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TEXT 6 ajo 'pi sann avyayatma
SYNONYMS  ajah--unborn;
api--although;
san--being so; avyaya--without deterioration;
atma--body;
bhutanam--all those who are born; isvarah--the Supreme Lord;
api--although; san--being so; prakrtim--transcendental
form; svam--of Myself; adhisthaya--being so situated; sambhavami--I
do incarnate; atma-mayaya--by My internal energy.
TRANSLATION Although
I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although
I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I still appear in every millennium
in My original transcendental form.
PURPORT The Lord has
spoken about the peculiarity of His birth: although He may appear like
an ordinary person, He remembers everything of His many, many past "births,"
whereas a common man cannot remember what he has done even a few hours
before. If someone is asked what he did exactly at the same time one day
earlier, it would be very difficult for a common man to answer immediately.
He would surely have to dredge his memory to recall what he was doing exactly
at the same time one day before. And yet, men often dare claim to be God,
or Krsna. One should not be misled by such meaningless claims. Then again,
the Lord explains His prakrti, or His form. Prakrti means
nature as well as svarupa, or one's own form. The Lord says that
He appears in His own body. He does not change His body, as the common
living entity changes from one body to another. The conditioned soul may
have one kind of body in the present birth, but he has a different body
in the next birth. In the material world, the living entity has no fixed
body but transmigrates from one body to another. The Lord, however, does
not do so. Whenever He appears, He does so in the same original body, by
His internal potency. In other words, Krsna appears in this material world
in His original eternal form, with two hands, holding a flute. He appears
exactly in His eternal body, uncontaminated by this material world. Although
He appears in the same transcendental body and is Lord of the universe,
it still appears that He takes His birth like an ordinary living entity.
Despite the fact Lord Krsna grows from childhood to boyhood and from boyhood
to youth, astonishingly enough He never ages beyond youth. At the time
of the Battle of Kuruksetra, He had many grandchildren at home; or, in
other words, He had sufficiently aged by material calculations. Still He
looked just like a young man twenty or twenty-five years old. We never
see a picture of Krsna in old age because He never grows old like us, although
He is the oldest person in the whole creation--past, present, and future.
Neither His body nor His intelligence ever deteriorates or changes. Therefore,
it is clear that in spite of His being in the material world, He is the
same unborn, eternal form of bliss and knowledge, changeless in His transcendental
body and intelligence. Factually, His appearance and disappearance is like
the sun's rising, moving before us, and then disappearing from our eyesight.
When the sun is out of sight, we think that the sun is set, and when the
sun is before our eyes, we think that the sun is on the horizon. Actually,
the sun is always in its fixed position, but owing to our defective, insufficient
senses, we calculate the appearance and disappearance of the sun in the
sky. And, because His appearance and disappearance are completely different
from that of any ordinary, common living entity, it is evident that He
is eternal, blissful knowledge by His internal potency--and He is never
contaminated by material nature. The Vedas also confirm that the
Supreme Personality of Godhead is unborn, yet He still appears to take
His birth in multi-manifestations. The Vedic supplementary literatures
also confirm that even though the Lord appears to be taking His birth,
He is still without change of body. In the Bhagavatam, He appears
before His mother as Narayana, with four hands and the decorations of the
six kinds of full opulences. His appearance in His original eternal form
is His causeless mercy, according to the Visva-kosa dictionary.
The Lord is conscious of all of His previous appearances and disappearances,
but a common living entity forgets everything about his past body as soon
as he gets another body. He is the Lord of all living entities because
He performs wonderful and superhuman activities while He is on this earth.
Therefore, the Lord is always the same Absolute Truth and is without differentiation
between His form and self, or between His quality and body. A question
may now be raised as to why the Lord appears and disappears in this world.
This is explained in the next verse.
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