Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta Ādi 7.113

cid-ānanda — teńho, tāńra sthāna, parivāra

tāńre kahe — prākṛta-sattvera vikāra

SYNONYMS

cit-ānanda — spiritual bliss; teńho — He is personally; tāńra — His; sthāna — abode; parivāra — entourage; tāńre — unto Him; kahe — someone says; prākṛta — material; sattvera — goodness; vikāra — transformation.

TRANSLATION

"The Supreme Personality of Godhead is full of spiritual potencies. Therefore His body, name, fame and entourage are all spiritual. The Māyāvādī philosopher, due to ignorance, says that these are all merely transformations of the material mode of goodness.

PURPORT

In the Seventh Chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā the Supreme Personality of Godhead has classified His energies in two distinct divisions — namely, prākṛta and aprākṛta, or parā-prakṛti and aparā-prakṛti. In the Viṣṇu Purāṇa the same distinction is made. The Māyāvādī philosophers cannot understand these two prakṛtis, or natures — material and spiritual — but one who is actually intelligent can understand them. Considering the many varieties and activities in material nature, why should the Māyāvādī philosophers deny the spiritual varieties of the spiritual world? The Bhāgavatam (10.2.32) says:

ye 'nye 'ravindākṣa vimukta-māninas

tvayy asta-bhāvād aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ

The intelligence of those who think themselves liberated but have no information of the spiritual world is not yet clear. In this verse the term aviśuddha-buddhayaḥ refers to unclean intelligence. Due to unclean intelligence or a poor fund of knowledge, the Māyāvādī philosophers cannot understand the distinction between material and spiritual varieties; therefore they cannot even think of spiritual varieties because they take it for granted that all variety is material.

Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, therefore, explains in this verse that Kṛṣṇa — the Supreme Personality of Godhead, or the Absolute Truth — has a spiritual body that is distinct from material bodies, and thus His name, abode, entourage and qualities are all spiritual. The material mode of goodness has nothing to do with spiritual varieties. Māyāvādī philosophers, however, cannot clearly understand spiritual varieties; therefore they imagine a negation of the material world to be the spiritual world. The material qualities of goodness, passion and ignorance cannot act in the spiritual world, which is therefore called nirguṇa, as clearly indicated in the Bhagavad-gītā (trai-guṇya-viṣayā vedā nistrai-guṇyo bhavārjuna). The material world is a manifestation of the three modes of material nature, but one has to become free from these modes to come to the spiritual world, where their influence is completely absent. Now Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu will disassociate Lord Śiva from Māyāvāda philosophy in the following verse.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness