decay, is without a beginning, whose form is endless, who is the beginning, and the eternal purusa; yet He is a person possessing the beauty of blooming youth.

PURPORT

Advaita means "indivisible truth who is knowledge absolute." Brahman, the infinite, emanates from Him as His effulgence and God-immanent (Paramatma) as His constituent; but nevertheless He remains one and indivisible. Acyuta means that though myriads of avataras emanate from Him as subjective portions and millions of jivas as separated spiritual particles, still He remains intact as the undivided whole of fullest perfection. Though He indulges in exhibiting the pastimes of births etc., still He is without a beginning. Though He disappears after the pastimes of His appearance, still He is eternal. Though without origin, yet He is with an origin in His pastime of appearance; and although eternal in essence, He is still a person in the full bloom of youth. The sum and substance of it is that though He possesses diverse and apparently mutually contradictory dualities, still they are in universal harmonious concordance by dint of His unthinkable potency. This is what is meant by cid-dharma (transcendental nature) as distinguished from the material. His graceful threefold-bending form with flute in hand, possesses eternal blooming youth and is above all unwholesomeness that is to be found in limited time and space. In the transcendental realm there is no past and future but only the unalloyed and immutable present time. In the transcendental sphere there is no distinction between the object and its qualities and no such identity as is found in the limited mundane region. Hence those qualities that seem to be apparently con- tradictory in the light of mundane conception limited by time and space, exist in agreeable and dainty concordance in the spiritual realm. How can the jiva realize such unprecedented existence? The limited intellectual function of the jiva is always contaminated by the influence of time and space and is, therefore, not in a position to shake off this limitedness. If the potency of cognitive function does not extend to the realization of the transcendental, what else can? In reply Brahma says that the transcendental Absolute is beyond the reach of the Vedas. The Vedas originate in sound and sound originates in the mundane ether. So the Vedas cannot present before us a direct view of the transcendental world (Goloka). It is only when the Vedas are imbued with the cit potency that they are enabled to deal with the transcendental. But Goloka reveals itself to every jiva-soul when he is under the innuence of the spiritual cognitive potency joined to the essence of ecstatic energy. The ecstatic function of devotion is boundless and is surcharged with unalloyed transcendental knowledge. That knowledge reveals goloka-tattva (the principle of the highest transcendental) in unison with devotion, without asserting itself separately but as a subsidiary to unalloyed devotion.