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Srila Prabhupada attended the 7pm arati kirtana, smiling broadly from his large maroon and gold vyasasana, enjoying the enthusiastic affair. While chanting, some of the devotees ran the full length of the temple, leaping exuberantly at Prabhupada's feet. They turned and then ran back, repeating the procedure at the Deity room end.

Prabhupada spoke on Chapter 9 of Bhagavad-gita, verse 4:

"By Me, in my unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them."

The theme of the class: how God is inside and outside of everything.

"Sometimes someone will ask a foolish question, 'Can you show me God?' Krsna is giving the answer to the question here in this verse, that maya tatam idam sarvam: I am everywhere. If you have eyes to see, you can see Me." God, Prabhupada explained, existed everywhere, simultaneously. He gave a practical example. "Just like I am here, you are here, but you are not in your apartment. You are absent from your apartment. But God is in His apartment and He is everywhere -- that is God. Similarly, the original God is Krsna, but He expands Himself throughout His creation. God expands Himself in so many ways, and for the material world, He is expanded as the purusa avataras, Karanodakasayi Visnu, Garbhodakasayi Visnu and Ksirodakasayi Visnu."

Prabhupada described how the Karanodakasayi Visnu lies down on the causal ocean, and from his breathing, innumerable bubbles expand as universes -- jagadandas. "Anda means egg. So there are millions, and to maintain the millions and millions of universes by His one portion, He is spread and He is called, Ksirodakasayi Visnu."

"If the rascals claim that 'I am God', then we should ask them, 'What kind of God are you? Are you spread everywhere?'"

Prabhupada gave a practical example to enable his audience to grasp the awesome concept of how God was expanded everywhere. "Whilst flying to Melbourne, we saw how, within a second, the sun arose from the sea water; not from the sea -- it looks like that. Immediately within a second, the whole world became illuminated. How God is expanded everywhere, you can take this example. The sun is away from us -- according to the scientist's calculation, 93 million miles away. And immediately, within a second, this sunshine is expanded all over the universe."

If this was possible by an ordinary material thing, the sun, Prabhupada reasoned, then how much more powerful was Krsna, Who is fully spiritual? "He can expand Himself all over the universe. So when Krsna says maya tatam idam sarvam, 'I am expanded everywhere', where is the difficulty to understand? There is no difficulty if you are a sane person."

Srila Prabhupada elaborated further on the example. The sun was so powerful, he said, that for millions of years it had been giving its energy, heat and light, and yet still it was bright and powerful, its temperature still high. Within the universe, the sunshine was the cause of growth for all vegetables, flowers and fruits -- everything, in fact. By meditating on the power of the sun, he said, one could appreciate just how more powerful was Krsna.

Prabhupada cautioned, however, that one should not conclude that "God is expanded everywhere, so whatever I worship that is God". This he said was the philosophy of the pantheists.

He continued to describe the inconceivable nature of God. "But here in this verse Krsna says that although He is everywhere, at the same time He is not everywhere as well. The same example: the sunshine is not different from the sun, and because the sunshine has entered within your room, it does not mean the sun has entered in your room. If you try to understand this example, then you will understand that God is everywhere, and still He is not everywhere. This is His inconceivable power."

Prabhupada drew the lecture to a close. "Therefore, if we want to worship God, then we have to worship His form, His name, His qualities, pastimes. Then we shall realise that God is a person. If we understand this, then it will not be difficult for us to understand what is God. Then we can establish our original relationship. If we act accordingly, then our life will be successful."


- From "The Great Transcendental Adventure" by HG Kurma Prabhu