Text 2] Questions by the Sages 53

strive to establish a competitionless society with God in the center. The
contemporary socialist’s conception of a competitionless society is artificial
because in the socialist state there is competition for the post of dictator.
From the point of view of the Vedas or from the point of view of common
human activities, sense gratification is the basis of material life. There are
three paths mentioned in the Vedas. One involves fruitive activities to
gain promotion to better planets. Another involves worshiping different
demigods for promotion to the planets of the demigods, and another
involves realizing the Absolute Truth and His impersonal feature and
becoming one with Him.

The impersonal aspect of the Absolute Truth is not the highest. Above
the impersonal feature is the Paramatma feature, and above this there is
the personal feature of the Absolute Truth or Bhagavan. Srimad-Bhagavatam
gives information about the Absolute Truth in His personal feature. It is
higher than impersonalist literatures and higher than the jidna-kanda
division of the Vedas. It is even higher than the karma-kanda division, and
even higher than the upasana-kanda division because it recommends the
worship of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krsna. In the
karma-kadnda, there is competition to reach heavenly planets for better
sense gratification, and there is similar competition in the jidna-kanda and
the upasana-kénda. The Srimad-Bhagavatam is superior to all of these
because it aims at the Supreme Truth which is the substance or the root of
all categories. From Srimad-Bhagavatam one can come to know the sub-
stance as well as the categories. The substance is the Absolute Truth, the
Supreme Lord, and all emanations are relative forms of energy.

Nothing is apart from the substance, but at the same time the energies
are different from the substance. This conception is not contradictory.
Srimad-Bhagavatam explicitly promulgates this simultaneously one and
different philosophy of the Veddnta-siitra, which begins with the “fan-
mady asya” siitra.

This knowledge of the energy of the Lord being simultaneously one
and different from the Lord is an answer to the mental speculators’
attempt to establish the energy as the Absolute. When this knowledge is
factually understood, one sees the conceptions of monism and dualism to
be imperfect. Development of this transcendental consciousness grounded
in the conception of simultaneously one and different leads one immedi-
ately to the stage of freedom from the threefold miseries. The threefold
miseries are 1.) those miseries which arise from the mind and body, 2.)
those miseries inflicted by other living beings, and 3.) those miseries
arising from natural catastrophes over which one has no control. Srimad-
