His Own Transcendental Form

One may have a great deal of difficulty accepting the sac-cid-ananda-vigrahaḥ aspect of the Supreme Person, or accepting the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but this is largely due to the frailties of human conceptualization. We think that because Krsna has a body or because He has form He is limited. This is because in the material world all forms have some limitation. I can run just so fast, or I can reach just so far, but the Vedas assert that Krsna's body is not like this. Although located in one place, His hand can extend anywhere, and He can personally accept what is offered to Him. In Īsopanisad it is stated that the Supreme Lord "although fixed in His abode, is more swift than the mind, and He can overcome all others running. The powerful demigods cannot approach Him. Although in one place, He controls those who supply the air and rain. He surpasses all in excellence." (Mantra 4) In Bhagavad-gita Arjuna sees all the universes contained within the body of Lord Sri Krsna, and in Brahma-samhita it is said that any one of the organs of the body of the Supreme Person can perform all the actions of all the other parts and that Krsna impregnated material nature simply by glancing at her. In Īsopanisad the Supreme Lord's body is described as asnaviram, which means that it is without veins. His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments: "The Supreme Lord is not formless. He has His own transcendental form which is not at all similar to those of the mundane world. The living entities of this world have their forms embodied by the material nature, and they work like any material machines. The physiological and anatomical structure of the body of a living being must have a mechanical construction, with veins and so forth in the embodiment. But in the transcendental body of the Lord there is nothing like veins. It is clearly stated here (Īsopanisad, Mantra 8) that He is unembodied. That means that there is no difference between His body and soul. Nor does He accept a body by the law of nature. In the material concept of life, the soul is different from the gross embodiment and subtle mind. The Supreme Lord is apart from any such departmentalized arrangement, however. There is nothing like a difference of body and mind in the Supreme Lord. He is the complete whole, and His mind and body, and He Himself are all one and the same. In the Brahma-samhita there is a similar description of the body of the Supreme Lord. He is described there as sac-cid-ananda-vigrahaḥ. This means that He is the eternal form fully representing existence, knowledge and bliss. The Vedic literature states clearly that He has a different kind of transcendental body, and thus He is sometimes described as formless. This formlessness means that He has no form like ours and that He is devoid of a form which we can perceive. In the Brahma-samhita it is further said that the Lord can do anything and everything with any one of the parts of His body. It is said there that with each and every one of the parts of His body, such as the hand, He can do the work of the other senses. This means that the Lord can walk with His hands, He can accept a thing with His legs, He can see by His hands and feet, and He can eat by His eyes. In the sruti mantras it is said that He has no hands and no legs like us, but that He has a different type of hand and leg by which He can accept all that we offer Him, and walk faster than anyone anywhere."

In the Judaic-Christian tradition, God is sometimes pictured as an old man, but Vedic literatures give quite different information. The Lord is described in the Vedas as ever-youthful and ever-fresh. He never grows old. Although Lord Sri Krsna was a grandfather on the Battlefield of Kuruksetra, He still appeared as a beautiful youth around sixteen years of age. Although He is described as "the oldest" because He existed before everyone else in the creation, He should not be thought of as an old man. All of these misconceptions arise from habitual materialistic thinking. Because our bodies are temporary, full of ignorance, and miserable, we think these to be attributes of all bodies. But Lord Sri Krsna's body is sac-cid-ananda, eternal and unchanging (sat), all-knowing (cit), and full of bliss (ananda).