एकमेकतराभावे यदा नोपलभामहे त्रितयं तत्र यो वेद स आत्मा स्वाश्रयाश्रयः
ekam ekatarābhāve yadā nopalabhāmahe tritayaṁ tatra yo veda sa ātmā svāśrayāśrayaḥ
Synonyms
ekam—one; ekatara—another; abhāve—in the absence of; yadā—because; na—does not; upalabhāmahe—perceptible; tritayam—in three stages; tatra—there; yaḥ—the one; veda—who knows; saḥ ātmā—the Supersoul; sva—own; āśraya—shelter; āśrayaḥ—of the shelter..
Translation
All the above-mentioned three stages of different living entities are interdependent. In the absence of one, the other is not understood. And the Supreme Being who is seeing every one of them as the shelter of the shelter is independent of all, and therefore He is the supreme shelter.
Purport
So there are innumerable living entities, one dependent on the other in the relationship of the controlled and the controller. But without the medium of perception, no one can know or understand who is the controlled and who is the controller. For example, the sun controls the power of our vision, and we can see the sun because the sun has its body, and the sunlight is useful only because we have eyes. Without our having eyes, the sunlight is useless, and without sunlight the eyes are useless. Thus they are interdependent, and neither of them is independent. Therefore the natural question arises concerning who made them interdependent, and one who has made such a relationship of interdependence must be ultimately completely independent. As it is stated in the beginning of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the ultimate source of all interdependent objectives is the complete independent subject. This ultimate source of all interdependence is the Supreme Truth or Paramātmā, the Supersoul, who is not dependent on anything else. He is svāśrayāśrayaḥ. He is only dependent on His self, and thus He is the supreme shelter of everything. Although Paramātmā or Brahman are subordinate to Bhagavān, because Bhagavān is Puruṣottama or the Superperson, He is the source of the Supersoul also. In the Bhagavad-gītā (Bg. 15.18) Lord Kṛṣṇa says that He is the Puruṣottama and the source of everything, and thus it is concluded that Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the ultimate source and shelter of all entities including the Supersoul or Supreme Brahman. Even accepting that there is no difference between the Supersoul and the individual soul, the individual soul is dependent on the Supersoul for being liberated from the illusion of material energy. The individual is under the clutches of illusory energy, and therefore although qualitatively one with the Supersoul, he is under the illusion of identifying himself with matter. And to get out of this illusory conception of factual life, the individual soul has to depend on the Supersoul to be recognized as one with Him. In that sense also the Supersoul is the supreme shelter. And there is no doubt about it.
The individual living entity or the jīva is always dependent on the Supersoul Paramātmā because the individual soul forgets his spiritual identity whereas the Supersoul Paramātmā does not forget His transcendental position. In the Bhagavad-gītā these separate positions of the jīva-ātmā and the paramātmā are specifically mentioned. In the Fourth Chapter, Arjuna, the jīva soul, is represented as forgetful of his many, many previous births, but the Lord, the Supersoul, is not forgetful. The Lord even remembers when He taught the Bhagavad-gītā to the sun-god some billions of years before. The Lord can remember such millions and billions of years, as is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā [7.26] as follows:
vedāhaṁ samatītāni vartamānāni cārjuna
bhaviṣyāṇi ca bhūtāni māṁ tu veda na kaścana
The Lord in His eternal blissful body of knowledge is fully aware of all that happened in the past, and that which is going on at the present as well as what will happen in the future. And in spite of His becoming the shelter of both the Paramātmā and Brahman, persons with a poor fund of knowledge are unable to understand Him as He is.
The propaganda of the identity of cosmic consciousness with the consciousness of the individual living entities is completely misleading because even a person or individual soul like Arjuna could not remember his past deeds, although he is always with the Lord. And what can the tiny ordinary man know about his past, present and future, falsely claiming to be one with the cosmic consciousness.