Text 9
tasmād yuktendriya-grāmo
yukta-citta idaṁ jagat
ātmanīkṣasva vitatam
ātmānaṁ mayy adhīśvare
tasmāt — therefore; yukta — having brought under control; indriya-grāmaḥ — all the senses; yukta — also subduing; cittaḥ — your mind; idam — this; jagat — world; ātmani — within the individual soul; īkṣasva — you should see; vitatam — spread out (as the substance of his material enjoyment); ātmānam — and that individual soul; mayi — in Me; adhīśvare — the supreme controller.
Therefore, bringing all your senses under control and thus subduing the mind, you should see the entire world as situated within the self, who is expanded everywhere, and you should also see this individual self within Me, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
The word vitatam, or “widely expanded,” implies that the individual jīva soul is present throughout the material universe. Similarly, in Bhagavad-gītā (2.24) Lord Kṛṣṇa states, nityaḥ sarva-gataḥ: the individual soul is eternal and is expanded everywhere throughout the material and spiritual worlds. This does not mean, however, that each individual soul is all-pervading, but that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Kṛṣṇa, has expanded His marginal potency everywhere. Thus, one should not blindly conclude that a minute living entity is all-pervading; rather, one should understand that God is great and expands His personal energy everywhere. In this verse, ātmanīkṣasva vitatam means that this material world is created to facilitate the sense gratification of the conditioned souls, who are trying to enjoy without Kṛṣṇa, their actual master. The living entities are busily trying to exploit the external energy of the Lord, but their jurisdiction over the material world is illusory. Both the material nature and the conditioned living being are energies of the Lord and thus exist within the Personality of Godhead and are under His supreme control.
The individual living entity exists for the pleasure of the Personality of Godhead and is the Lord’s eternal servant. As soon as the senses become absorbed in material gratification they lose their power to experience the Absolute Truth. The actual goal of sense activity is satisfaction of Viṣṇu, the Lord, and all of the senses can experience infinite spiritual pleasure by perceiving and serving the Lord in His personal feature. Those who adopt the impersonal conception of God, however, try to stop all sense activity. But because the senses cannot remain permanently inactive they naturally return to activities in the realm of material illusion. If one engages the senses in the service of the Personality of Godhead, then one enjoys unlimited pleasure upon seeing the transcendental beauty of the Lord’s form. But unless one qualifies himself by pure loving devotion to Kṛṣṇa, the Lord does not award him this exalted experience. Therefore, every conditioned soul should end his unnecessary separation from the Personality of Godhead by rejoining the Lord’s blissful company. Lord Kṛṣṇa personally comes down to reopen the blind eyes of the conditioned souls, and thus the Lord is personally teaching Uddhava so that sincere souls in the future might take advantage of His instructions. Indeed, hundreds and millions of people even now derive spiritual enlightenment from Lord Kṛṣṇa’s instructions to Arjuna in Bhagavad-gītā.