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God's easy accessibility

CHENNAI : The superhuman deeds (Lila) of the Lord during His incarnation as Krishna have inspired generations of devotees and saints down the ages, and also the creation of innumerable works in devotional genre. The reason for this was His easy accessibility to one and all during the period of His advent, which enables a devotee to relate to Him. His superhuman acts like the killing of the various demons despatched to kill Him by Kamsa even as a baby are not just described in the Puranas to highlight His divine nature but also to underscore their deeper philosophical significance.

In his discourse, Vaduvur Sri Veeraraghavachariar said Lord Krishna proved the truth that the Lord was manifest as the entire creation when the creator, Brahma, hid all the calves and the cowherd boys to witness His divine nature firsthand. Krishna assumed their forms and a year passed without anyone the wiser.

And, when Brahma returned them he was confused for he could not differentiate between the two and the Lord by His power granted him the vision of His divine form in all that he beheld. Transfixed by what he saw by divine grace, Brahma extolled Lord Krishna.

The manner in which Lord Krishna graced the Gopis (cowherd maidens) of Brindavan, the Rasa lila, conveys the truth that the entire creation is the body (Sarira) of the Supreme Being (who is the soul), which is the underlying concept unique to Visishtadvaita metaphysics. Thus the relationship between God and His creation is intrinsic and inseparable. This unity underlying the diversity that is apparent to human experience can be understood and experienced only by loving devotion to God.

These Gopis observed a sacred vow for a month to elicit divine grace. The spiritual union they experienced is symbolically expressed as `marriage' in devotional mysticism to highlight that the souls rightly belong to God. It is the bridal mysticism of the Gopis that Andal identified with and exemplified in her life. She has elaborated its dynamics in her hymn Tiruppavai.

Kamsa sent many Asuras to kill Krishna out of fear for his life and their extermination was one of the purposes of His descent to the world — to lessen the burden of Mother Earth ravaged by these evil forces.

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