218 Teachings of Lord Chaitanya

with the same intentions—of getting advanced into the different planets of the
different types of demigods. And, lastly, there are the activities of reaching
the Absolute Truth in His impersonal Feature, to become One with Him.

The impersonal aspect of the Absolute Truth is not the last word. Above
the impersonal Feature is the Paramatma, or Supersoul, aspect, and above that
there is the Personal quality of the Absolute Truth. Srimad Bhagwatam gives
us information about the Absolute Truth in His Personal quality, beyond the
impersonal aspect. It is therefore greater than the topics of impersonal phi-
losophical speculations, and as such, Srimad Bhagwatam is given higher status
than the Jnanakanda division of the Vedas. It is higher than the Karmakanda
division as well as the Jnanakanda division and it is above the Upashanakanda
division, because Srimad Bhagwatam recommends the worship of the Supreme
Personality of Godhead, Sri Krishna, the Divine Son of Vasudeva. In the
Karmakanda of the Vedas there is competition for supremacy in reaching the
heavenly planets for better sense gratification. And the same competition is
there in the Jnanakanda or Upashanakandas. But Srimad Bhagwatam is above
all of them because It aims at the Supreme Truth, the Substance or the Root
of all categories. In other words, from Srimad Bhagwatam we can know the
Substance as well as the relativities in the true sense and prespective. The
Substance is the Absolute Truth, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and
all emanations from Him are relativities in different forms of energies. The
living entities are also related to all different types of His energies, and there-
fore nothing is different from the Substance. But, at the same time, the energies
are different from the Substance. This concept is not self-contradictory.
Srimad Bhagwatam explicitly deals with this simultaneously one and different
philosophy of the Vedanta Sutra, which begins with the Janmadyasya Sutra.

Such knowledge of the simultaneously one and different nature of the
Absolute Truth is really for the well-being of the knower. Otherwise the mental
speculators mislead the people wrongly establishing the energy as Absolute.
When it is understood, the truth becomes more pleasing than the imperfect
concept of monism or dualism. Development of this consciousness leads one
at once to the stage of freedom from the threefold miseries. The threefold
miseries are 1. in relation to the body and the mind, 2. in relation to our deal-
ings with other beings, and 3. in relation to the acts of providence, over which
we have no control.

Srimad Bhagwatam begins from the surrender of the living entity unto
the Absolute Person, with clear consciousness of the devotee’s oneness with the Ab-
solute, and, at the same time, his awareness of his eternal position of servitorship toward
