Krsna in the Gita nº 3

[Radha-Govinda Mandir]

2. Krishna and the individual souls are distinct entities.
As Lord Krishna is eternally the Supreme Person, so the individual souls
are, of logical necessity, eternally distinct from and subordinate to the
Lord:  “Never did I not exist, nor you, nor all these kings. And it is
certainly not (the case) that we shall not exist, all of us, for ever after.
[na tv evåham jåtu nåsam na tvam na tvaµ neme janådhipå? na caiva na
bhavißyåma? sarve vayam ata? param 2.12]
Here Krishna clearly states that "all of us" [sarve vayam] will exist
forever, just as I (Krishna), you (Arjuna) and all these kings have always
existed at all times in the past. Indeed, never was there a time when we did
not exist. In the previous verse, Krishna chastized Arjuna for taking the
body to be the self. Similarly, in the verse immedaitely following, Krishna
will describe the soul as dehî, the owner of the body, different from deha,
the body. Indeed the entire first half of the second chapter of the
Bhagavad-gîtå makes it clear that our real identity is eternal soul and not
the body. Thus having said that a learned person (pa??ita) sees the soul,
and not the body, as primary, it is certain that Krishna is speaking of the
real person, the soul, as He begins to explain to Arjuna the fundamental
ontology of the world. After all, how can the Lord be apa??ita, or foolish?
Thus it is the real K®ß?a, the eternal Krishna, and the real Arjuna, the
eternal Arjuna, who have always existed and always will exist. And all of
us, says Krishna, will continue to exist in the future.
Similarly, later in the Gîtå, we find the following:
“There are two [classes of] beings in this world, the perishable and the
imperishable. All created forms are perishable, but a soul who stands at the
summit is imperishable.
“The Supreme Person, however, is another, and He is declared to be the
Supersoul. It is that inexhaustible Lord who has entered the three worlds
and sustains them.
“Because I am beyond the perishable beings, and greater even than the
imperishable, I am thus celebrated in this world, and in the Vedas, as the
Supreme Person. One who knows Me in this way to be the Supreme Person is a
knower of everything, and he worships Me with all his heart.” [Bg 15.16-19]
There are many significant lessons in these four ?lokas of the Gîtå.
Krishna has defined the term purußottama as: the Supreme Person who stands
beyond both the conditioned souls entangled in the snare of måyå, and “even
beyond the highest soul”, e.g. a liberated soul who stands at the highest
point of spiritual perfection. Indeed Monier-Williams in his Oxford Sanskrit
dictionary describes kü†a-stha? as the pure soul standing on the unchanging,
spiritual platform. Since Krishna emphatically declares that the purußottma
is beyond even the liberated soul, we can hardly translate purußa here as
"man" or anything indicative of a material position, since this would not
even apply to the kü†a-stha or the liberated soul, and what to speak of the
Supreme Person who stands far beyond such a pure soul. Krishna uses the word
api, "even" to make explicit that "I am beyond even the liberated soul. In
other words, it is not the Gîtå's  philosophy that one becomes Krishna, or
equal to Krishna, by spiritual liberation. A normal reader would not
question that Krishna is beyond the conditioned soul, but here the Lord
emphasizes by the world api that He is beyond even the liberated soul who
stands at the summit of spiritual perfection.
The finality of this understanding of the supreme personal individuality of
Krishna is confirmed at 15.19 wherein Krishna states that one who
understands Him in this way [evam] as the Supreme Person [purußottama] is
the knower of everything [sarva-vit] and worships the Lord with all his
heart. [bhajati måm sarva-bhåvena bhårata 15.19] In other words, Krishna
explicitly rejects the notion that realization of the personal feature of
the Lord is a mere prelude to an eventual impersonal understanding.
Earlier in the fifteenth chapter, Krishna states that the living being in
this world is eternally a fragmental part [aµ?a] of the Lord. [mamaivåµ?o
jîva-loke jîva-bhüta? sanåtana? 15.7] The soul is further said to be
indivisible [acchedyo 'yam 2.24], and so the fragmental status is not
effectuated in time, but is a pre-eternal, never-ending fact: [na tvevåhaµ
jåtu nåsaµ na tvam neme janådhipå? na caiva na bhavißyåmah sarve vayam atah
param 2.12] As Lord K®ß?a simply puts its, God is not one of the ordinary
living beings, nor even one of the liberated souls; rather: “the Supreme
Person is someone else
” [uttama? purußas tv anya? 15.17]
We have already demonstrated that Krishna claims to be absolutely cognizant
and the source of all other cognition. He makes the same claim in the
thirteenth chapter where Lord Krishna introduces the terms kßetra, “the
field (i.e. the body)” and kßetra-jña, “the knower of the field (i.e. the
soul who is conscious of the body).” The Lord concludes this discourse by
asserting that although each soul is the knower of his field, i.e. his
particular body, “I am the knower of all fields, meaning all bodies
[kßetra-jñaµ cåpi måµ viddhi sarva-kßetreßu bhårata 13.3].
In the same thirteenth chapter, Krishna describes both the individual soul
and the Lord as purußa, but the contrast is striking. The individual soul is
a purusa, but he is  (a) “situated in material nature,” (b) “trying to enjoy
the material qualities”, and thus (c) compelled by his attachments to those
qualities to take birth in high and low species of bodily encangement
[purußa? prak®ti-stho hi bhuõkte prak®ti-jån, kåra?aµ gu?a-saõgo 'sya
sad-asad-yoni-janmasu 13.22].  In the very next ?loka, the Lord describes
Himself also as purußa, but the difference between the two purußas could not
be more clear, for Krishna is said to be the supreme or transcendental
purusa? [purusa? para?]. The use of the adjective parah to denote the
supreme purusa is sigificant, for this word not only entails the notion of
supremacy, but also a strong sense of "the other". Indeed, para is often
used in Sanskrit to indicate the opposite of åtma- or sva- 2 , both of which
indicate "self" or "one's own". In fact, åtma is the simple reflexive
pronoun in Sanskrit. In other words, para has the unenquivocal sense of here
of the wholly other who is supreme. In this same ?loka, Lord Krishna also
uses the term paramåtmå, describing Himself thus as the "Supreme Soul".
It should be noted that the adjective parama [used with åtmå to form
paramåtmå], is almost identical to para, as regards the notion of supremacy,
but that parama does not convey the sense of being the "other" in contrast
to one's self. It is this wider term para that Krishna employs to
distinguish Himself, as purusa, from the ordinary purußa who is struggling
vainly to exploit the Lord's material creation. Thus the Gîtå's claim that
the indiviual soul is eternally distinct from the Supreme Soul is a strong
one, and not a vague or esoteric articulation.
The Lord is also said to be the maintainer of the living beings [sarva-bh®c
caiva 13.5]. It is natural that the Lord maintain the living beings, for
they are stated in the Gîtå to be the Lord's own energy: “Besides the
material nature, there is another superior energy of Mine. Know it to be the
living being
” [apareyam itas tv anyåm prak®tiµ viddhi me paråµ
jîva-bhütåm
] The living being trapped in the clutches of måyå, the Lord's
illusory material energy, can only escape her control by surrendering to the
Lord. He cannot escape by his own autonomous decision or endeavor: [daivî hy
eßå gu?a-mayî mama måyå duratyayå, måm eva ye prapadyante måyåm etåm taranti
te 7.5].