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tad ejati tan naijati
tad dūre tad v antike
tad antar asya sarvasya
tad u sarvasyāsya bāhyataḥ

SYNONYMS

tat—this Supreme Lord; ejati—walks; tat—He; na—not; ejati—walks; tat—He; dūre—far away; tat—He; u—also; antike—very near; tat—He; antah—within; asya—of this; sarvasya—of all; tat—He; u—also; sarvasya—of all; asya—of this;bāhyataḥ—external to.

TRANSLATION

The Supreme Lord walks and does not walk. He is far away, but He is very near as well. He is within everything, and yet He is outside of everything.

PURPORT

The Supreme Lord’s transcendental activities always seem paradoxical when viewed with mundane vision. But even the impossible becomes possible when executed by His inconceivable potencies. The apparent contradictions here are only artifacts of our limited materialistic system of representation and logic; they do not and cannot prove any contradictions in the inconceivable potencies of the Lord, who is all-perfect by nature.

“He walks, and He does not walk,” is a coded expression meant for those who know the transcendental pastimes of the Lord. It is a message from Srila Vyasadeva, the compiler of the Vedas, to remind them that in some pastimes He appears like an ordinary human being, walking from place to place; in others, He appears suddenly out of nowhere. Accordingly, we will narrate some of these pastimes later on.

We cannot accommodate the paradoxical nature of multidimensional spiritual reality with the limited tools of Aristotelian logic. If we do, we will see the Lord in terms of our limited conception of reality. This inevitably results in trying to reason about spiritual objects with material logic, leading to erroneous conclusions.

Most modern philosophers assume that the Lord’s impersonal feature of unlimited existence and pure consciousness is the Supreme, and reject His personal form and activities. But the Esoteric Teaching is built on the perfect conception of the Lord; therefore we accept the inconceivable and paradoxical nature of His potencies. We can understand that Supreme means that He is the Complete Whole: both personal and impersonal. Supreme Personality of Godhead means inconceivable omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience.

Many people of ordinary intelligence take it for granted that because we cannot see the Lord, He has no personal existence. But Sri Isopanisad reveals that He is both far away, beyond our vision and also very near, within our very hearts. The abode of the Lord in the Spiritual Sky, the Kingdom of Vaikuntha, is certainly beyond the material sky, and we cannot find the limit even of this material sky. If the material sky is so great, then how can we understand the spiritual sky, which is altogether beyond it?

The spiritual sky is far beyond the material universe. Kṛṣṇa says in Bhagavad-gita,

“That supreme abode of Mine is not illumined by the sun or moon, nor by fire or electricity. Those who reach it never return to this material world.” [Bhagavad-gita 15.6]

Nevertheless, He can appear before us within a moment. He can run—or fly—faster than the mind or wind, so swiftly that no one can surpass Him. Wherever you go, there He is.

Yet we have been conditioned by modern so-called education to neglect Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead when He comes before us. We are taught to call His existence ‘mythological’ or ‘primitive superstition,’ and spiritual experiences are ‘all in your mind.’ The Lord condemns this ignorance in Bhagavad-gita, where He says that

“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.” [Bhagavad-gita 9.11]

Kṛṣṇa is not an ordinary being, or even an ordinary spiritual being. Nor does He appear in this world in a mortal material body. His form is always spiritual, eternal and all-powerful, even as an infant in the lap of His mother. But He plays like that just to enjoy intimate loving relationships with His pure devotees.

The same so-called experts who assume that God is impersonal also contend that when the Lord descends to this world, it must be in a material body like an ordinary living being. They want to place Him on an equal level with themselves, refusing to acknowledge the inconceivable power of the Lord.

They do not realize that because God is the complete whole, with inconceivable and inexhaustible potencies, He can accept our service at any place or time or through any medium. Because He is completely transcendental, He can convert His different potencies according to His own will. In other words, one of His transcendental senses or potencies can perform the actions of another. Therefore He can eat by seeing, or appear in the form of a temple Deity. Nothing is impossible for Him, and there are no barriers to His will.

Those whose minds are insufficiently agile cannot accommodate such transcendental concepts. They cannot understand that the Lord can incarnate Himself or that the Complete Whole can appear inside His creation. They falsely reason that if He does incarnate, He must appear in a material form.

These false conclusions are nullified as soon as we the understand the Lord’s inconceivable potencies. He can be inside and outside, here and there and everywhere at the same time, with full consciousness, knowledge and potency.

Once we understand this, then we can understand that it is quite possible for the Lord to convert His material energy into spiritual energy. Since all energies are His, they can be utilized according to His will. For example, the Lord can appear in the worshiper’s mind, in a mantra containing his Holy Name, or in the form of the arca-vigraha, a Deity apparently made of clay, stone or wood.

These sacred deity forms, although sculpted from material ingredients, are not idols because they are representations of the transcendental form of the Lord. His name, form, abode, pastimes, qualities, associates, potencies, etc. are always transcendental, even when they appear in matter. Yes, they are symbols, but because they are symbols of a transcendental reality, they are qualitatively equivalent to the realities they represent. We can recognize the Supreme Lord in His Deity form or in the vibration of His Holy Names when our natural spiritual intelligence is cleansed from the covering of material existence by association with, and hearing from, the great souls.

Devotees who want to see the Lord by their material eyes are benedicted by the Lord when He appears in His beautiful Deity form. Although these devotees, are in the lowest stage of devotional service, they are not worshiping an idol. They are really worshiping the Supreme Lord, who after being invited by the congregation, has agreed to appear before them to accept their service. The arca-vigraha or Deity form is carefully crafted by long lines of devotee artists according to the detailed instructions of the scriptures. The Deity expansions of the Lord are eternally existent with all paraphernalia.

In the Bhagavad-gita the Lord says,

ye yathā māṁ prapadyante
tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham
mama vartmānuvartante
manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ

“As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O son of Prtha.” [Bhagavad-gita 4.11]

The Lord reserves the right not to reveal Himself to anyone and everyone, but He reveals Himself to souls who surrender unto Him with love. Thus He is always close by for the surrendered soul, whereas for the rebellious and demonic He is very far away and unapproachable.

The impersonalists like to think that the terms nirguna (without qualities, referring to Brahman) and saguna (with qualities, referring to the Supreme Personality of Godhead) are synonymous with spiritual and material, respectively. But saguna does not imply that when the Lord manifests a perceptible form with spiritual qualities that it must be a material form subject to the laws of material nature. His form is always manifested by His internal potency, and is spiritual, eternal and fully qualified with all the potencies of the Supreme Godhead.

There is no difference between the material and spiritual energies for Him, because He emanates both. He is never under the influence of His energies at any time; rather, He is the controller of all energies. We conditioned souls are under the influence of the material energy, but He controls His material energy, therefore He can use it for any purposes whatever without being influenced by its qualities.

In this sense He is nirguna, or without qualities. His energies inherit their qualities from Him, but He does not inherit their qualities. Nor does the Lord ever become formless. His impersonal aspect, the Brahman effulgence, is the spiritual radiance, expanding like the rays of the sun from His beautiful transcendental form.

The atheist king Hiranyaksipu asked his devotee son Prahlada Maharaja, “Where is your God?” Prahlada innocently replied that God resides everywhere. Then the father challenged Prahlada whether his God was within the pillars of his palace. When the boy said yes, Hiranyakasipu angrily shattered a pillar with his sword, and the Lord instantly appeared as Nrsimhadeva, the half-man, half-lion incarnation, killing the atheist king and saving His devotee Prahlada.

In one sense, the Lord is within everything. Through His inconceivable powers, He can appear anywhere to protect His pure devotee. Lord Nrsimhadeva appeared from within the pillar by the desire of His devotee Prahlada. He creates everything by His different energies, and He can appear anywhere in His creation at any time. An atheist cannot make the Lord appear, but He can and will appear anywhere and everywhere to show mercy to His devotee.

Bhagavad-gita says,

paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ
vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām
dharma-saṁsthāpanārthāya
sambhavāmi yuge yuge

“I appear in My original form in millennium after millennium to deliver the pious, to annihilate the miscreants, and to reestablish the principles of religion.” [Bhagavad-gita 4.8]

The Lord appears in order to protect His devotees and vanquish the atheists. Of course, He can vanquish the atheists with His potent energies and agents, but He descends as an incarnation because it pleases Him to bless His devotees personally.

In the Brahma-samhita it is said:

“He is an undifferentiated entity, as there is no distinction between potency and the possessor thereof. In His work of creation of millions of worlds, His potency remains inseparable from Him. All the universes exist in Him, yet simultaneously He is present in His fullness in every one of the atoms scattered throughout the universe. Such is the primeval Lord whom I adore.” [Brahma-samhita 5.35]

Govinda, the primeval Lord, enters all the atoms of the universe by His plenary portion of Garbhodakasayi Visnu. He is outside everything in His virat form of Maha-Visnu, and He is within everything as Antaryami or the indwelling Supersoul. He witnesses everything, and awards us the results of our actions according to the laws of karma. We may forget the activities we performed in previous lives, but the Lord witnesses our actions and remembers everything. As long as we persist in trying to work for material enjoyment instead of serving Him alone, the results of our actions manifest by His will, and we have to undergo the reactions.

Ultimately there is nothing but God, inside and out. Everything we can experience is a manifestation of His different energies. His energies emanate from Him, like the heat and light emanating from a fire. He can do anything with any of His energies, and in this way there is a oneness among their diversity. His aspect of oneness, however, is not very prominent in the spiritual world, where the Lord enjoys all the pleasures of life unlimitedly in His personal transcendental form among His pure devotees.