Thou son of Vasudeva

—5—

Thou son of Vasudeva,
Destroyer of the demons Kaṁsa and Cāṇūra,
Thou supreme bliss of Mother Devakī,
O Thou, guru of the universe,
Teacher of the worlds,
Thee, O Kṛṣṇa, I salute.

Śaṅkara describes Him as the son of Vasudeva and Devakī. Does he mean thereby that he is worshiping an ordinary, material man? He worships Kṛṣṇa because he knows that Kṛṣṇa's birth and activities are all supernatural. As stated in the Bhagavad-gītā [4.9], Kṛṣṇa's birth and activities are mysterious and transcendental, and therefore only the devotees of Kṛṣṇa can know them perfectly. Śaṅkara was not such a fool that he would accept Kṛṣṇa as an ordinary man and at the same time offer Him all devotional obeisances, knowing Him as the son of Devakī and Vasudeva. According to the Bhagavad-gītā, only by knowing the transcendental birth and activities of Kṛṣṇa can one attain liberation by acquiring a spiritual form like Kṛṣṇa's. There are five different kinds of liberation. One who merges into the spiritual aura of Kṛṣṇa, known as the impersonal Brahman effulgence, does not fully develop his spiritual body. But one who fully develops his spiritual existence becomes an associate of Nārāyaṇa or Kṛṣṇa in different spiritual abodes. One who enters into the abode of Nārāyaṇa develops a spiritual form exactly like Nārāyaṇa's (four-handed), and one who enters into the highest spiritual abode of Kṛṣṇa, known as Goloka Vṛndāvana, develops a spiritual form of two hands like Kṛṣṇa's. Śaṅkara, as an incarnation of Lord Śiva, knows all these spiritual existences, but he did not disclose them to his then Buddhist followers because it was impossible for them to know about the spiritual world. Lord Buddha preached that the void is the ultimate goal, so how could his followers understand spiritual variegatedness? Therefore Śaṅkara said, brahma satyaṁ jagan mithyā, or, material variegatedness is false but spiritual variegatedness is fact. In the Padma Purāṇa Lord Śiva has admitted that he had to preach the philosophy of māyā, or illusion, in the Kali-yuga as another edition of the "void" philosophy of Buddha. He had to do this by the order of the Lord for specific reasons. He disclosed his real mind, however, by recommending that people worship Kṛṣṇa, for no one can be saved simply by mental speculations composed of word jugglery and grammatical maneuvers. Śaṅkara further instructs:

"You intellectual fools, just worship Govinda, just worship Govinda, just worship Govinda. Your grammatical knowledge and word jugglery will not save you at the time of death."