290
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 2, Ch. 6]
in the mode of unalloyed goodness only. The conception of spiritual bliss ( brahmānanda ) is fully present in those planets. Each of them is eternal, indestructible and free from all kinds of inebrieties experienced in the material world. Each of them is self-illuminating and more powerfully dazzling than (if we can imagine) the total sunshine of millions of mundane suns. The inhabitants of those planets are liberated from birth, death, old age and diseases and have full knowledge of everything; they are all godly and free from all sorts of material hankerings. They have nothing to do there except to render transcendental loving service to the Supreme Lord Nārāyaṇa, who is the predominating Deity of such Vaikuṇṭha planets. Those liberated souls are engaged incessantly in singing songs mentioned in the  Śāma-veda  ( vedaiḥ sāṇga-pada-kramopaniṣadair gāyanti yam sāmagāḥ ). All of them are personifications of the five  Upaniṣads .  Tripād-vibhūti , or the seventy-five percent portion known as the internal potency of the Lord, is to be understood as the kingdom of God far beyond the material sky; and when we speak of  pāda-vibhūti , or the twenty-five percent portion comprising His external energy, we should understand that this refers to the sphere of the material world. It is also said in the  Padma Purāṇa  that the kingdom of  tripād-vibhūti  is transcendental, whereas the  pāda-vibhūti  is mundane.  Tripād-vibhūti  is eternal, whereas the  pāda-vibhūti  is transient. The Lord and His eternal servitors in the transcendental kingdom all have eternal forms which are auspicious, infallible, spiritual and eternally youthful. In other words, there is no birth, death, old age and disease. That eternal land is full of transcendental enjoyment and full of beauty and bliss. This very fact is also corroborated in this verse of  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam , and the transcendental nature is described as  amṛta ; and as it is described in the  Vedas: utāmṛtatvasyeśanaḥ . The Supreme Lord is the Lord of immortality, or in other words, the Lord is immortal, and because He is the Lord of immortality He can award immortality to His devotees. In the  Bhagavad-gītā  also (Bg. 8.16) the Lord assures that whoever may go to His abode of immortality shall never return to this mortal land of three-fold miseries. The Lord is not like the mundane lord. The mundane master or lord never enjoys equally along with his subordinates, nor is a mundane lord immortal, nor can he award immortality to his subordinate. The Supreme Lord, who is the leader of all living entities, can award all the qualities of His personality unto His devotees, including immortality and spiritual bliss. In the material world there is always anxiety or fearfulness in the heart of all living entities, but the Lord, being Himself the supreme fearless, also awards the same quality of fearlessness to His pure devotees. Mundane existence is itself a kind of fearfulness because in all mundane