xii Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simul-
taneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like
Krsna, in the history of humanity. Krsna, the Supreme Personality of
Godhead, is an historical person who appeared on this earth 5,00@ years
ago. He stayed on this earth for 125 years 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 Krsna 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 acaryas, the authorized persons versed in the knowledge of God, in
all ages, like dcaryas Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Visnusvami, Lord
Caitanya and all their followers by disciplic succession, all unanimously
agree that Krsna 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 Patalalokas, or the lower planetary
system. The modern historians of this earth cannot supply historical
evidences of events that occurred before 5,@0@ years ago, and the anthro-
pologists say that 40,@@@ years ago Homo sapiens had not appeared on
this planet because evolution had not reached that point. But the Vedic
histories, the Puranas and Mahabharata, relate human histories which ex-
tend millions and billions of years into the past.

For example, from these literatures we are given the histories of Krsna’s
appearances and disappearances millions and billions of years ago. In the
Fourth Chapter of the Bhagavad-gita Krsna tells Arjuna that both He and
Arjuna had had many births before and that He (Krsna) could remember
all of them and that Arjuna could not. This illustrates the difference
between the knowledge of Krsna and that of Arjuna: Arjuna might have
been a very great warrior, a well-cultured member of the Kuru dynasty,
but after all, he was an ordinary human being, whereas Krsna, the Supreme
Personality of Godhead, is the possessor of unlimited knowledge. Because
He possesses unlimited knowledge, Krsna has a memory that is boundless.

Krsna’s knowledge is so perfect that He remembers all the incidences of
His appearances some millions and billions of years in the past, but
Arjuna’s memory and knowledge are limited by time and space, for he is
