Foreword

The materialistic demeanor cannot possibly stretch to the transcendental autocrat who is ever inviting the fallen conditioned souls to associate with Him through devotion, the eternal serving mood. The phenomenal attractions are often found to tempt sentient beings to enjoy the variegated position, which is opposed to undifferentiated monism. People are apt to indulge in transitory speculations even when they are to educate themselves about a situation beyond their empiric area or experimental knowledge. But often the esoteric aspect obliges them to trace out Immanence in their outward inspection of transitory and transformable things. This impulse moves them to fix the position of the immanent to an indeterminate impersonal entity, no clue of which can be discerned in moving earth and heaven through man's organic senses.

The lines of this booklet will surely help such puzzled souls in their march towards the personality of the Immanent lying beyond their sensuous inspection. The very first stanza of this publication will revolutionize their conservative ideas when the nomenclature of the Absolute is put before them as "Krsna." The speculative minds will tend to offer some other attributive name to designate the unknown object. They will prefer to brand Him by their own experience as the "creator of this universe," or "the entity beyond phenomena," which are far removed from any object of nature and void of all transformation. So they will urge that the very fountainhead should have no conceivable designation other than that which would indicate an invisible, inaudible, untouchable, non-fragrant and imperceivable object. But they will not desist from contemplating on the object with their poor fund of experience. The interested enquirer will be found to hanker after the records left by erudite savants in lieu of incompatible hallucinatory views of savage demonstration. In comparing different names offered by mankind's different schools of thought, a particular judge would naturally decide in favor of some nomenclature which will suit best his limited and specific whims. The slave mentality of an individual will no doubt offer invectives to those who would appeal to him to explain his decision. To remedy this evil, the Hymns (Brahma-samhita) of the accepted progenitor of the phenomena would help greatly for they offer a nomenclature which is possessed of adequate power to dispel all imaginations conjured by those who experience phenomena through tentative exploitations.

The first hymn will establish the supremacy of the Absolute Truth, if His substratum is not shot by the bullets of limited time, ignorance and discomfort by those who recognize Him as an effect instead of accepting Him as the prime cause. But earnest seekers will be satisfied to note that the object of their determination is the par-excellent Supreme Lord Sri Krsna who has eternally embodied Himself in His ever-present, all-blissful, all-pervasive form of perfected knowledge, the very fountainhead of all prime causes, or unending non-beginning time, the supplying fosterer of all entities, namely, mundane and transcendental.

The subsequent lines will determine the different aspects of the Absolute, which are but emanations of the supreme fountainhead Krsna, the most attractive entity of all entities. Moreover, the etymology of the nomenclature "Krsna" indicates a plane of uninterrupted, unending, transcendental felicity and indicates that He Himself is the source of the two components which go by the names of "efficient" and "material" causes. The very transcendental name "Krsna" denotes the embodiment of all the transcendental eternal rasas (nectarean pleasures) as well as the origin of all eclipsed conceptions of interrupted rasas (perverted relationships) found in the mentality of animated beings which are successfully depicted by literati and rhetoricians for our mundane speculation.

The verses of Brahma-samhita are a full elucidation of the origination of phenomena and noumena. These hymns of the incarnated prime potency deal fully with the henotheistic speculations of different schools, which are busy giving the outer coverings of esoteric concoctions without referring to the true, eternal aspect of the transcendental, non-transformable and imperishable manifestation of the Immanent. These hymns also deal with different partial aspects of the Personality of the Absolute, who is quite separate from the conception of the enjoyers of this phenomenal world.

A very closely attentive comparative study of all prevailing thoughts and conceptions will relieve and enlighten all-be one a materialist, a downright atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, a naturalist, or a pantheist-busy with knowledge of mere three dimensions by speculative exertions.

This booklet is only the fifth chapter of the Hymns of Brahma (Brahma-samhita) which were recorded in a hundred chapters. The Supreme Lord Sri Caitanya picked up this chapter from the temple of Adikesava at Tiruvattar, a village lying under the government of Travancore, for the assurance of all God-loving, and especially Krsna-loving, people in this conditioned world. This booklet can easily be compared with another book called Srimad-Bhagavatam. Though it has reference in the pantheon of Puranas, the Bhagavatam corroborates the same idea of this Pancaratra.

The devotees should note that these two books point to the identical Krsna who is the Fountainhead of all transcendental and mundane entities and who exhibits a manifestation of plenary variegatedness.

Aspersions and calumniation are confined to the limited world, for the Transcendence cannot admit such "angularities," being at an angle of 180 degrees, that is to say, void of any angular discrepancies.

The publisher is carried away to the realm of gratitude when his stores of publication are scrutinized. Thakur Bhaktivinoda has given an elucidating purport to the conception of the most sublime fountainhead of all entities, and one of his devout followers has rendered that from Bengali into English for propagatory purposes. The background of the purports and translations are traced to the writings of Srila Jiva Gosvami, a contemporary follower of the Supreme Lord Sri Krsna Caitanya.

The materialists often go on to say that the provincial conception of theism has depicted the transcendental unity as diversity, but we differ from these erroneous considerations, for we get a prospective view of the manifested Transcendence which eliminates all historiographies and allegorical interpretations. Our enjoying mood should take a different direction when we take into account the Transcendental Entity who absorbs all the frailties and limitations of nature. So we solicit the happier mood of the scrutinizers and beg them to pay special attention to the importance of manifestive transcendence in Krsna.

It was found necessary to publish this small book for the use of English speaking people who are interested in the acme of transcendental truth in all its manifested phases. The theme delineated herein is quite different from the ordinary heaps of poetical mundane literature which are confined to our limited senses. This book was found in South India some four centuries ago, and it is again brought to light in the very same country after a long time. It is just like the worshiping the Goddess Ganges by offering her own water.

Siddhanta Sarasvati, Sri Gauḍiya Math, Calcutta, August 1, 1932.