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own body. The Sanskrit phrase that describes this faulty perception is atmavan manyate jagat – thinking all
others are like himself. Persons with mundane knowledge cannot imagine that Krishna’s body and soul are both
eternal and above all material contamination. The Lord is never covered by a material body. Thus, He is
described as advaita because His body and soul are non-different. No conditioned living entity has a material
body and soul that are one.

The Lord expands His infinite effulgence, called the Brahman or Brahmajyoyi, and His divine and personal
immanent presence, the Supersoul, the in-dwelling Soul within all souls. Yet, He remains one and indivisible
inspite of such infinite expansions of His energies and Himself. This is another source of bewilderment of the
conditioned persons trying to comprehend God empirically.

Acyuta conveys the understanding that infinite avataras (Krishna or His plenary expansions who descend from
the spiritual world into the material world for a specific purpose) emanate from Krishna as subjective portions,
which means each avatara is non-different from the original Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Krishna.
There may appear to be differences to the uninformed. For example, Lord Narayana is non-different than Lord
Krishna, regardless of the fact that He appears with four arms and Lord Krishna has two arms. This may sound
illogical. Yet, this fact is what differentiates Lord Krishna from all other eternal living entities. The Lord remains
intact, complete and perfect and not subject to decay although He emanates infinite and variegated incarnations
(avataras), individual living entities and variegated eternal energies.

oṁ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ / pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya / pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate

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 complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the
Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete
units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance. (ISO invocation)

Thus, He possesses mutually contradictory qualities. Lord Caitanya conceptualized the incredible qualities of
Lord Krishna by the doctrinal term achintya bheda abheda tattva, which means the absolute truth is
simultaneously and inconceivably one and different. The millions of jivas (unique individual living entities) are
emanations from Krishna. They have all expanded from the Lord as His fragmental parts and parcelles in quality
one with Him as eternal spirit souls. Yet, they are all quantitatively different than Him being infinitesimally small
whereas the Lord is infinitely great. This is compared to gold in a gold ring and gold in a gold mine. The gold is
qualitatively the same in the ring and the mine, but quantitatively different.

Although the living entities are all unique individuals as is the Lord, they are all dependent on the Lord for their
maintenance (nityo nityanam cetanas caityanaman from the Katha Upanisad). Even though infinite avataras
(ananta-rupam, infinite incarnations) emanate from the Lord and infinite individual living entities (jivas), He
remains intact as the undivided whole and retains unaltered perfection and completeness. The Lord exhibits
pastimes of births, yet He is without beginning (adyam). He also seems to disappear at the conclusion of His
pastimes, yet He is eternal.

The transcendental form of Lord Krishna, which is called tribhanga. This means He has a threefold-bending
shape and holds a flute, manifests eternal youthful vitality. His gorgeous body is not limited by time, space or
the three modes of nature (nava yauvanam ca – He appears as a pristine youth eternally).

In the transcendental nature there is no past and future. One experiences time as the continuum of the present
with eternal variagatedness. There is no distinction between the object and its qualities because the duality of

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