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The Most Confidential Knowledge
461
First Canto, First Chapter, when the sages inquire about the activities of Kṛṣṇa, it is stated that His appearance as a man bewilders the foolish. No human being could perform the wonderful acts that Kṛṣṇa performed while He was present on this earth. When Kṛṣṇa appeared before His father and mother, Vasudeva and Devakī, He appeared with four hands, but after the prayers of the parents, He transformed Himself into an ordinary child. His appearance as an ordinary human being is one of the features of His transcendental body. In the Eleventh Chapter of the  Gītā  also it is stated,  tenaiva rūpeṇa  etc. Arjuna prayed to see again that form of four hands, and when Kṛṣṇa was thus petitioned by Arjuna, He again assumed His original form. All these different features of the Supreme Lord are certainly not those of an ordinary human being.
Some of those who deride Krṣṇa, who are infected with the Māyāvādī philosophy, quote the following verse from the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  to prove that Krṣṇa is just an ordinary man:  ahaṁ sarveṣu bhūteṣu bhūtātmāvasthitaḥ sadā : “The Supreme is present in every living entity.” ( Bhāg.  3.29.21) We should better take note of this particular verse from the Vaiṣṇava  ācāryas  like Jīva Gosvāmī instead of following the interpretation of unauthorized persons who deride Krṣṇa. Jīva Gosvāmī, commenting on this verse, says that Krṣṇa, in His plenary expansion as Paramātmā, is situated in the moving and the nonmoving entities as the Supersoul, so any neophyte devotee who simply gives his attention to the  arca-mūrti , the form of the Supreme Lord in the temple, and does not respect other living entities is uselessly worshiping the form of the Lord in the temple. There are three kinds of devotees of the Lord, and the neophyte is in the lowest stage. The neophyte devotee gives more attention to the Deity in the temple than to other devotees, so Jīva Gosvāmī warns that this sort of mentality should be corrected. A devotee should see that Krṣṇa is present in everyone’s heart as Paramātmā; therefore every body is the embodiment or the temple of the Supreme Lord, and as such, as one offers respect to the temple of the Lord, he should similarly properly respect each and every body in whom the Paramātmā dwells. Everyone should therefore be given proper respect and should not be neglected.
There are also many impersonalists who deride temple worship. They say that since God is everywhere, why should one restrict himself to temple worship? But if God is everywhere, is He not in the temple or in the Deity? Although the personalist and the impersonalist will fight with one another perpetually, a perfect devotee in Kṛṣṇa consciousness knows that although Kṛṣṇa is the Supreme Personality, He is all-pervading, as is confirmed in the  Brahma-saṁhitā . Although His personal abode is Goloka