Text 9] Answers by Citing the Lord’s Version 473

PURPORT

The troubles of penance accepted by Lord Brahma were certainly in the
line of devotional service (bhakti). Otherwise there was no chance of
Vaihuutha or svalokam, the Lord’s personal abodes, becoming visible to
Brahmaji. The personal abodes of the Lord, known as Vaikunthas, are
neither myth nor material, as conceived by the impersonalists. But such
realization of the transcendental abodes of the Lord is possible only
through devotional service, and thus the devotees enter into such abodes.
There is undoubtedly trouble in executing penance, but the trouble
accepled in executing bhakti-yoga is transcendental happiness from the
very beginning, whercas the trouble of penance in other processes of self-
realization (namely jid@nayoga, dhyanayoga, etc.) without any Vaikuntha
realization ends in trouble only and nothing more. There is no profit in
biting husks without grains. Similarly, there is no profit in executing
troublesome penances other than bhakti-yoga for self-realization.

Execution of bhakti-yuga is exactly like sitting on the lotus sprouted
out of the abdomen of the transcendental Personality of Godhead, for
Lord Brahma was seated there. Brahmaji was able to please the Lord, and
the Lord was also pleased to show Brahmaji His personal abode. Srila Jiva
Gosvam? narrates, in the comments of his Krama-sandarbha annotation
of Srimad-Bhagavatam, quotations from the Garga Upanisad, Vedic evi-
dence. It is said that Yajfiavalkya described this transcendental abode of
the Lord to Gargi, and it is said there that the abode of the Lord is
situated above the highest planet of the universe, namely Brahmaloka.
This abode of the Lord, although described in the revealed scriptures like
the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam, remains only a myth for
the less intelligent class of men with a poor fund of knowledge. Herein
the word svadrstavadbhi is very significant. One who has actually realized
his self realizes the transcendental form of one’s self. Impersonal realization
of self and the Supreme is not complete, because it is just an opposite
conception of material personalities. The Personality of Godhead and the
personalities of devotees of the Lord are all transcendental; they do not
have material bodies. The material body is overcast with five kinds of
miserable conditions, namely ignorance, material conception, attachment,
hatred and absorption. As long as one is overwhelmed with these five
kinds of material miseries, there is no question of entering into the
Vaikunthalokas. Impersonal conception of one’s self is just the negation of
material personality, far from the positive existence of personal form. These
personal forms of the transcendental abode will be explained in the follow-
