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anejad ekaṁ manaso javīyo
nainad devā āpnuvan pūrvam arṣat
tad dhāvato 'nyān atyeti tiṣṭhat
tasminn apo mātariśvā dadhāti

SYNONYMS

anejat—fixed; ekam—one; manasaḥ—than the mind; javīyaḥ—more swift; na—not; enat—this Supreme Lord; devāḥ—the demigods like Indra, etc.; āpnuvan—can approach; pūrvam—in front; arṣat—moving quickly; tat—He; dhāvataḥ—those who are running; anyān—others; atyeti—surpasses; tiṣṭhat—remaining in one place; tasmin—in Him; apaḥ—rain; mātariśvā—the gods who control the wind and rain; dadhāti—supply.

TRANSLATION

“Although fixed in His abode, the Personality of Godhead is swifter than the mind and can overcome all others running. The powerful demigods cannot approach Him. Although in one place, He controls those who supply the air and rain. He surpasses all in excellence.”

PURPORT

The Absolute is intellectually unfathomable. Even the most intelligent philosopher is unable to realize the Supreme Lord as the Absolute Personality of Godhead through mental speculation. In the Brahma-samhita it is stated that even if a nondevotee philosopher travels through space at the speed of the wind or the mind for hundreds of millions of years, he will still find that the Absolute Truth is far, far away from him.

“I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, only the tip of the toe of whose lotus feet is approached by the yogis who aspire after the transcendental, and betake themselves to pranayama by drilling the respiration; or by the jnanis who try to find out the nondifferentiated Brahman by the process of elimination of the mundane (neti-neti), extending over thousands of millions of years.” [Brahma-samhita 5.34]

However, His devotees can know Him through His causeless mercy, and approach Him through devotional service. Lord Brahma further declares:

“I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, residing in His own realm Goloka with Radha, His eternal counterpart and the reflection of His own figure, the embodiment of the internal ecstatic potency hladini-sakti, the mistress of the sixty-four devotional arts, in the company of Her confidantes [sakhis], embodiments of the expansions of Her bodily form, permeated and vitalized by His ever-blissful spiritual rasa.” [Brahma-samhita 5.37]

The Supreme Absolute, the Personality of Godhead does not appear alone in empty space. He remains engaged in ecstatic, inspiring pastimes in His eternal transcendental abode Goloka, yet He can appear and act in every corner of His creation simultaneously by His inconceivable potencies. This is the meaning of the omnipotency of God.

The Visnu Purana compares His potencies to the heat and light emanated by a fire. A fire distributes light and heat to other objects across a distance; similarly, although the Absolute Personality of Godhead is fixed in His transcendental abode, His different energies are everywhere. Since His energies do nothing but His will, it is as though He is everywhere effortlessly and His will is performed automatically.

There are three principal categories of His innumerable and ever-expanding energies:

• the internal potency (the spiritual world)

• the marginal potency (the living entities)

• the external potency (the material world)

with innumerable subheadings below each.

The kingdom of God is situated in the spiritual sky, maintained by His internal potency. The living beings, including humans, are spiritual and conscious but belong to the Lord’s marginal potency. The demigods are like us, but are empowered servants of the Lord who administer natural phenomena such as air, light and rain in the material world, which is the creation of the Lord’s external potency.

Thus the innumerable expansions, energies and servants of the Lord are everywhere. Although the Lord and His energies are qualitatively identical, the energies are emanations, not the Supreme Truth. The Supreme Lord is personally located everywhere; He never loses His personal existence. The Supreme Lord is never limited by our limitations and misunderstanding; we can understand Him only as deeply as our capacity permits. A bird may fly very high in the sky, but the sky itself is unlimited and stretches far beyond the ability of the bird to approach it. Thus the Upanisad warns us that if even the empowered demigods cannot fully understand Him, how can we even think of approaching the Lord by our own limited potency?

na me viduḥ sura-gaṇāḥ
prabhavaṁ na maharṣayaḥ
aham ādir hi devānāṁ
maharṣīṇāṁ ca sarvaśaḥ

“Neither the hosts of demigods nor the great sages know My origin or opulences, for, in every respect, I am the source of the demigods and sages.” [Bhagavad-gita 10.2]

Not even the great rsis and suras can know Him. Why? They are bewildered because the product is always inferior to its source. Therefore, “By Him even the great sages and demigods are placed into illusion. Only because of Him do the material universes, temporarily manifested by the reactions of the three modes of nature, appear factual, although they are unreal.” [Srimad-Bhagavatam 1.1.1] If the rsis and suras cannot comprehend Him, then what to speak of the asuras? There is never any question of their understanding the ways of the Lord, due to their longstanding enmity with Him.

This mantra strongly implies that the Absolute Truth is ultimately the Supreme Person; He must be a person, or how could He defeat others in running and control the universal demigods from His kingdom far away in the spiritual world? The text also glorifies the excellence of His personal features.

The exalted qualities of the Supreme Whole are mirrored to a greater or lesser degree by His emanated potencies and created beings. The jiva souls are individual parts and parcels of the Lord, with all the primary potencies and symptoms of the Lord Himself. The principal difference is that the jivas have limited spheres of activity and influence compared to the Lord.

In other words, the Supreme Lord is the whole and we are His parts. Under the influence of material nature, foolish and ignorant living beings who are but parts and parcels of the Lord try to conjecture about the Lord’s transcendental position. This mantra of Sri Isopanisad warns us that trying to compete with the Lord in any way is an exercise in futility. The parts are never equal to the whole; therefore we cannot estimate the Lord’s complete potency. One should therefore hear the Esoteric Teaching from the Lord Himself, for He is the supreme source of the Vedas, and alone has full knowledge of all aspects of Transcendence. Although infinite Transcendence is inconceivable to our tiny brains, when the Lord Himself explains it, by His causeless transcendental mercy it is clearly understandable to everyone.

By the Lord’s will, each individual part and parcel of the Complete Whole is endowed with a particular set of talents and energies to render a particular service to Him. This is called sva-dharma, or the eternal nature of the living entity in relationship with the Supreme Lord. When the living entity forgets his designated service activities, he is considered to be in illusion or materially conditioned consciousness.

Thus Sri Isopanisad encourages us to understand His purpose and the part designated for us to play. This does not indicate an attitude of complete surrender to destiny; the living entities, as parts and parcels of the Lord, also display the quality of initiative as found in the Lord. We should engage our initiative according to intelligence received from the Lord through His Esoteric Teaching. Our spiritual intelligence is lost due to association with maya, the external energy. When we act in service with the understanding that everything is the Lord’s potency, we can revive our original spiritual consciousness.

The power to act is given by the Lord; therefore our actions should be according to the Lord’s intentions and directions. The Lord will certainly be pleased to reveal Himself to anyone with such a nice service attitude. Perfect self-realization requires knowing the Lord’s different forms and features, His expansions, His potencies, and how these potencies work automatically according to His will. All this is described in detail by the Lord Himself in the Bhagavad-gita, or Gitopanisad, the essence of all the Upanisads.

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