Reading of BG 7.7-10
While reading, understanding and appreciating the contents, meaning, theme and the deep underlying ideas and ethos of Slokas 7.7 to 7.10 of Bhagavad Gita, an ordinary layman of average intelligence gets an impression that Lord Krishna is exhibiting lots of ego. No doubt Lord Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but still as far as possible ego needs to be avoided.
Was this intentional and necessary to make Arjuna ready for war? Was there no alternative way/words to guide and explain the contents of these slokas so as to eliminate or reduce the impression of ego?
OR
Is it the case that LORD KRISHNA is above all these?
Do you think that we should suspend our common sense temporarily in this case?
Answer by Romapada Swami: Lord Krishna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. From him comes everything – both material and spiritual. See BG 10.8.
He doesn’t have a need or a desire to show His opulence to anyone. Whatever activity He performs when He descends into this world is mainly for the three reasons as He mentioned in BG – to protect his devotees, to destroy the evil doers and to establish the religiosity – as well as reciprocating the love of His devotees.
Lord Krishna loves His devotees so much that he can go to any extent to show His love and serve them. As in the example of Arjuna, Krishna took a very menial position as a charioteer for Arjuna in the battle field of Kurukshetra.
Krishna’s mission is to attract the suffering living entities in this world to the Spiritual world, His eternal abode of bliss and knowledge. Everyone can live happily in the Spiritual world by loving and serving Krishna.
Krishna’s love is for everyone – devotees, non-devotees, the faithless etc. To attract all kinds of living entities, He performs many kinds of pastimes. Hence He sometimes shows His opulence and super human powers. By seeing His opulence, one can develop a faith in Him as the Supreme protector and well-wisher. One can appreciate and respect Him as Supreme Personality of Godhead. One can get inspired to love Him fully and eventually surrender to Him. Srila Prabhupada puts it very nicely in the purport to BG 11.3 “Now as far as Arjuna is concerned, he is inspired by the statements of Krsna, but in order to convince others in the future who may think that Krsna is an ordinary person, Arjuna desires to see Him actually in His universal form, to see how He is acting from within the universe, although He is apart from it. Arjuna’s addressing the Lord as purusottama is also significant. Since the Lord is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He is present within Arjuna himself; therefore He knows the desire of Arjuna, and He can understand that Arjuna has no special desire to see Him in His universal form, for Arjuna is completely satisfied to see Him in His personal form of Krsna. But the Lord can understand also that Arjuna wants to see the universal form to convince others. Arjuna did not have any personal desire for confirmation. Krsna also understands that Arjuna wants to see the universal form to set a criterion, for in the future there would be so many imposters who would pose themselves as incarnations of God. The people, therefore, should be carefull one who claims to be Krsna should be prepared to show his universal form to confirm his claim to the people.” As you mentioned in your question, Krishna is above the material qualities- He is always transcendental – sat cit-ananda vigraha.
