ātmā yathā svapna-janekṣitaikaḥ
taṁ satyam ānanda-nidhiṁ bhajeta
nānyatra sajjed yata ātma-pātaḥ
saḥ-He (the Supreme Person); sarva-dhī-vṛtti-the process of realization by all sorts of intelligence; anubhūta-cognizant; sarve-everyone; ātmā-the Supersoul; yathā-as much as; svapna-jana-a person dreaming; īkṣita-seen by; ekaḥ-one and the same; tam-unto Him; satyam-the Supreme Truth; ānanda-nidhim-the ocean of bliss; bhajeta-must one worship; na-never; anyatra-anything else; sajjet-be attached; yataḥ-whereby; ātma-pātaḥ-degradation of oneself.
One should concentrate his mind upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who alone distributes Himself in so many manifestations just as ordinary persons create thousands of manifestations in dreams. One must concentrate the mind on Him, the only all-blissful Absolute Truth. Otherwise one will be
misled and will cause his own degradation.
In this verse, the process of devotional service is indicated by the great Gosvāmī, Śrīla Śukadeva. He tries to impress upon us that instead of diverting our attention to several branches of self-realization, we should concentrate upon the Supreme Personality of Godhead as the supreme object of realization, worship and devotion. Self-realization is, as it were, offering a fight for eternal life against the material struggle for existence, and therefore by the illusory grace of the external energy, the yogī or the devotee is faced with many allurements which can entangle a great fighter again in the bondage of material existence. A yogī can attain miraculous successes in material achievements, such as aṇimā and laghimā, by which one can become more minute than the minutest or lighter than the lightest, or in the ordinary sense, one may achieve material benedictions in the shape of wealth and women. But one is warned against such allurements because entanglement again in such illusory pleasure means degradation of the self and further imprisonment in the material world. By this warning, one should follow one's vigilant intelligence only. The Supreme Lord is one, and His expansions are various. He is therefore the Supersoul of everything. When a man sees anything, he must know that his seeing is secondary and the Lord's seeing is primary. One cannot see anything without the Lord's having first seen it. That is the instruction of the Vedas and the Upaniṣads. So whatever we see or do, the Supersoul of all acts of seeing or doing is the Lord. This theory of simultaneous oneness and difference between the individual soul and the Supersoul is propounded by Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu as the philosophy of acintya-bhedābheda-tattva(1). The virāṭ-rūpa, or the gigantic feature of the Supreme Lord, includes everything materially manifested, and therefore the virāṭ or gigantic feature of the Lord is the Supersoul of all living and nonliving entities. But the virāṭ-rūpa is also the manifestation of Nārāyaṇa or Viṣṇu, and going further on and on one will eventually see that Lord Kṛṣṇa is the ultimate Supersoul of everything that be. The conclusion is that one should