Question: When we became jealous or envious of Krsna and were born here in material world, what was the first form we took in the material world?
Answer by Romapada Swami: I would first like to make a comment about the language of your question. Contemplating the living entity’s enthrallment as if an event within time is misleading. Here is what Bhaktivinode Thakur writes in “Sri Caitanya, His Life and Precepts”
“Hari is the Lord of Maya; she serves Him at His pleasure. The soul or jiva is so constructed as to be liable to be enthralled by maya when unassisted by the hladini shakti of the Lord. Hence, there is a natural and inherent distinction between God and the jiva that no pantheistic maneuver can annihilate. Please avoid the misleading question, ‘When were these jivas created and enthralled?’ The mayik time has no existence in spiritual history because it has its commencement after the enthrallment of jivas in matter; one cannot, therefore, employ mayik chronology in matters like these.”
Responsive to your question, in his purport of SB 9.24.58, Srila Prabhupada writes: “Both the Lord and the living entity, being qualitatively spirit soul, have the tendency for peaceful enjoyment, but when the part of the Supreme Personality of Godhead unfortunately wants to enjoy independently, without Krsna, he is put into the material world, where he begins his life as Brahma and is gradually degraded to the status of an ant or a worm in stool.”
