Supreme God, Shree Krishna, got caught in a trap by His devotees. How is that possible?
Someone might think, “Oh, He must be acting,” because we have all heard the shlok that one of His main reasons for coming to Earth is to perform leela (Divine pastimes) that are very attractive to the minds of devotees, so that we have something to engage our minds in. If He just performed boring leelas, in other words, if Krishna simply sat on His throne all day and just acted as God, how long would you listen to that leela? I told the whole leela and it is done.
So one may think, “Krishna has to perform interesting leelas because He knows how worldly we are, how our minds crave variety. To grace us, He performs these leelas, and this amazing devotional material is left behind in the scriptures and in the writings of Saints. On the basis of that, we do devotion and we attain Him.” Yes, this is true.
But what is not true is that He is acting in these leelas.
He is not pretending that He got tricked. He is not pretending when a gopi (cowherd maiden) ties Him up with her chunni (veil), and the supreme, all-powerful God cannot get free. It is not like when you wrestle with a small child, they push you, and you pretend to fall over just to make them happy. They laugh because they do not know you are pretending.
So does supreme God pretend in His leelas? Absolutely not. He forgets that He is God. He forgets His power, His knowledge, even the fact that He is God. Under the effect of Yogamaya (the Divine illusion), under the effect of the power of Divine love, Shree Krishna actually forgets that He is God. How does this happen? It happens through the most powerful power of all.
Sure, He is still God. He is still omnipresent. He is still sarva-shaktimān (all-powerful). He is still omniscient, but there is something even more powerful than all of this. It is His power of prem (Divine love). It’s the essence of Divine bliss, which is the essence of Krishna’s personal power, swaroop-shakti (His intrinsic Divine energy), which is the supreme power out of all of His unlimited powers. This prem shakti is so great, it doesn’t get rid of God’s other powers. He’s still God. A power can’t leave its owner.
So Krishna’s aiśhvarya (Divine majesty) and His sarvagyatā (omniscience) do not leave Him. It’s still there. What happens instead is that they merge.
