Gita 04.05 – Krishna spiritual position is not affected by his material location

Thank you so Arjuna had asked one verse question in 4.4 and Krishna is answering here in one verse beginning from this verse so Arjuna's question in the previous verse was son God is older to you so how did you give this knowledge to him Krishna said and Krishna is answering here many have passed have lived through may and tava may is I, tava is you both of us have gone through many lives all of them I know but you do not so now here Krishna refers to Arjuna by two names Arjuna and Parantapa the word Arjuna itself means one who is straight, pure, spotless so Parantapa refers to one who is who can overpower enemies so Arjuna you are pure and you are powerful and yet your purity and potency is not enough to overcome the oblivion that comes because of the passage of time and the change of lifetimes however that does not affect me although Krishna and Arjuna may externally seem to be on the same chariot may seem to be on the same level through this verse Krishna reveals the substantially different position that belongs to him Krishna is the god of gods he is the supreme lord and as the supreme lord he is not subject to the vicissitudes of time he is all attractive, he is all powerful and being all powerful he is omniscient, he knows everything and he doesn't forget anything so what it means is that as the supreme lord he is exhibiting the characteristics when he says Krishna that you and I both of us have gone through many lifetimes so he is indirectly answering the question by stating that it was in a previous life, in a previous form that I instructed Suryadeva so in this life I may be, I may be born I may have appeared recently, Krishna is not born like us he appears just like the sun appears in the eastern horizon in the morning but in this life, yes I am more or less your contemporary but in a previous life in a previous avatar, in a previous manifestation I gave the knowledge to sun god so here the tattva is more important than the details, the philosophical principle is more important than the practical details, practical details was if you want to go and ask okay which particular form is this referring to in which particular avatar of Krishna did he give the knowledge to Vivasvan Krishna himself, if we see he does not delve on this fact too much just answers in one verse and moves forward and we will see that what Krishna will talk about the principle is what he focuses on and that is what we should also focus on, the principle is that actually in this world we all have many, that we all go through many births and what Krishna emphasizes in this verse is that if we will see in the next verse, two verses later I will say that in every yuga I come again and again so in that sense the emphasis is on the nature of the lord's appearance and the principle that the lord appears again and again it is not so much on in which particular incarnation the lord appears when although in some cases those facts can also be known but that is not the stress, that is not the emphasis over here so here the focus of Krishna is on explaining the point that it is he who goes through many lifetimes unlike the various lords unlike other living entities who may or may not go to, who even when they go through many lifetimes they forget that whereas Krishna does not forget that Krishna does not forget because he is there are multiple reasons first of all he is supreme, he does not come under the influence of time, another is that Krishna actually generally we forget things related with the body whereas Krishna does not manifest in a form which is material which changes from body to body so yes Krishna has a different form when he appears as Ram and when he appears as say Narasimha but then those forms are not forms which are temporarily assumed like as our bodily form those are eternal forms which are revealed periodically in this world so here the point is that there are different incarnations of the lord, different avatars of the lord and they perform different functions at different times but irrespective of whatever time and whatever function they perform the important point is always that they all always perform the principles of protecting dharma as will be mentioned in the next words so while protecting dharma they all act in the way that is appropriate for their potency and positions so they may appear to be here in a form just like other living beings but then suddenly when the time is required they exhibit extraordinary powers, powers of the kind that are not seen in others and those powers indicate their divine position and by those arrangements they demonstrate their divinity so here Krishna is demonstrating the supreme position which he has and he is also demonstrating how that position is something which is not something which we can grasp with our finite intelligence the principle is that Krishna is the supreme lord, the supreme being so the key point here is that Krishna's spiritual position is not affected by his physical location now he may be in the material world he may be in a body of a particular age he may be in a position as a charioteer which is subordinate to Arjuna so he is a charioteer where Arjuna is the warrior but despite all these things he remains the supreme person so he may as a leela, as a pastime accept seemingly ordinary or even inferior material position but wherever he is located materially his material location does not affect his spiritual position because material illusion which is the cause of the obscuring of one's spiritual position that does not affect Krishna and that he will mention in his next verse, in the next verse of the Gita and this was the emphasis that through the emphasis, emphatic point conveyed through the fact that Arjuna has forgotten whereas Krishna hasn't forgotten is that Krishna's spiritual position is not affected by his.