Krsihna

aK”£‹a, The Supreme Personality of Godhead Preface niv”tta-tar£air upag†yam•n•d bhavau£adh•c chrotra-mano-'bhir•m•t ka uttama¤loka-gu‹•nuv•d•t pum•n virajyeta vin• pa¤u-ghn•t (¥r†mad-Bh•gavatam 10.1.4) In these Western countries, when someone sees the cover of a book like K”£‹a, he immediately asks, "Who is K”£‹a? Who is the girl with K”£‹a?" etc. The immediate answer is that K”£‹a is the SupremePersonality of Godhead. How is that? Because He conforms in exact detail to descriptions of the Supreme Being, the Godhead. In other words, K”£‹a is the Godhead because He is all-attractive. Outside the principle of all-attraction, there is no meaning to the word Godhead. How is it one can be all-attractive? First of all, if one is very wealthy, if he has great riches, he becomes attractive tothe people in general. Similarly, if someone is very powerful, he also becomes attractive, and if someone is very famous, he also becomes attractive, and if someone is very beautiful or wise or unattached to all kinds of possessions, he also becomes attractive. So from practical experience we can observe that one is attractive due to 1) wealth, 2) power, 3) fame, 4) beauty, 5) wisdom, and 6)renunciation. One who is in possession of all six of these opulences at the same time, who possesses them to an unlimited degree, is understood to be the Supreme Personality of Godhead. These opulences of the Godhead are delineated by Par•¤ara Muni, a great Vedic authority. We have seen many rich persons, many powerful persons, many famous persons, many beautiful persons, many learned and scholarlypersons, and persons in the renounced order of life unattached to material possessions. But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simultaneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like K”£‹a, in the history of humanity. K”£‹a, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is an historical person who appeared on this earth 5,000 years ago. He stayed on this earth for 125years and played exactly like a human being, but His activities were unparalleled. From the very moment of His appearance to the moment of His disappearance, every one of His activities is unparalleled in the history of the world, and therefore anyone who knows what we mean by Godhead will accept K”£‹a as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one is equal to the Godhead, and no one is greaterthan Him. That is the import of the familiar saying, "God is great." There are various classes of men in the world who speak of God in different ways, but according to Vedic literatures and according to the great •c•ryas, the authorized persons versed in the knowledge of God, in all ages, like •c•ryas ¥a•kara, R•m•nuja, Madhva, Vi£‹usv•m†, Lord Caitanya and all their followers by disciplicsuccession, all unanimously agree that K”£‹a is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As far as we, the followers of Vedic civilization, are concerned, we accept the Vedic history of the whole universe, which consists of different planetary systems called Svargalokas, or the higher planetary system, Martyalokas, or the intermediary planetary system, and P•t•lalokas, or the lower planetary system. The modernhistorians of this earth cannot supply historical evidences of events that occurred before 5,000 years ago, and the anthropologists say that 40,000 years ago Homo sapiens had not appeared on this planet because evolution had not reached that 1

point. But the Vedic histories, the Pur•‹as and Mah•bh•rata, relate human histories which extend millions and billions of years into the past. Forexample, from these literatures we are given the histories of K”£‹a's appearances and disappearances millions and billions of years ago. In the Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavad-g†t• K”£‹a tells Arjuna that both He and Arjuna had had many births before and that He (K”£‹a) could remember all of them and that Arjuna could not. This illustrates the difference between the knowledge of K”£‹a and that of...