How Can God Eat?

Now one may think, "Well, all this sounds very nice, but one thing is missing. You're assuming that God eats. But since God is spiritual, not material like us, how can He eat?" This is a good question. Krsna is spiritual, of course. But we have to understand what that means. If we try to figure out God on the power of our own intelligence, we may arrive at our idea of God in this way: "Spiritual is just the opposite of material; as we have material bodies which limit us, so God must be spiritual and unlimited by any body. As I have hands and feet, so God must be without hands and feet: I have eyes, ears, a nose, and a tongue, and God must be eyeless, earless, noseless, tongueless and so on." Nearly everyone speculates like this, and that's why so many people have been led to believe that God is impersonal or void. Thus the idea of God's eating becomes difficult to understand.

But we should consider, first of all, the worth of this speculative process. Since we are limited by our material bodies, how, by means of speculation, are we to have knowledge about an area far beyond the scope of our senses? Since we are enclosed in these material forms, we are conditioned by defective senses, by a propensity for error, by a tendency to be illusioned, and by a propensity to cheat. With these defects we can hardly figure out God. Unless we meet an authority who can give us definite information about God, we cannot know anything about Him. We can only have vague negative ideas. Because we thus stand in need of aid, Krsna Himself delivered positive knowledge about Himself to His disciples like Lord Brahma and Arjuna and arranged to have such knowledge handed down through an unbroken chain of perfect spiritual authorities. We can therefore read in Bhagavad-gita that Krsna says to Arjuna, "I am unborn, and My transcendental body never deteriorates." (Bg. 4.6) He further states that the form which He displayed 5,000 years ago on this earth is His own original and transcendental form-not an assumed material form, like our own. Krsna is not embodied; He is not a spiritual spark covered by a material body. Rather, He is His own spiritual form, eternal and always young.

Thus, according to information from the spiritual chain of authority, God is equipped with all senses-sight, touch, taste, smell, etc. But His senses are spiritual. If we think about it, we can understand how this teaching makes much more sense than the impersonal conclusion.

Krsna is the Absolute Truth. This means that He is the origin or source of everything; whatever we can experience, spiritual or material, is an emanation from Him. Therefore our own mind, senses and intelligence are all creations of the Absolute Truth. This means that the Absolute Truth is not without mind, senses or intelligence. He is not impersonal. If He were lacking in senses or in intelligence, He would be less than His own creation. The very word "created" indicates that He has transcendental intelligence. Because Krsna is a person, we are persons. When a father begets a child, that child is equipped with hands and legs because the father has them. The child also has senses because his father has senses. Therefore sometimes it is said that man is made in the likeness of God. We have senses because Krsna, the Original Father, has senses.

But because Krsna's senses are spiritual, they are not limited in the way that ours are limited. In our material body, each sense can only perform its own proper function, but in the transcendental figure of Krsna each and every limb possesses in itself the full-fledged functions of all the other organs. Each sense can perform the functions of all the rest. This means that He can walk with His hands, see with His hands, or eat with His eyes. In Bhagavad-gita Krsna says that He impregnated all living entities into the womb of material nature by His glance. This is the nature of the Lord's spiritual form. Thus when we offer food to the Lord and he hears our prayers and sees the food on the altar, that seeing and hearing are wholly identical with His eating and enjoying the food. In this way, Krsna accepts our offering and eats it.