Question : How did Krishna disappear from the material world in that lila?
Answer by Romapada Swami:
The departure of Lord Krishna from this material world is described in the Mahabharata, Mausala parva, and also in the Srimad Bhagavatam. After having established the Pandavas as the emperors of the planet, Lord Krishna decided to wind up his pastimes in this universe, and on the pretense of a curse, He arranged to withdraw all the members of the Yadu clan from the surface of the earth. And then He sat down in a forest, displaying His brilliant four-armed form and surrounded by His personal weapons in their embodied form, when on the pretense of the curse, and by the inconceivable will of the Lord, a hunter named Jara mistakenly pierced the lotus foot of the Lord with an arrow. The Lord then departed from the planet, and it is described that as He entered His abode, even the demigods, headed by Lord Brahma, could not see Him or ascertain His movements, and thus became astonished.
As with the appearance of the Lord from the womb of Devaki, His disappearance, although resembling an ordinary living entity, is actually an enactment of yogamaya, and is very difficult to understand for the common man. Although His body is non-different from His self, unlike ordinary conditioned living entities, it is described that when Krishna returned to His abode, He left behind His virat-rupa form in the material world just to bewilder the atheists who did not understand the transcendental nature of the Lord. (Cf. SB 1.14.8)
