Adi-lila, Chapter 4 267
TRANSLATION
That hladini energy gives Krsna pleasure and nourishes His devotees.
PURPORT

Srila Jiva Gosvami has elaborately discussed the A/adini potency in his Priti-
sandarbha. He says that the Vedas clearly state, ‘Only devotional service can lead
one to the Personality of Godhead. Only devotional service can help a devotee meet
the Supreme Lord face to face. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is attracted
by devotional service, and as such the ultimate supremacy of Vedic knowledge rests
in knowing the science of devotional service.”’

What is the particular attraction that makes the Supreme Lord enthusiastic to
accept devotional service, and what is the nature of such service? The Vedic scriptures
inform us that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the Absolute Truth, is self-
sufficient, and that mdyd, nescience, can never influence Him at all. As such, the
potency that overcomes the Supreme must be purely spiritual. Such a potency can-
not be anything of the material manifestation. The bliss enjoyed by the Supreme
Personality of Godhead cannot be of material composition like the impersonalist con-
ception of the bliss of Brahman. Devotional service is reciprocation between two,
and therefore it cannot be located simply within one’s self. Therefore the bliss of
self-realization, brahmdnanda, cannot be equated with devotional service.

The Supreme Personality of Godhead has three kinds of internal potency,
namely the A/ddini, or pleasure potency, sandhini, or existential potency, and
samvit, or cognitive potency. In the Visnu Purana (1.12.69) the Lord is addressed
as follows: ‘‘O Lord, You are the support of everything. The three attributes
hladini, sandhini and samvit exist in You as one spiritual energy. But the material
modes, which cause happiness, misery and mixtures of the two, do not exist in You,
for You have no material qualities.”

Hladini is the personal manifestation of the blissfulness of the Supreme Person-
ality of Godhead, by which He enjoys pleasure. Because the pleasure potency is
perpetually present in the Supreme Lord, the theory of the impersonalist that the
Lord appears in the material mode of goodness cannot be accepted. The impersonal-
ist conclusion is against the Vedic version that the Lord possesses a transcendental
pleasure potency. When the pleasure potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead
is exhibited by His grace in the person of a devotee, that manifestation is called love
of God. Love of God is another epithet of the pleasure potency of the Lord. There-
fore devotional service reciprocated between the Lord and His devotee is an exhibi-
tion of the transcendental pleasure potency of the Lord.

The potency of the Supreme Personality of Godhead that always enriches Him
with transcendental bliss is not material, but the Sankarites have accepted it as such
because they are ignorant of the identity of the Supreme Lord and His pleasure
potency. Those ignorant persons cannot understand the distinction between
impersonal spiritual bliss and the variegatedness of the spiritual pleasure potency.
The Alddini potency gives the Lord all transcendental pleasure, and the Lord
bestows such a potency upon His pure devotee.
