Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 10.14.23

ekas tvam ātmā purushah purānah

satyah svayam-jyotir ananta ādyah

nityo 'ksharo 'jasra-sukho nirañjanah

pūrnādvayo mukta upādhito 'mritah

SYNONYMS

ekah — one; tvam — You; ātmā — the Supreme Soul; purushah — the Supreme Person; purānah — the oldest; satyah — the Absolute Truth; svayam-jyotih — self-manifested; anantah — without end; ādyah — without beginning; nityah — eternal; aksharah — indestructible; ajasra-sukhah — whose happiness cannot be obstructed; nirañjanah — devoid of contamination; pūrna — complete; advayah — without a second; muktah — free; upādhitah — from all material designations; amritah — deathless.

TRANSLATION

You are the one Supreme Soul, the primeval Supreme Personality, the Absolute Truth — self-manifested, endless and beginningless. You are eternal and infallible, perfect and complete, without any rival and free from all material designations. Your happiness can never be obstructed, nor have You any connection with material contamination. Indeed, You are the indestructible nectar of immortality.

PURPORT

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī explains how the various terms of this verse demonstrate that the transcendental body of Lord Krishna is free from the characteristics of material bodies. All material bodies go through six phases: birth, growth, maturity, reproduction, decline and destruction. But Lord Krishna does not take material birth, since He is the original reality, a fact clearly indicated here by the word adya, "original." We take our material birth within a particular material atmosphere, in material bodies that are amalgamations of various material elements. Since Lord Krishna existed long before the creation of any material atmosphere or element, there is no question of material birth for His transcendental body.

Similarly, the word pūrna, meaning "full and complete," refutes the concept that Lord Krishna could grow, since He is ever-existing in fullness. When one's material body becomes mature, one can no longer enjoy as in youth; but the words ajasra-sukha, "enjoying unobstructed happiness," indicate that Lord Krishna's body never reaches so-called middle age, since it is always full of spiritual youthful bliss. The word akshara, "undiminishing," refutes the possibility that Lord Krishna's body grows old or declines, and the word amrita, "immortal" negates the possibility of death.

In other words, Lord Krishna's transcendental body is free from the transformations of material bodies. The Lord does, however, create innumerable worlds and expand Himself as innumerable living entities. But the Lord's so-called reproduction is completely spiritual and does not take place at a certain phase of bodily existence; rather, it constitutes the Lord's eternal proclivity to expand His spiritual bliss and glories.

As the Lord states in śruti, pūrvam evāham ihāsam: "I alone existed in the beginning." Therefore here the Lord is called purushah purānah, "the primeval enjoyer. "This original purusha expands Himself as the Supersoul and enters every living being. Still, He is ultimately the Absolute Truth, Krishna, as stated in the Gopāla-tāpanī Upanishad: yah sākshāt para-brahmeti govindam sac-cid-ānanda-vigraham vrindāvana-sura-bhūruha-talāsīnam. "The Absolute Truth Himself is Govinda, who has an eternal form of bliss and knowledge and who is sitting beneath the shady desire trees of Vrindāvana." This Absolute Truth is beyond material ignorance and beyond even ordinary spiritual knowledge, as stated in the same Gopāla-tāpanī śruti: vidyāvidyābhyām bhinnah. Thus, in many ways the supremacy of Lord Krishna has been established in the Vedic literature, and it is here confirmed by Lord Brahmā himself.

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