One who possesses the full opulence of richness, one who possesses all the powers, all the influence, all beauty, all knowledge, all renunciation, that is Bhagavān. So you haven't got to think very ser . . . you take the formula given in the Vedas. That is perfect knowledge. You understand everything. Therefore the intelligent men, they follow the Vedic injunction. Then the knowledge is perfect. It is already there.
So bhagavān uvāca. So when Bhagavān is speaking—atha te sampravakṣyāmi tattvānām—of the truth, lakṣaṇam, characteristic . . . everyone has to understand anything by the characteristic. Just like in the chemical laboratory, if you send something just for chemical analysis just to see whether it is pure, so they have got in their authorized books, pharmacopeia, the characteristic: "The soda bicarb, its characteristic is like this, its taste is like this; it is formed like this, granules or powder or so many things." They analyze. And when the characteristics are corroborated, then they accept, "Yes. It is this." Similarly, you have to accept God from the characteristics, by analysis. Not that any rascal comes and says: "I am Bhagavān." You must know how to analyze Bhagavān. That is there in the śāstra. This word Bhagavān is used not loosely. It has got meaning, characteristics.
Just like Kṛṣṇa said when He was present, He said, mattaḥ parataraṁ nānyat (BG 7.7): "Nobody is superior than Me." He proved it. So long Kṛṣṇa was on the planet, He proved it, that no . . . no more superior. Even from ordinary life as gṛhastha . . . Kṛṣṇa was gṛhastha, householder. Now, He married 16,108 wives. So who has got this potency to marry sixteen thousand? One . . . it is very difficult to maintain one wife. (chuckles) One lady in America, her (she) had a grown-up son. So I asked her, "Why don't you get your son married?" "No, I have no objection. He can maintain wife here, I have no objection." Then I understood that it is very difficult to maintain a wife here. And actually it is difficult. So even from material point of view, Kṛṣṇa, as far as we can calculate, we cannot conceive even at the present moment to maintain more than one wife or two wife. But He was maintaining sixteen thousand wives, 16,108.
But, because we have no conception of God, we take it, "This is all fictitious. God . . ." When God gives His reality, identification, and it is recorded in the śāstra, not by any loafer-class writer but like Vyāsadeva, and we take it fictitious. Just see our position—Vyāsadeva has bothered his brain to write something fictitious. Just see how low-grade persons we are. We don't believe writing of Vyāsadeva. Or sometimes we say, "No, no, this was not written by Vyāsadeva. It is interpolation." If it is interpolation, then why the ācāryas have accepted? They're also fools—Rāmānujācārya, Madhvācārya, Viṣṇu Svāmī . . .? They have made commentary on the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, and they mention, they have accepted, "Yes. Kṛṣṇa has sixteen thousand wives." So Vyāsadeva has written and the ācāryas have accepted. Then I have become such a great scholar that I say it is fictitious. And we have to believe these rascals.