But there is an effulgence that doesn’t depend on the sun, and that is Krishna Himself. Call it a halo or whatever, it is Krishna’s light. In Bhagavad-gita As It Is, He says that His “supreme abode is not illumined by the sun or moon, nor by fire or electricity.”

In Life Comes From Life, Srila Prabhupada says that only Krsna possesses all mystic power. Birds can fly which we marvel at, but human aviation is a kind of mystic power.

It’s become a feature of kaliyuga that the most lucrative sale item in many American supermarkets is water, and that canned air is a major commodity in the computer, film, and camera industries.

While secularists (atheists) prefer terms like “outer space” to heaven, they’re convinced people would freeze on one side and burn on the other if cast into outer space without a space suit. Yet personalities like Narada Muni can travel much further than spaceships, without the aid of jet fuel, rockets, or a space suit.

The material world is based on envy, a quality absent in the spiritual world. Once Srila Prabhupada spoke of the relationship between the grass and the trees in the spiritual world. He said that the trees would say, how wonderful is the grass. It provides a nice, soft carpet for the Lord and the gopis to walk on. And the grasses would say, how wonderful are the trees as they give the Lord and the gopis a wonderful sight upon which to gaze.

Ultimately everything is Krishna, even maya, who performs the thankless task of keeping conditioned souls imprisoned (and attached to) the material world. Our attachments are intimated in Bhagavad-gita As It Is, 10.41: “Know that all opulent, beautiful and glorious creations spring from but a spark of My splendor.” Purport – “Any glorious or beautiful existence should be understood to be but a fragmental manifestation of Krsna’s opulence, whether it be in the spiritual or material world. Anything extraordinarily opulent should be considered to represent Krsna’s opulence.”

“Impossible is a word in a fool’s dictionary,” Srila Prabhupada was quoted saying when devotees told him they couldn’t publish the seventeen volumes of Caitanya Caritamrta in two months. (From the Introduction to “Prabhupada in Malaysia” by Janananda prabhu)

The first verse of the Gayatri mantra invites meditation on the sun god. Karna worshiped this personality, and it is said that he was the worshipful deity in the home of Nanda Maharaja, the foster father of the Lord. This is text 30 of the eleventh chapter, twelfth canto, of Srimad Bhagavatam: “The sun-god, being nondifferent from Lord Hari, is one soul of all the worlds and their original creator. He is the source of all the ritualistic activities prescribed in the Vedas and has been given many names by the Vedic sages.” There are also references to God appearing as the sun-god in Srimad Bhagavatam 12.6.67, 12.11.31 and 12.11.32.

Analytical and empirical thought pretty much dictates that a whole is the sum of its parts. This has been disputed by philosophers, but it’s the way we’ve been trained to think – it’s sort of built on mathematical models, like 2 + 2 = 4. But the rigidity of this process crumbles with the onslaught of Vedic wisdom. The Bhagavata approach to truth defies the constraints of the human brain. Multiple worlds and multiple dimensions, universes beyond our perception and their instruments cease to be science fiction and fantasy and become reality. How Krishna can be smaller and larger than our universe does not add up empirically. It is the kind of mysticism that atheists love to deride as fanciful and wishful. In Krishna consciousness, the Whole can be much more and much less than the sum of all of His parts – simultaneously.

The three ‘gods,’ Brahma, Siva and Visnu, are known respectively in today’s Hinduistic studies as the creator, destroyer and Maintainer. Why is the Maintainer more important? Well here’s one reason. Any builder or contractor will tell us that the cost to maintain a building for one year is on the average ten per cent of the building cost. That means that in ten years you will have paid twice the cost of the initial construction. After twenty years you will have paid three times the cost of the original building of the structure, and after thirty years, the costs will amount to four times the cost of creation. This means that after thirty years maintenance costs will amount to three times the initial cost of putting up the building. Maintenance is what I call “the Visnu Factor.” The greater ‘value’ then of the building is in its maintenance. Ergo, the maintainer of a thing is ‘greater” than the creation of a thing, Q.E.D.