108 Ways of Glorifying The Lord - Part 7

Hare Krishna Prabhujis and Matajis,
Please accept my humble obeisances! All glories to Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev! 

We have been meditating on glorifying the Lord in the offerings titled, "108 Ways of Glorifying the Lord" for the last few months. As we had been out of the station, we could not continue with the offering. So Krishna willing, we shall resume this series again. In the previous offering, we saw that the Lord is the greatest of all. Let us continue to meditate on the next glorification. 

Glorification 9 - The Lord is the Supreme Personality of Godhead: It is mentioned in Sri Isopanishad mantra 8,

sa paryagāc chukram akāyam avraṇam
asnāviraḿ śuddham apāpa-viddham
kavir manīṣī paribhūḥ svayambhūr
yāthātathyato ’rthān vyadadhāc chāśvatībhyaḥ samābhyaḥ

Such a person must factually know the greatest of all, the Personality of Godhead, who is unembodied, omniscient, beyond reproach, without veins, pure and uncontaminated, the self sufficient philosopher, who has been fulfilling everyone's desire since time immemorial."

The Lord is described here as the Personality of Godhead. The term Personality of Godhead has various imports. 

1.The word "personality" indicates that the Lord has His own personality and form. 
2.The word Godhead indicates that Lord Krishna is the Head of all gods, or in other words, the Lord of all lords. 

1. Personality: The Lord's form is transcendental and is not at all similar to the forms of the mundane world. His form is full of bliss, truth, substantiality and is thus full of the most dazzling splendor. The philosophy of Mayavadis and impersonalist is that the Lord doesn't have any form and that He takes on a form only when He advents on the material world. They say that in the spiritual world the Lord doesn't have any form and is only a formless Brahmajyoti. All the Vaishnava acharyas including Ramanujacharya, Madhavacharya, Madhavendra puri etc. have smashed this idea and have established the irrevocable fact that the Lord is a person and has form. Srila Prabhupada further explains this, "if the Lord, the origin of everything doesn't have a form how is it possible that we, who have been generated out of Him have form, this is not logical."

2. God Head: In the material world, when we mean a head or chief, it means the head of a certain company or department or country. Nobody can say that he or she is the head of the world or universe. In Indian tradition, there are many many demigods that are worshiped. It is estimated that there are 33 crores (330 million) demigods. People who worship demigods do not have any idea about who is the Supreme God among the demigods. Whereas, the Vedic literature gives a very clear idea that Krishna is the Godhead among all demigods and is the source of everything. In this connection, there is a very nice poem composed by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura "tumi sarvesvareshvaraa" from Saranagati. Let us look at some of the lines from this poem, that glorify Lord Krishna.

tumi sarveshvareshvara, brajendra-kumaara! 
tomaara icchaaya vishve srjana samhaara 
tava icchaa-mato brahmaa korena srjana 
tava icchaa-mato vishnu korena paalana 
tava icchaa-mate shiva korena samhaara 
tava icchaa-mate maayaa srje kaaraagaara 
tava icchaa-mate jiver janama-marana 
samrddhi-nipaate duhkha sukha-samghatana

O youthful son of the King of Vraja, You are Lord of all lords. According to Your will, creation and destruction take place in the universe. According to Your will Lord Brahma creates, and according to Your will Lord Vishnu maintains. According to Your will Lord Siva destroys, and according to Your will Maya constructs the prison house of this world. According to Your will the living beings take birth and die, and according to Your will they meet with prosperity and ruin, happiness and sorrow.

The conclusion is that Lord Krishna is the Supreme and nothing ever happens without the sanction of the Lord. Hence, the term 'Supreme Personality of Godhead' is very appropriate for Krishna and can be only used for Him.

Krishna willing, we shall continue our journey of glorifying the Lord in the upcoming emails. 

Thank you very much.
Yours in service of Srila Prabhupada and Srila Gurudev,
Anand Patil,
Wellington, New Zealand.