Prabhupāda: That monad, as we say, Kṛṣṇa, as we understand from Brahma-saṁhitā, that Kṛṣṇa is within the atom also.
Śyāmasundara: He says that a monad is the force or activity which constitutes the essence of a substance.
Prabhupāda: But Kṛṣṇa is the substance, summum bonum. Aṇḍāntara-stha paramāṇu-cayāntara-stham (Bs. 5.35). He is within everything. That is His all-pervasive nature.
Śyāmasundara: Then how are the individualities accounted for?
Prabhupāda: Every individual soul is awarded a little portion of independence, because every individual soul is part and parcel of God, so he has got the quality of independence, in minute quantity. That is individuality.
Śyāmasundara: Just like, for instance, say, this particulate substance, he would say that there is a force or activity which constitutes the essence of this substance, and that is the monad of this substance. He is attributing it to everything, matter.
Prabhupāda: So we take the atom. Atom is the smallest. So we say within the atom the force is Kṛṣṇa. He is simply suggesting there is some enforcing power. We are giving directly that that is Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: But he says that in that enforcing power each atom is individual, separate, different.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Kṛṣṇa, by His omnipotency, can expand Himself in innumerable forms. Advaitam acyutam anādim ananta-rūpam (Bs. 5.33). Ananta, unlimited. As it is clearly said, aṇḍāntara-stham. He is within the atom.