For a devotee like Maharaja Pariksit, none of the material planets, even the topmost Brahmaloka, is as desirable as Goloka Vrndavana, the abode of Lord Sri Krsna, the primeval Lord and original Personality of Godhead. This earth is one of the innumerable material planets within the universe, and there are innumerable universes also within the compass of the mahat-tattva. The devotees are told by the Lord and His representatives, the spiritual masters or acaryas, that not one of the planets within all the innumerable universes is suitable for the residential purposes of a devotee. The devotee always desires to go back home, back to Godhead, just to become one of the associates of the Lord in the capacity of servitor, friend, parent or conjugal lover of the Lord, either in one of the innumerable Vaikuntha planets or in Goloka Vrndavana, the planet of Lord Sri Krsna. All these planets are eternally situated in the spiritual sky, the paravyoma, which is on the other side of the Causal Ocean within the mahat-tattva. Maharaja Pariksit was already aware of all this information due to his accumulated piety and birth in a high family of devotees, Vaisnavas, and thus he was not at all interested in the material planets. Modern scientists are very eager to reach the moon by material arrangements, but they cannot conceive of the highest planet of this universe. But a devotee like Maharaja Pariksit does not care a fig for the moon or, for that matter, any of the material planets. So when he was assured of his death on a fixed date, he became more determined in the transcendental loving service of Lord Krsna by complete fasting on the bank of the transcendental River Yamuna, which flows down by the capital of Hastinapura (in the Delhi state). Both the Ganges and the Yamuna are amartya (transcendental) rivers, and Yamuna is still more sanctified for the following reasons.