God Still - Reconciling the Inconceivable Opulences of the Lord
Śrīla Prabhupāda frequently emphasizes that the Supreme Personality of Godhead cannot be understood through mundane logic. In our material experience, everything is subject to limitation, exhaustion, and contradiction. However, the Vedic literatures use the concept of "still" to demonstrate the inconceivable opulence of the Absolute Truth. The Lord performs actions and possesses qualities that seem diametrically opposed to the conditioned mind, yet He still remains perfectly complete, eternally youthful, and completely independent.
The Complete Original Person
In the material world, if you subtract a portion from a whole, the original object is diminished. However, the spiritual arithmetic governing the Supreme Lord is entirely different. Śrīla Prabhupāda explains that the Lord can expand into infinite forms and emanate the entire cosmos, yet He still remains the complete, original person.
- As stated in the Brahma-samhita: I worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Govinda, who is the original person, nondual, infallible, and without beginning. Although He expands into unlimited forms, He is still the original.
- He is so complete that purnasya purnam adaya, from the complete, if you take the whole complete, still He is complete.
- From spiritual, you may draw as much as you can, but it is always full. That is the spiritual idea. So God is so full. He is paripurna, purna. So even God comes out of God, still, God is there. That is incarnation.
- God is great, but still God can become smaller than the smallest and at the same time He can become bigger than the biggest. That is God. Omnipotency.
All-Pervading Yet Localized
A common philosophical stumbling block is the idea that if God is everywhere, He cannot have a personal form or a specific location. Śrīla Prabhupāda refutes this material conception by showing that the Lord is simultaneously present in every atom while still residing in His supreme abode.
- Although He is all-pervading, still He is a person. According to our material perception, if something is all-pervading, then it has no personality, no localized aspect. But God is not like that.
- As confirmed in the Brahma-samhita, goloka eva nivasaty akhilatma-bhutah: "Although the Lord always stays in His abode, Goloka Vrndavana, He is still all-pervading."
- Demons cannot understand that God, by His multifarious potencies, can work so wonderfully that He can be present everywhere and still remain in His eternal abode, Goloka Vrndavana.
- One should not conclude that because He is spread all over He has lost His personal existence. To refute such arguments, the Lord says, I am everywhere, and everything is in Me, but still I am aloof.
Unborn Yet Appearing in this World
The Supreme Lord is eternal and His spiritual body never changes or degrades. Yet, to perform His pastimes and attract the conditioned souls, He appears to take birth within the material world. Śrīla Prabhupāda emphasizes that despite this appearance, He is still completely transcendental to the laws of material nature.
- The Vedas also confirm that the Supreme Personality of Godhead is unborn, yet He still appears to take His birth in multi-manifestations.
- This is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita: Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all living entities, by My spiritual potency I still appear in every millennium in My original transcendental form.
- The Vedic supplementary literatures also confirm that even though the Lord appears to be taking His birth, He is still without change of body.
- Although His body does not deteriorate like a material body, it still appears that Lord Krsna grows from childhood to boyhood and from boyhood to youth. But astonishingly enough He never ages beyond youth.
Aloof from the Cosmic Manifestation
Because the Lord is the ultimate source of the material creation, one might assume He is tangled up in its complexities. However, Śrīla Prabhupāda clarifies that while the universe is an emanation of His energy and rests upon Him, He still remains entirely detached as the supreme observer.
- By His will everything is being created, everything is being maintained, and everything is being annihilated. Still He is aloof from everything, as space is always aloof from the activities of the atmosphere.
- The Lord says, "Although they are situated on My inconceivable energy, still, as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, I am aloof from them." This is the inconceivable opulence of the Lord.
- He says that although everything is resting on Him, still He is aloof.
- The creation is nondifferent from the Lord, and still He is not in the creation. This is explained in the Bhagavad-gita.
Conclusion
A comprehensive understanding of the Absolute Truth requires one to transcend the limitations of worldly logic and accept the supreme potencies of the Personality of Godhead. Śrīla Prabhupāda masterfully utilizes the concept of "still" to harmonize the Lord's inconceivable attributes. He is the ultimate source of everything, yet when everything emanates from Him, He is still the complete whole. He permeates every atom of the material creation, but He still remains a localized person playing His flute in Goloka Vṛndāvana. He is eternally unborn and free from old age, yet He still appears as the child of Devakī and grows into a beautiful youth. Though the massive cosmic manifestation is conducted entirely by His will, He still remains perfectly peaceful and aloof. By understanding how the Supreme Lord effortlessly reconciles these profound contradictions, a sincere soul develops unflinching faith in His unlimited, majestic, and completely independent nature.
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Śrīla Prabhupāda lives within his instructions. This article is a summary of the profound truths found in the Vaniquotes category God Still. We invite you to visit this link to study the complete compilation and experience Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings in their direct, verbatim form.