Lord Govinda is the Supreme Personality, unsurpassable, the topmost being, the unlimited Godhead. He is known as Kṛṣṇa because He attracts everyone by His extraordinary transcendental pastimes. It is therefore unanimously accepted that all His other names and expansions are partial. As the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam declares, ete cāṁśa-kalāḥ puṁsaḥ kṛṣṇas tu bhagavān svayam: (SB 1.3.28) "All these incarnations of Godhead are either plenary portions or portions of the plenary portions of the Lord, but Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the original Personality of Godhead."
Thus Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the original, beginningless, and supreme Personality of Godhead, and this material universe is simply part of His unlimited energy. We may now reject this material world as illusory, but one day, with Kṛṣṇa conscious vision, we will see its intimate connection with the Lord. In this stage of spiritual vision we will see material things as objects of neither exploitation nor rejection. Such transcendental vision is attained by the process of buddhi-yoga, or bhakti-yoga. We will then clearly see the truth of the following verse from the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.51):
- agnir mahī gaganam ambu marud diśaś ca
- kālas tathātma-manasīti jagat-trayāṇi
- yasmād bhavanti vibhavanti viśanti yaṁ ca
- govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi
The three worlds are composed of the nine elements, viz., fire, earth, ether, water, air, direction, time, soul, and mind. I adore the primeval Lord Govinda from whom they originate, in whom they exist and into whom they enter at the time of the universal cataclysm.
Once one is fixed in transcendental realization, all distress, lamentation, illusion, fear, and so on, are immediately eradicated. The soul is assailed by these miseries as long as he harbors the delusion that something exists outside of Kṛṣṇa. Therefore when one is situated in transcendence, one feels happiness even in this world. The mundane conception of life is a product of the three modes of material nature, which affect the mind and senses. But when one's vision is transformed through buddhi-yoga, one sees everything as having a direct link with Kṛṣṇa. The material elements, such as fire, water, ether, and mind, along with the directions, the soul, and time—everything material and spiritual, personal and impersonal—all reflect Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Being. When one reaches this state of realization, the dualities and illusion of sin and piety, happiness and distress, are dissolved by the ecstatic harmony of transcendence. In one Upaniṣad there is a statement that once a person experiences the happiness derived from Brahman realization, he no longer has anything to fear.