Study a Verse

• Sceptics may question why the Supreme Lord has created the material world, which is full of birth, maintenance and death.
• Śrī Kṛṣṇa actually desires that all conditioned souls live with Him in His eternal kingdom, but those forgetful souls who are inimical to their loving relationship with God must go to the material world and be subjected to the conditions of time.
• The fortunate conditioned souls are startled into remembrance of their actual position as loving servants of the Lord, and from within the heart the Lord then encourages them to come back home, back to Godhead, where time is conspicuous by its absence and where eternal, blissful existence supersedes the dramatic but disturbing functions of cosmic creation and annihilation.

The purport's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Peril and pride → Friendship and humility. Divinity is revealed amid intimate childhood play.

Chapters 12–19 of Canto 10: Childhood dangers and Brahmā's amazement. An editorial reading of the story's mood, not the text itself. See the emotional arc

Chapter 16: Kṛṣṇa Chastises the Serpent Kāliya

From the chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

Today he has borne upon his head the dust of the lotus feet of the Personality of Godhead, the attainment of which is difficult for even the mother of the universe, the goddess Lakṣmī. Please kindly forgive the offense Kāliya has committed out of ignorance, and allow him to live.”