One important point we have to come to terms with in spiritual life is the simple fact that there are things that we can’t understand. Some things are just inconceivable. It’s not about how many books we study, or how many verses we memorize. Certain things simply can’t be fully understood using our material intelligence. They are inconceivable, period.

This is one of the differences between the devotee and the atheist. An atheist trusts his material intelligence and thus wants to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit into his limited framework as fantasy or mythology. Of course, in the process of trying to explain reality through his restricted intelligence, he ends up creating even more fantastic theories, such as the Big Bang or the idea of life coming spontaneously from dead matter, but atheists don’t seem to care, as long as they are not forced to accept the existence of God.

A devotee, on the other hand, can understand how Krsna is great and can appreciate His inconceivable power. No other story illustrates this more directly than the story of the Brahmana and the cobber.

Once Narada was on the way to see Lord Narayana in Svetadwipa, on the Milk Ocean. Sweta Dwipa is the abode of Lord Ksirodakasayi Vishnu, an eternal Vaikunta planet manifest inside of our material universe. Most of the pastimes of demigods and other personalities from our universe visiting Lord Narayana or visiting Vaikuntha Loka, such as Jaya and Vijaya being cursed by the four Kumaras and Durvasa Muni begging Lord Narayana for help when being chased by the Chakra and so on happen there. This is just a technical difference since there is no difference between Svetadwipa and the other Vaikuntha planets in the spiritual sky, but it’s an interesting detail.

In any case, Narada Muni went to see Lord Narayana, and on the way he met a learned Brahma who requested him to ask Lord Narayana when he would go back to Godhead. A little later, Narada received the same request from a cobbler. When he finally reached Lord Narayana, he asked about the liberation of both devotees. The Lord answered that the cobbler was living his last life and soon would go back home, while the Brahmana still had several lives ahead in the material world.

Narada was surprised that the humble cobbler was going back, while the learned Brahmana was destined to continue transmigrating in the material world and asked Lord Narayana to clarify. Lord Narayana showed a pastime of Him passing an elephant through the eye of a needle and told Narada to relate this to both.

When Narada approached the Brahmana and narrated to him what Lord Naraya was doing, the Brahmana was immediately skeptical. He showed some respect to Narada Muni but bluntly said he didn’t believe in such nonsense. Narada then went to the cobbler, who immediately started crying in ecstasy when he heard Narada describing what the Lord was doing. “Oh, my Lord is wonderful. He can do anything.” When Narada became surprised that he could believe it so easily, the cobbler explained that he was sitting under a banyan tree and observing how the tree was producing so many seeds, each seed containing a complete banyan tree inside. If the Lord was capable of putting so many banyan trees inside of so many seeds, what was the problem of passing an elephant through the eye of a needle?

Narada then understood that the Brahmana was just reading books but had no faith, while the cobbler, although uneducated, was a pure devotee and was thus ready to go back to Godhead.

The moral of the story is that Krsna presents us with so many contradictory details about the structure of the universe, His pastimes, and also many philosophical truths. In many cases, we can’t really understand these things using our intelligence. When Krsna was dancing with the gopis, He made the night as long as a day of Brahma. As Maha-Vishnu, He becomes so big that universes pass through the pores of His body. Similarly, the description of the universe included in the Puranas is completely different from what we can observe with our senses, and it’s said that we have an eternal relationship with Krsna, at the same time that it’s mentioned that no one falls from the spiritual world.

Devotees who have firm faith can easily accept these apparent contradictions as a manifestation of Krsna’s inconceivable power, while others who lack the same faith will become skeptical and end up rationalizing that these are just myths. Thus, this shows us not only the difference between the devotee and the non-devotee, but also between an advanced devotee who has firm faith and a neophyte who is just reading books and collecting quotes.

Once we start understanding and appreciating the greatness of Krsna, it becomes easy to understand his inconceivable power and accept that many things are just beyond our comprehension. Not just us, but even great personalities like Lord Brahma have to go through the same process.

When Brahma tried to play his small trick of hiding the cowherd boys and calves, Krsna showed him a much bigger trick of expanding Himself in innumerable Vishnu forms and assuming the forms of all boys and calves. Brahma thought he was the only Brahma, that there was just one material universe, and that there was just one Lord Vishnu and one Lord Shiva, but suddenly he was forced to deal with the idea that not only there were many Vishnus, but that each of these forms of Vishnu whom Krsna created had his own universe, complete with innumerable living entities, as well as his own Brahma and Shiva. To add to Brahma’s bewilderment, Krsna invoked all the Brahmas of different universes to come before him. Each of these Brahmas never leaves his own universe, but at the same time, they were all present before Krsna, who was sitting inside this particular universe. Brahma could never fully understand that, he was simply forced to accept the inconceivable power of Krsna. If even Lord Brahma can’t understand, what to say about us? Things are just much bigger and more complex than we can imagine.

In Teachings of Queen Kunti (chapter 14), Prabhupada makes an interesting remark on this connection: “Therefore the mentality of Vṛndāvana is the perfect status of mind for devotees. The inhabitants of Vṛndāvana have no concern with understanding Kṛṣṇa. Rather, they want to love Kṛṣṇa unconditionally. It is not that they think, “Kṛṣṇa is God, and therefore I love Him.” In Vṛndāvana Kṛṣṇa does not play as God; He plays there as an ordinary cowherd boy, and although at times He proves that He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the devotees there do not care to know it.”