So to know God, God, He is personally giving instruction how to know God. Kṛṣṇa says, bhagavān uvāca. Here it is not, Vyāsadeva is not speaking, Kṛṣṇa says. Because sometimes Kṛṣṇa is misunderstood; therefore Vyāsadeva writes or says in this connection, bhagavān uvāca. Bhagavān means the fully opulent, samagrasya. Aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya: He is the most powerful, the supreme rich, supreme wise, supreme beautiful and at the same time supremely renounced. These qualification makes one Bhagavān. So kṛṣṇas tu bhagavān svayam (SB 1.3.28). That is the verdict of Vedic literature. So īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ (Bs. 5.1). Bhagavān is also sometimes called Parameśvara. Īśvara means the ruling power or the personality who controls. So everyone of us, we have got some controlling power either in the society or family or community or government or international. Everyone has got some capacity to control, but nobody is supreme controller. Supreme controller means that He is no more controlled by anyone. Other controller, they are controllers, but they are controlled by somebody else. But Kṛṣṇa is not that kind of controller. He is the supreme controller means He controls everyone but nobody has above Him to control. Therefore He is called Parameśvara. Īśvaraḥ means controller.
Īśvaraḥ paramaḥ kṛṣṇaḥ sac-cid-ānanda-vigrahaḥ (Bs. 5.1). He is not nirākāra; vigraha. Vigraha means form, but His form is different from our form. Therefore He is described as sac-cid-ānanda. Sat means eternal, cit means full of knowledge, and ānanda means full of transcendental bliss, eternal bliss. The beginning is eternal, so eternal life, eternal complete full knowledge and eternal bliss; this is the composition of Kṛṣṇa's body. But mūḍhas, rascals, they think of Kṛṣṇa as ordinary human being. Avajānanti māṁ mūḍhā mānuṣīṁ tanum āśritam (BG 9.11). Fools and rascals, mūḍhāḥ—mūḍhāḥ means fools and rascals—because they see that Kṛṣṇa is incarnation just like ordinary human being: cousin of Arjuna or nephew of Kuntī, like that. Paraṁ bhāvam ajānantaḥ, Kṛṣṇa comes just like ordinary human being, but that does not mean He is ordinary human being. Therefore Vyāsadeva says bhagavān uvāca. If you consider Kṛṣṇa as ordinary human being, then you are missing the point. And I have already given the definition of Bhagavān.
One of the qualification of Bhagavān is aiśvaryasya samagrasya vīryasya yaśasaḥ śriyaḥ (Viṣṇu Purāṇa 6.5.47), jñāna. He has got full knowledge. He hasn't got to take knowledge from anyone else. Svābhāvikī jñāna. Bhagavān means svābhāvikī jñāna-bala-kriyā ca. Na tasya kāryaṁ karaṇam, this is Vedic injunction,
- na tasya kāryaṁ karaṇaṁ ca vidyate
- na tat-samaś cābhyadhikaś ca dṛśyate
- parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate
- svābhāvikī jñāna-bala-kriyā ca
(Cc. Madhya 13.65, purport)
Svābhāvikī jñāna, all full knowledge He has got. Ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavaḥ (BG 10.8), He is the creator of everything. So how He got this knowledge to float these big, big planets in the air? That is knowledge, that is art. Just like when you float a big aeroplane in the sky, it requires knowledge, it requires technology, art. It is not flying automatically; that is a mistake. So if to float an ordinary airship it requires so much knowledge, so much technology, how much knowledge is there when you see that the biggest planet, the sun is floating in the air, and it is lying in one corner of the sky and exactly in time it is rotating, yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakraḥ? There is knowledge. There is art who has fixed it. Therefore in the Vedas it is said yasyājñayā bhramati sambhṛta-kāla-cakraḥ. He is also rotating in the orbit by the order of Govinda. Govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi **.
So there are so many things to learn and to understand what is God and what is Kṛṣṇa.