TRANSLATION

The troubles of penance accepted by Lord Brahma were certainly in the line of devotional service (bhakti). Otherwise there was no chance of Vaikuntha or svalokam, the Lord's personal abodes, becoming visible to Brahmaji. The personal abodes of the Lord, known as Vaikunthas, are neither myth nor material, as conceived by the impersonalists. But such realization of the transcendental abodes of the Lord is possible only through devotional service, and thus the devotees enter into such abodes. There is undoubtedly trouble in executing penance, but the trouble accepted in executing bhakti-yoga is transcendental happiness from the very beginning, whereas the trouble of penance in other processes of self-realization (namely jnanayoga, dhyanayoga, etc.) without any Vaikuntha realization ends in trouble only and nothing more. There is no profit in biting husks without grains. Similarly, there is no profit in executing troublesome penances other than bhakti-yoga for self-realization.

Execution of bhakti-yoga is exactly like sitting on the lotus sprouted out of the abdomen of the transcendental Personality of Godhead, for Lord Brahma was seated there. Brahmaji was able to please the Lord, and the Lord was also pleased to show Brahmaji His personal abode. Srila Jiva Gosvami narrates, in the comments of his Krama-sandarbha annotation of Srimad-Bhagavatam, quotations from the Garga Upanisad, Vedic evidence. It is said that Yajnavalkya described this transcendental abode of the Lord to Gargi, and it is said there that the abode of the Lord is situated above the highest planet of the universe, namely Brahmaloka. This abode of the Lord, although described in the revealed scriptures like the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam, remains only a myth for the less intelligent class of men with a poor fund of knowledge. Herein the word svadrstavadbhi is very significant. One who has actually realized his self realizes the transcendental form of one's self. Impersonal realization of self and the Supreme is not complete, because it is just an opposite conception of material personalities. The Personality of Godhead and the personalities of devotees of the Lord are all transcendental; they do not have material bodies. The material body is overcast with five kinds of miserable conditions, namely ignorance, material conception, attachment, hatred and absorption. As long as one is overwhelmed with these five kinds of material miseries, there is no question of entering into the Vaikunthalokas. Impersonal conception of one's self is just the negation of material personality, far from the positive existence of personal form. These personal forms of the transcendental abode will be explained in the following verses. Brahmaji also described this highest planet of the Vaikunthaloka as Goloka Vrndavana, where the Lord resides as a cowherd boy keeping transcendental surabhi cows and surrounded by hundreds and thousands of goddesses of fortune.