When Prabhupada says that God can never be illusioned how can we understand that Krishna comes under Yoga-Maya?
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Transcript
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So God, we say impersonalists, may say that when they say that I am God or they claim that Prabhupada Vyatagiri impersonally said that God never comes into illusion. I think impersonalists are in bondage, right? That’s how you prove that they are, argue that they are not God.
But we are saying that God also comes into illusion. See there is a big difference between Leela. Leela is that which is voluntarily accepted for enjoyment.
And there is Maya. That is illusion that is forcibly imposed on a person. So Krishna, he may forget that he is God, but at any moment when he wants, he can re-manifest his divinity.
At one moment, he is a helpless child who is running away in fear from his mother and who eventually is caught by her. But the next moment, while still manifesting that small form, the longest ropes are not able to tie him. He gets tied by a rope to a grinding mortar.
But then he next sees, oh these two trees. My devotee Narada had said that I will deliver them in the future. So if the Lord, if he can by his strength break giant trees, he causes the two trees to fall down when the grinding mortar comes in between them.
Can that Lord not break the ropes which are tying him to the grinding mortar? So if he has the strength to break trees, what is the strength required to break ropes over there? So the point is, Krishna, he can at any moment. So in that sense, he is not under illusion in the way the conditioned souls are. The conditioned souls cannot at any moment become enlightened.
We have to follow the whole process of sadhana, bhakti by which we become enlightened. Even if we become enlightened, we don’t become omnipotent. Krishna can manifest omnipotency at any moment, whenever he wants.
So the fundamental difference between we conditioned souls being in illusion is that that illusion stays on even when we don’t want it to be there. But with respect to Krishna, the illusion can go the moment when he wants it to go. So in that sense, when Brahmapada says God can never be put under illusion, he is talking from the point of view of philosophical truth.
That even when Krishna comes under yoga maya, actually yoga maya is working by his will. Tomorrow I’ll talk about that. How Krishna, when he works under yoga maya, actually yoga maya is also still under his control.
So in that sense, Krishna is actually still the supreme controller. But a supreme controller voluntarily chooses to be controlled. But when a conditioned soul is there, he is not voluntarily choosing to be controlled.
He is forcibly put under control.