What Is Brahman?

What is Brahman? Sri Krsna says, "The indestructible, transcendental, living entity is called Brahman, and his eternal nature is called the self." (8.3) Krsna is repeating the Vedic aphorism aham brahmasmi, "I am spirit soul." Krsna very elaborately explained in the Second Chapter that we are not these material bodies. "For the soul there is never birth or death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain." (2.20) That eternal, all-pervading, immeasurable self is called Brahman, and Krsna adds: "I am the Self seated in the hearts of all creatures." (10.20) Can we then conclude that there is only one soul as the Mayavadi impersonalists say? No, we cannot do that, for then we could not understand so many other verses in which the eternal individuality of the soul is clearly established. (2.12, 13.12, 14.27, 15.7 for example). Therefore, Lord Caitanya, who is Krsna Himself disguised as a devotee, clarifies the whole matter by His sublime philosophy of acintya-bhedabheda-tattva, inconceivable, simultaneous difference and nondifference. In other words, the living entity is inconceivably simultaneously one and different from Krsna, the Supreme Absolute. We are Brahman, and He is Parambrahman. We are the energy which is one in quality with the absolute whole, but which is not itself the energetic source.

This is a very beautiful mantra from Sri Īsopanisad, one of the oldest of the Upanisads. It is translated by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada as follows: "The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete. And because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world are perfectly equipped as a complete whole. Whatever is produced of the complete whole is also complete by itself. And because He is the complete whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance." It is just as if one has a bank account of one million dollars, and he withdraws one thousand dollars every hour. Now each withdrawal is qualitatively the same as the whole. A dollar is a dollar, either singly or in large groups. But suppose one could withdraw one thousand dollars every hour and the original million never diminished? The individual withdrawals have no such reproductive power-when they are spent, they are gone. Then that would be something like the difference between the original pūrnam, which is the source of everything that be, and the individual parts and parcels, or the cosmic manifestation. We have energy, but are not the energetic.