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Lord Krishna's Appearance and Activities
On understanding that Krishna is the Supreme Personality of
Godhead, one may wonder, "If Krishna is God, how does He take birth into
the material world and behave like an ordinary child?" However even when He descends into this
material world, His appearance and activities are divine, as confirmed in the
Bhagavad-gita (4.9):
janma karma ca me divyam evam yo vetti tattvatah
tyaktva deham punar janma naiti mam eti so 'rjuna
'One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and
activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this
material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna." That the appearance and activities of Krishna
are transcendental can be understood from His following superhuman attributes.
1. Krishna Knows Past, Present and Future
In the Bhagavad-gita (4.6), Arjuna asks Krishna how He could have
instructed Vivasvan, who was apparently millions of years senior to Him by
birth. Krishna explains that although both He and Arjuna have passed many "births",
the difference is that Krishna can remember all of them, whereas Arjuna and
other ordinary living entities cannot. If a common man is asked what he
did exactly at the same time one day
earlier, it would be very difficult for him to answer immediately. He would
surely have to dredge his memory to recall what he was doing just one day before.
And yet, men often dare claim to be God,
or Krishna. One should not be misled by such meaningless claims. Lord Krishna
is conscious of all of His previous appearances and disappearances, but a common living entity forgets everything about
his body as soon as he gets another body.
2. Krishna and His Body are Non-different
We are different from our body, because we are spirit souls and
the body is only a material covering. But as far as Lord Krishna is concerned,
He comes to this material world in His self-same sac-cid-ananda body. So Krishna and His body
are non-different. The Lord explains this fact in Bhagavad-gita (4.6)
ajo 'pi sarin avyayatma bhutanam isvaro 'pi san
prakrtim svam adhisthaya sambhavamy atma-mayaya
-Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never
deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I still appear
in every millennium in My original transcendental
form."
The Lord does not change His body, as the conditioned soul
transmigrates from one body to another. Krishna appears in this material world
in His original eternal form, with two hands, holding a flute. He descends in His eternal body,
uncontaminated and untouched by this material world.
3. Krishna is Eternally Youthful
Whenever Lord Krishna descends into this material world, despite
the fact that He grows from childhood to boyhood and from boyhood to youth,
astonishingly enough He never ages beyond
youth. At the time of the Battle of Kurukshetra, He had many
grandchildren at home; or in other words, He had sufficiently aged by material
calculations. Still He looked just like a young man twenty or twenty five years old. We never see
a picture of Krishna in old age because He never grows old like us, although
He is the oldest person in the whole creation - past, present, and future. Neither Krishna's body nor His
intelligence ever deteriorate or change. That Krishna is eternally youthful is
confirmed by Lord Brahma in the Brahma-Samhita (5.33): adyam purana purusam nava yauvanam ca: "Although Lord
Krishna is the original person, the oldest, still He is always a fresh
youth."
4. Krishna Neither Takes Birth nor Dies; He Appears and Disappears
When Lord Krishna was born, He appeared as a baby with four hands,
holding conchshell, club, disc, and lotus flower, decorated with the mark of
the shrivatsa, wearing the jeweled necklace of
kaustubha stone, dressed in yellow silk, appearing dazzling like a
bright blackish cloud, wearing a helmet bedecked with the vaidurya stone,
valuable bracelets, earrings and similar other
ornaments all over His body and an abundance of hair on His head. Due to
the extraordinary features of the child, Vasudeva was struck with wonder: how
could a newly born child be so
decorated? Such is the divine nature of the birth of Krishna. On the
other hand, when an ordinary child is born, he is born naked, smeared in
amniotic fluid, stool, urine, crying and in total ignorance, with filthy worms falling out from
the same womb as his brothers. Thus it is clear that the Lord's advent is not
like an ordinary child's painful birth. Therefore the Lord says that
anyone who considers Him to be an
ordinary man is a fool.
avajananti mam mudha
manushim tanum ashritah
param bhavam ajananto
mama bhuta maheshvaram
"Fools deride Me when I descend in a human form. They do not
know My transcendental nature as the Supreme Lord of all that
be."(Bhagavad-gita 9.11)
Krishna's appearance, activities and disappearance are like the
movements of the sun. When the sun appears in the east one may tllink that the
sun is horn. And when the sun sets in the west,
one may think that the sun is dead. The sun is always existing, although
we see it rise and set, appear and disappear, according to 0lir position on the
planet. Similarly, the Lord's pastimes are
go-l,1M on eternally, although we can see them manifest in this
particular universe only at certain intervals. Just like the sun appears and
disappears from the sky. Lord Krishna appears and disappears in this material world, out of
His own sweet will, for the sake of reclaiming the fallen souls and for giving
pleasure to His devotees. His eternal abode is the supreme planet in the spiritual world, known as Goloka Vrindavana,
and, by His will, thatGoloka Vrindavana is manifested in this universe and in
other universes as well. Thus the Lord is always residing in His supreme abode, Goloka Vrindavana, and by His supreme
will, His activities are also manifested in innumerable universes. From the
evidences discussed in this chapter, we can clearly understand that the conclusion of all the scriptures is that
Lord Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. When one understands this
supreme position of Krishna, one can learn to serve Him with love and devotion. By such devotional service, one
can attain krishna-prema, pure love for Krishna. That is the ultimate
perfection of life.