Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (Bhāgavata Purāṇa) » Canto 2: The

Cosmic Manifestation » SB 2.9: Answers by Citing the

Lord’s Version
SB 2.9.33
aham evāsam evāgre

nānyad yat sad-asat param

paścād ahaṁ yad etac ca

yo ’vaśiṣyeta so ’smy aham

SYNONYMS:
aham — I, the Personality of Godhead; eva — certainly; āsam —
existed; eva — only; agre — before the creation; na — never; anyat —
anything else; yat — all those; sat — the effect; asat — the
cause; param — the supreme; paścāt — at the end; aham — I, the
Personality of Godhead; yat — all these; etat — creation; ca —
also; yaḥ — everything; avaśiṣyeta — remains; saḥ — that; asmi — I
am; aham — I, the Personality of Godhead.
TRANSLATION:
Brahmā, it is I, the Personality of Godhead, who was existing before
the creation, when there was nothing but Myself. Nor was there the
material nature, the cause of this creation. That which you see now is
also I, the Personality of Godhead, and after annihilation what
remains will also be I, the Personality of Godhead.
PURPORT:
In another feature of this verse, no one can deny the personalities of both
the Lord and Brahmā. Therefore in the ultimate issue both the
predominator and predominated are persons. This conclusion refutes the
conclusion of the impersonalist that in the ultimate issue everything is
impersonal. This impersonal feature stressed by the less intelligent
impersonalist school is refuted by pointing out that the predominator I is
the Absolute Truth and that He is a person. The predominated I, Brahmā,
is also a person, but he is not the Absolute. For realization of one’s self in
spiritual psychology it may be convenient to assume oneself to be the
same principle as the Absolute Truth, but there is always the difference of
the predominated and the predominator, as clearly pointed out here in this
verse, which is grossly misused by the impersonalists. Brahmā is factually
seeing face to face his predominator Lord, who exists in His
transcendental eternal form, even after the annihilation of the material
creation. The form of the Lord, as seen by Brahmā, existed before the
creation of Brahmā, and the material manifestation with all the ingredients
and agents of material creation are also energetic expansions of the Lord,
and after the exhibition of the Lord’s energy comes to a close, what
remains is the same Personality of Godhead. Therefore the form of the
Lord exists in all circumstances of creation, maintenance and annihilation.
The Vedic hymns confirm this fact in the statement vāsudevo vā idam
agra āsīn na brahmā na ca śaṅkara eko nārāyaṇa āsīn na brahmā
neśāna, etc. Before the creation there was none except Vāsudeva. There
was neither Brahmā nor Śaṅkara. Only Nārāyaṇa was there and no one
else, neither Brahmā nor Īśāna. Śrīpāda Śaṅkarācārya also confirms in his
comments on the Bhagavad-gītā that Nārāyaṇa, or the Personality of
Godhead, is transcendental to all creation, but that the whole creation is
the product of avyakta. Therefore the difference between the created and
the creator is always there, although both the creator and created are of the
same quality.
The other feature of the statement is that the supreme truth is Bhagavān, or
the Personality of Godhead. The Personality of Godhead and His kingdom
have already been explained. The kingdom of Godhead is not void as
conceived by the impersonalists. The Vaikuṇṭha planets are full of
transcendental variegatedness, including the four-handed residents of those
planets, with great opulence of wealth and prosperity, and there are even
airplanes and other amenities required for high-grade personalities.
Therefore the Personality of Godhead exists before the creation, and He
exists with all transcendental variegatedness in the Vaikuṇṭhalokas. The
Vaikuṇṭhalokas, also accepted in the Bhagavad-gītā as being of
the sanātana nature, are not annihilated even after the annihilation of the
manifested cosmos. Those transcendental planets are of a different nature
altogether, and that nature is not subjected to the rules and regulations of
material creation, maintenance or annihilation. The existence of the
Personality of Godhead implies the existence of the Vaikuṇṭhalokas, as the
existence of a king implies the existence of a kingdom.
In various places in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and in other revealed scriptures
the existence of the Personality of Godhead is mentioned. For example,
in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (2.8.10), Mahārāja Parīkṣit asks:
sa cāpi yatra puruṣo
viśva-sthity-udbhavāpyayaḥ
muktvātma-māyāṁ māyeśaḥ
śete sarva-guhāśayaḥ
“How does the Personality of Godhead, the cause of creation, maintenance
and annihilation, who is always freed from the influence of the illusory
energy and is the controller of the same, lie in everyone’s heart?” Similar
also is a question of Vidura’s:

tattvānāṁ bhagavaṁs teṣāṁ

katidhā pratisaṅkramaḥ
tatremaṁ ka upāsīran
ka u svid anuśerate
(Bhāg. 3.7.37)
Śrīdhara Svāmī explains this in his notes: “During the annihilation of the
creation, who serves the Lord lying on the Śeṣa, etc.” This means that the
transcendental Lord with all His name, fame, quality and paraphernalia
exists eternally. The same confirmation is also in the Kāśī-khaṇḍa of
the Skanda Purāṇa in connection with dhruva-carita. It is said there:
na cyavante ’pi yad-bhaktā
mahatyāṁ pralayāpadi
ato ’cyuto ’khile loke
sa ekaḥ sarvago ’vyayaḥ
Even the devotees of the Personality of Godhead are not annihilated during
the period of the entire annihilation of the material world, not to speak of
the Lord Himself. The Lord is ever-existent in all three stages of material
change.

The impersonalist adduces no activity in the Supreme, but in this

discussion between Brahmā and the Supreme Personality of Godhead the
Lord is said to have activities also, as He has His form and quality. The
activities of Brahmā and other demigods during the maintenance of the
creation are to be understood as the activities of the Lord. The king, or the
head executive of a state, may not be seen in the government offices, for
he may be engaged in royal comforts. Yet it should be understood that
everything is being done under his direction and everything is at his
command. The Personality of Godhead is never formless. In the material
world He may not be visible in His personal form to the less intelligent
class of men, and therefore He may sometimes be called formless. But
actually He is always in His eternal form in His Vaikuṇṭha planets as well
as in other planets of the universes as different incarnations. The example
of the sun is very appropriate in this connection. The sun in the night may
not be visible to the eyes of men in the darkness, but the sun is visible
wherever it has risen. That the sun is not visible to the eyes of the
inhabitants of a particular part of the earth does not mean that the sun has
no form.

In the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (1.4.1) there is the hymn ātmaivedam

agra āsīt puruṣa-vidhaḥ. This mantraindicates the Supreme Personality of
Godhead (Kṛṣṇa) even before the appearance of the puruṣa incarnation. In
the Bhagavad-gītā (15.18) it is said that Lord Kṛṣṇa is Puruṣottama
because He is the supreme puruṣa, transcendental even to the puruṣa-
akṣara and the puruṣa-kṣara. The akṣara-puruṣa, or the Mahā-Viṣṇu,
throws His glance over prakṛti, or material nature, but the Puruṣottama
existed even before that. The Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad therefore
confirms the statement of the Bhagavad-gītā that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the
Supreme Person (Puruṣottama).
In some of the Vedas it is also said that in the beginning only the
impersonal Brahman existed. However, according to this verse, the
impersonal Brahman, which is the glowing effulgence of the body of the
Supreme Lord, may be called the immediate cause, but the cause of all
causes, or the remote cause, is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The
Lord’s impersonal feature is existent in the material world because by
material senses or material eyes the Lord cannot be seen or perceived. One
has to spiritualize the senses before one can expect to see or perceive the
Supreme Lord. But He is always engaged in His personal capacity, and He
is eternally visible to the inhabitants of Vaikuṇṭhaloka, face to face.
Therefore He is materially impersonal, just as the executive head of the
state may be impersonal in the government offices, although he is not
impersonal in the government house. Similarly, the Lord is not impersonal
in His abode, which is always nirasta-kuhakam, as stated in the very
beginning of the Bhāgavatam. Therefore both the impersonal and personal
features of the Lord are acceptable, as mentioned in the revealed
scriptures. This Personality of Godhead is very emphatically explained in
the Bhagavad-gītā in connection with the verse brahmaṇo hi
pratiṣṭhāham (Bg. 14.27). Therefore in all ways the confidential part of
spiritual knowledge is realization of the Personality of Godhead, and not
His impersonal Brahman feature. One should therefore have his ultimate
aim of realization not in the impersonal feature but in the personal feature
of the Absolute Truth. The example of the sky within the pot and the sky
outside the pot may be helpful to the student for his realization of the all-
pervading quality of the cosmic consciousness of the Absolute Truth. But
that does not mean that the individual part and parcel of the Lord becomes
the Supreme by a false claim. It means only that the conditioned soul is a
victim of the illusory energy in her last snare. To claim to be one with the
cosmic consciousness of the Lord is the last trap set by the illusory energy,
or daivī māyā. Even in the impersonal existence of the Lord, as it is in the
material creation, one should aspire for personal realization of the Lord,
and that is the meaning of paścād ahaṁ yad etac ca yo ’vaśiṣyeta so ’smy
aham.
Brahmājī also accepted the same truth when he was instructing Nārada. He
said:

so ’yaṁ te ’bhihitas tāta

bhagavān viśva-bhāvanaḥ
(Bhāg. 2.7.50)
There is no other cause of all causes than the Supreme Personality of
Godhead, Hari. Therefore this verse aham evanever indicates anything
other than the Supreme Lord, and one should therefore follow the path of
the Brahma sampradāya, or the path from Brahmājī to Nārada, to
Vyāsadeva, etc., and make it a point in life to realize the Supreme
Personality of Godhead, Hari, or Lord Kṛṣṇa. This very confidential
instruction to the pure devotees of the Lord was also given to Arjuna and
to Brahmā in the beginning of the creation. The demigods like Brahmā,
Viṣṇu, Maheśvara, Indra, Candra and Varuṇa are undoubtedly different
forms of the Lord for execution of different functions; the different
elemental ingredients of material creation, as well as the multifarious
energies, also may be of the same Personality of Godhead, but the root of
all of them is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. One should
be attached to the root of everything rather than bewildered by the
branches and leaves. That is the instruction given in this verse.