He Never Forgets

But Krsna is never forgetful. In the Brahma-samhita it says: "I worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Govinda [Krsna], who is the Original Person, absolute, infallible, without beginning, although expanded into unlimited forms, still the same original, the oldest, and the person always appearing as a fresh youth." Such vision may on occasion be manifest to the best Vedic scholars, but Krsna says that it is always available to the pure devotee. Actually, this word acyuta, infallible, means that He never forgets himself, even when He is in contact with material nature. The jiva, or individual soul, forgets himself because the jiva is infinitesimal while Krsna is infinite.

So the Lord and the living entity can never be equal in all respects, even if the living entity is as liberated as Arjuna. Although Arjuna is a liberated soul from the very beginning and is an eternal associate of the Lord, nevertheless he sometimes forgets the nature of the Lord. But by the divine grace of the Lord, a devotee alone can understand the infallible condition of the Lord, whereas a nondevotee or demon cannot understand this transcendental nature of Krsna.

And why the Lord never forgets is further explained in the sixth verse: "Although I am unborn and My transcendental body never deteriorates, and although I am the Lord of all sentient beings, I still appear in every millennium in My original transcendental form." The Lord's body is called advaita, which means that there is no distinction between the Lord and His body-everything is spirit. But the conditioned soul is different from his material body. Therefore when he leaves one material body and goes to another he forgets, but the Lord never takes a material body; He always appears in the same sac-cid-ananda body. Sac-cid-ananda means eternal, knowledgeable and blissful, so that is called His transcendental body, and it never deteriorates, and He never changes bodies.

It is something like the sun, which appears on the horizon and passes through the meridian and then sets; but this appearance and disappearance is due to our vision, not to the sun. Similarly, Krsna's appearance and disappearance are due to the imperfect eyesight of the conditioned soul. The Lord is always the same Absolute Truth and is without differentiation between His form and His Self, or between His quality and body. This is omnipotence.