​When all forms of God exist eternally, what does Krishna is the source of all those forms means?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So if all the forms of the supreme are eternally existing In their own spiritual world What is the point of saying that Krishna is the source of everything? Yeah Again I would say that At our level of preaching to people in today’s world Stressing Krishna’s supremacy over Vishnu’s or Ram’s Is not really important It may be in the later stages May be in Bhagavatam classes or When preaching to new people Krishna and Vishnu are the same thing In terms they say one God in different moods In different moods that’s all Getting into technicalities Causes unnecessary controversies and it causes alienation Jiva Goswami has a whole Krishna Sandarbha where he tries to talk about Where he tries to establish how Krishna Is the original supreme personality of God And he quotes various scriptures for that And the point is that there Jiva Goswami has a specific mission That is he wanted to give the Shastric basis for Gaudiya Vishnu So we can envision preaching as if there is a pyramid Pyramid at the bottom has a broad circumference As it moves forward upward circumference becomes thinner At the peak it is just one point So what is it is that When we are initially preaching to new people At that time we are not really preaching Gaudiya Vishnu We are just preaching basic spiritual philosophy And at that time people who need to understand basic spiritual truths If we start getting into esoteric Gaudiya Siddhantas It creates unnecessary conflict So most of the people who come to our programs I mean most of the people they are already having some piety They already have some faith in God And they come to Krishna Consciousness and start practicing And by practicing they progress, they get realization And once they get realization By inner experience their doubts get removed And they start focusing more on Krishna Bhakti So Bhaktivinoda Thakur has written a book on Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Which was sent to the McGill University, you know famous book The introduction to that he says Now we come to the identity of Sri Chaitanya He uses the word Sri Chaitanya Prabhupada would use the word Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Previously the Asuras would use Sri Chaitanya forever Now we come to the question of the identity of Sri Chaitanya He says that as far as the Vaishnavas are concerned They accept Sri Chaitanya to be non-different from Krishna And they also quote many miracles as proof of his divinity But we know, so Bhaktivinoda Thakur is not really putting himself in the category of Vaishnavas Vaishnavas say like this But he says we know that miracles are no proof of divinity No conclusive proof of divinity After all demons like Ravana also perform miracles like changing their form So he says the real gift of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Is the gift of love of God And by following the instructions of Lord Chaitanya One can flood one’s heart with the supreme experience of love of God And it is this ecstasy that is accessible for those For all those who are ready to follow Lord Chaitanya So there may be people who accept Lord Chaitanya as a Sanyasi As a great devotee As a founder of the Gaudiya Vishnu Sanchi Sampradaya But they may not accept him as Vishnu, Krishna It’s fine, we don’t have to get into that We will get into discussion at this stage Krishna Surya Goswami, Chaitanya Chaitanya are very strong in establishing Because that is an insider book for insider people So at our level, when you are preaching to new people It’s best to avoid conflict and simply say Krishna and Vishnu are the same person Now, yes the Bhagavatam does talk in various places And it can, Yogoswami makes a fairly strong case To establish how Krishna is the source of Vishnu But, since they both are eternal The idea, see we say that Does God, there are three questions Does God create in time? Does God create through time? Or does God create time? What does that mean? When we say God creates in time That means God creates the world in time That means, time was already existing So just like we were saying, okay this building At a building it may be 1815 Or 2015 What does it mean? It was created in time So time was already existing And at a particular time, this building came into existence So does God create in time? Or does God create through time? Through time means, time is the agency through which God creates everything So God is not directly involved But God creates through the agency of time Or does God create time itself? Time is something God creates Now our understanding is, neither of the two Because our understanding is, time also is eternal Time is eternal, matter is eternal, God is also eternal So, when everything is eternal in this spiritual world The idea that there is one person who is the source of everyone else That is not talking about chronology at all That is not talking about time sequence at all It is talking simply about philosophical understanding So, that way for that matter, soul comes from Krishna But then the soul also is eternal So how can the soul come from Krishna? So when we talk about one thing coming from another in spiritual circles That is not meant to talk at all in terms of chronology That is meant to talk primarily in terms of, the philosophical word is ontology Ontology means nature of existence That is meant to talk about the nature of reality We are just going to illustrate the point that Krishna has more qualities than the other manifestations Same one absolute truth, when he manifests as Krishna, more qualities are manifested You know, 64 qualities, 60 qualities like that. The differentiation is there.
So Krishna is God manifested in his complete fullness All the various rasas, all the kind of relationship that God can have Various of them are manifested in their richness They are manifested slightly less in Ram and substantially less in Vishnu And like that it goes on. So we, it’s not at all in terms of chronology It turns in terms of philosophical understanding of the nature of these people And of their relative interrelation, that is what it’s talking about So better not get into it, but if we get into it, we can just explain that this is not talking about chronology at all Everybody, only one of them is eternal And it is simply a way of explaining things which is meant to illustrate a philosophical point The philosophical point is that Krishna has all the qualities that all the manifestations of God have And the other manifestations of God may not have all these qualities So just to illustrate this philosophical point that this is one way of saying it It is not a literal statement of fact where Krishna is existing at one time and others are not existing at another time See rhetorical statements are quite often used in scripture to drive home the philosophical point So for example, when Srivastava expresses his faith in Lord Krishna He says, you know, I just clap three times and everything will come So Sharda Shetan Mahaprabhu says, your faith in Krishna is so great Therefore, even if the Goddess of Fortune becomes power-restricted Still there will be no shortage in your house And the fact is, the Goddess of Fortune can never become power-restricted See Lakshmi, the Lord Lakshmi belongs to him, the God belongs to her So when he says that she becomes power-restricted, that simply means a rhetorical statement Or another proverbial statement says that When Narayana says that I am not seeing the Vaikuntha, what does it mean? It means that Vaikuntha is unpopulated It means that there is a succession crisis in Vaikuntha that Krishna has gone away, don’t know who is successing Krishna Nothing like that And Krishna is also present in the heart of yogis, present in the heart of all living beings So the point is, when he is present in Vaikuntha and he is present in the heart He is not accessible to the common people But when Krishna as the whole being is accessible to everyone So the point here is not a philosophical statement of absolute truth It is not a literal statement to be taken, it is meant to be rested a particular point Point is, Krishna’s accessibility as the whole being is much more than his accessibility in his own personal form So like that, the idea that Krishna is the source of all of that That is meant to illustrate the point that Krishna manifests the qualities of divinity more than other devotees But it is not meant to minimize the divinity and it is not meant to create unnecessary conflict If unnecessary conflict is happening, you can just straight away say that Actually Krishna and Vishnu are the same person in different ways and leave it at that Does that answer your question? Yeah, last question