not manifest to foolish / yogamaya

I am never manifest to the foolish and unintelligent. For them I am covered by My eternal creative potency [yoga-māyā]; and so the deluded world knows Me not, who am unborn and infallible.

It may be argued that since Krsna was present on this earth and was visible to everyone, then why isn't He manifest to everyone now? But actually He was not manifest to everyone. When Krsna was present there were only a few people who could understand Him to be the Supreme Personality of Godhead. In the assembly of Kurus, when Sisupala spoke against Krsna being elected president of the assembly, Bhisma supported Him and proclaimed Him to be the Supreme God. Similarly, the Panḍavas and a few others knew that He was the Supreme, but not everyone. He was not revealed to the nondevotees and the common man. Therefore in the Gita Krsna says that but for His pure devotees, all men consider Him to be like themselves. He was manifest only to His devotees as the reservoir of all pleasure. But to others, to unintelligent nondevotees, He was covered by His eternal potency. (More...)

In the prayers of Kunti in the Srimad-Bhagavatam (1.8.18), it is said that the Lord is covered by the curtain of yoga-maya and thus ordinary people cannot understand Him. Kunti prays: "O my Lord, You are the maintainer of the entire universe, and devotional service to You is the highest religious principle. Therefore, I pray that You will also maintain me. Your transcendental form is covered by the yoga-maya. The brahmajyoti is the covering of the internal potency. May You kindly remove this glowing effulgence that impedes my seeing Your sac-cid-ananda-vigraha, Your eternal form of bliss and knowledge." (More...)

This yoga-maya curtain is also mentioned in the Fifteenth Chapter of the Gita. The Supreme Personality of Godhead in His transcendental form of bliss and knowledge is covered by the eternal potency of brahmajyoti and the less intelligent impersonalists cannot see the Supreme on this account. Also in the Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.14.) there is this prayer by Brahma: "O Supreme Personality of Godhead, O Supersoul, O master of all mystery, who can calculate Your potency and pastimes in this world? You are always expanding Your eternal potency, and therefore no one can understand You. Learned scientists and learned scholars can examine the atomic constitution of the material world or even the planets, but still they are unable to calculate Your energy and potency, although You are present before them." The Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Krsna, is not only unborn, but He is avyaya, inexhaustible. His eternal form is bliss and knowledge, and His energies are all inexhaustible. (More...)

It is our attempt to control nature in this age that has given rise to the machine and the demonic industrial civilization centered about it. Indeed, Henry Adams' historical theory of the virgin and the dynamo divides Western history into two epochs: that controlled by the virgin, the symbol of religious unity, and that controlled by the dynamo, the symbol of materialistic chaos and diversity. Nor is it coincidental that a Twentieth Century poet, Hart Crane, fuses these two forces in a single symbol of the Godhead: the Brooklyn Bridge. "Science," Crane wrote, "the uncanonized Deity of the times, seems to have automatically displaced the hierarchies of both Academy and Church." Science has become man's systematized attempt to understand the world and its purpose through his own blunt material senses. In its final analysis, science explores the cause or mystery of the universe through the observation of perceivable phenomena, and according to Krsna in Bhagavad-gita, this is not possible. Krsna is the cause of creation, and He cannot be perceived at all by the gross material senses. "I am never manifest to the foolish and unintelligent," Krsna says. "For them I am covered by My eternal creative potency (yoga-maya), and so the deluded world knows Me not, who am unborn and infallible." (Bg. 7.25) In other words, it is impossible to discover Krsna, the primal cause of everything, simply by observing Krsna's energy. "All states of being-be they of goodness, passion, or ignorance-are manifested by My energy," Krsna says. "I am, in one sense, everything-but I am independent. I am not under the modes of this material nature. Deluded by the three modes [goodness, passion and ignorance], the whole world does not know Me, who am above them and inexhaustible." (Bg. 7.12-13) (More...)

If Yaśodā had seen Kṛṣṇa in her lap extending six miles to cope with the she-demon Pūtanā, then the natural filial love of Yaśodā would have been hurt because in that way Yaśodā would have come to

One cannot manufacture a God by one's mental speculation or by numerical votes, as has become a practice for the less intelligent class of men. God is God eternally, and an ordinary living entity is eternally a part and parcel of God. God is one without a second, and the ordinary living entities are many without number. All such living entities are maintained by God Himself, and that is the verdict of the Vedic literatures. When Krsna was on the lap of His mother, the demon Pūtana appeared before His mother and prayed to nurture the child in her lap. Mother Yasoda agreed, and the child was transferred onto the lap of Pūtana, who was in the garb of a respectable lady. Pūtana wanted to kill the child by smearing poison on the nipple of her breast. But when everything was complete, the Lord sucked her breast along with her very air of life, and the demon's gigantic body, said to be as long as six miles, fell down. But Lord Krsna did not need to expand Himself to the length of the she-demon Pūtana, although He was quite competent to extend Himself more than six miles long. In His Vamana incarnation He posed Himself as a dwarf brahmana, but when He took possession of His land, promised by Bali Maharaja, He expanded His footstep to the top end of the universe, extending over thousands and millions of miles. So it was not very difficult for Krsna to perform a miracle by extending His bodily feature, but He had no desire to do it because of His deep filial love for His mother, Yasoda. If Yasoda would have seen Krsna in her lap extending six miles to cope with the she-demon Pūtana, then the natural filial love of Yasoda would have been hurt because in that way Yasoda would come to know that her so-called son, Krsna, was God Himself. And with the knowledge of the Godhead of Krsna, Yasodamayi would have lost the temper of her love for Krsna as a natural mother. But as far as Lord Krsna is concerned, He is God always, either as a child on the lap of His mother, or as the coverer of the universe, Vamanadeva. He does not require to become God by undergoing severe penances, although some men think of becoming God in that way. By undergoing severe austerities and penances, one cannot become one or equal with God, but one can attain most of the godly qualities. A living being can attain godly qualities to a large extent, but he cannot become God; whereas Krsna, without undergoing any type of penance, is God always, either in the lap of His mother or growing up or at any stage of growth. (More...)

So at the age of only three months He killed the Sakatasura who remained hidden behind a cart in the house of Yasodamayi. And when He was crawling and was disturbing His mother from doing household affairs, the mother tied Him with a grinding pestle, but the naughty child dragged the pestle up to a pair of very high arjuna trees in the yard of Yasodamayi, and when the pestel was stuck in between the pair of trees, they fell down with a horrible sound. When Yasodamayi came to see the happenings, she thought that her child was saved from the falling trees by the mercy of the Lord, without knowing that the Lord Himself, crawling in her yard, had wreaked the havoc. So that is the way of reciprocation of love affairs between the Lord and His devotees. Yasodamayi wanted to have the Lord as her child, and the Lord played exactly like a child in her lap, but at the same time played the part of the Almighty Lord whenever it was so required. The beauty of such pastimes was that the Lord fulfilled everyone's desire. In the case of felling the gigantic arjuna tree, the Lord's mission was to deliver the two sons of Kuvera, who were condemned to become trees by the curse of Narada, as well as to play like a crawling child in the yard of Yasoda, who took transcendental pleasure in seeing such activities of the Lord in the very yard of her home. (More...)

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