CHAPTER 2

“When I come, I do not accept a material body; My birth and activities are completely spiritual. And anyone who perfectly understands this is liberated.” When Kṛṣṇa displayed Himself as the perfect child before Mother Yaśodā, He would break everything when she did not supply Him with butter – as if He were in need of butter! So God can display Himself exactly like an ordinary human being, yet He remains the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Impersonalists cannot know God because they see Him as an ordinary man. This is rascaldom, as Kṛṣṇa declares in the Bhagavad-gītā (9.11): avajānanti māṁ mūḍhāḥ. “Only rascals accept Me as an ordinary human being.” The Māyāvādīs say, “Oh, here is a child. How can He be God?” Even Brahmā and Indra became bewildered. They thought, “How can this boy be the Supreme Lord? Let me test Him.”

Sometimes a so-called incarnation of God declares, “I am God.” He should be tested to determine whether or not he is actually God. The Māyāvādīs are claiming, “I am God, I am Kṛṣṇa, I am Rāma.” Everyone becomes “Kṛṣṇa,” everyone becomes “Rāma,” yet people do not challenge their claims: “If you are Rāma, exhibit your supreme potency! Rāma constructed a bridge over the Indian Ocean. What have you done? At the age of seven, Kṛṣṇa lifted Govardhana Hill. What have you done?” When they are challenged by Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes, these rascals say, “It is all fiction; it is all legend.” Therefore people accept an ordinary person as Rāma or Kṛṣṇa. This nonsense is going on, and both those who declare themselves to be God and those who accept them as God will have to suffer for it. Anyone can claim to be God, and any foolish person can accept, but no one will benefit by serving a false God.

Once Lord Brahmā thought that Kṛṣṇa might also be such a false God. He observed that a mere boy in Vṛndāvana, India, was accepted as the Supreme Lord and that He was performing extraordinary activities. So Brahmā decided to make a test. He took away all of Kṛṣṇa’s calves and playmates and hid them. When Brahmā returned to Vṛndāvana after one year and saw the same calves and playmates still there, he could understand that Kṛṣṇa had expanded Himself by His unlimited potency into so many calves and boys. The boys’ own mothers could not detect that their sons were Kṛṣṇa’s expansions, though the mothers could not explain why every evening when their boys returned home from the fields, their affection for them increased more and more. Finally, Brahmā surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, composing very nice prayers in glorification of the Lord.

Similarly, Indra became bewildered when Kṛṣṇa told His father, Nanda Mahārāja, “There is no need of performing sacrifices to Indra, because he is under the order of the Supreme Lord.” Kṛṣṇa did not say to Nanda Mahārāja, “I am the Supreme Lord,” but He said, “Indra is under the order of the Supreme Lord; therefore he has to supply you with water. So there is no need of performing this yajña [sacrifice] to him.”

When the sacrifice to Indra was stopped, he became furious and tried to punish the inhabitants of Vṛndāvana by sending incessant torrents of rain for seven days. Vṛndāvana was nearly drowned in water – so great was the downpour. But Kṛṣṇa, a child of about seven years, immediately lifted Govardhana Hill and invited all the residents of Vṛndāvana, together with their animals, to take shelter underneath the hill. Kṛṣṇa held up the hill for seven days and nights without taking any food or rest, just to protect the residents of Vṛndāvana. Thus Indra understood that Kṛṣṇa was the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

In this way the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam warns that if even great personalities like Brahmā and Indra can sometimes become bewildered by māyā, the external manifestation of Kṛṣṇa’s energy, then what to speak of us.

So, God sometimes displays Himself as God and sometimes as a human being, but the rascal impersonalists dismiss His pastimes as legend or mythology. Either they do not believe in the śāstras or they interpret them in their own way, using ardha-kukkuṭī-nyāya, “the logic of half a hen.” Once a man kept a hen that delivered a golden egg every day. The foolish man thought, “It is very profitable, but it is expensive to feed this hen. Better that I cut off her head and save the expense of feeding her. Then I will get the egg without any charge.” The impersonalists accept the śāstras in this way. They think, “Oh, this is not good; it is inconvenient. We shall cut this portion out.” When Kṛṣṇa says, “One should see Me everywhere,” the rascal Māyāvādīs think it is very palatable, but when He says, “Give up everything and surrender to Me,” they disagree. They accept what is convenient and reject what is not. But the ācāryas do not distort the śāstras in this way. When Kṛṣṇa spoke the Bhagavad-gītā, Arjuna said, “I accept whatever You have said.”