We find in the case of Śiśupāla, a couple of things happen as he took birth. He was also extremely opulent. You may have noticed in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Śiśupāla was materially no slouch. He was practically described as more opulent than Kṛṣṇa. He had so much opulence he was killed by Rāmacandra in his next life. He had all these assets, and we all know that when he was a little child, he began saying the Lord's Names, and it's a chanting, but he was blaspheming Kṛṣṇa. He still had this hatred towards the Lord, and in his last act at the Rājasūya Yajña, where he tried to ruin the whole yajña, he waited till the perfect time to stand up and say, "Kṛṣṇa is not qualified," because previously, they could have taken back the yajña, but after it was already finished, and he said, if they had followed him and said Kṛṣṇa wasn't qualified to be the first one worshiped in this yajña, it would have nullified the whole rājasūya. So he was diabolical in his calculation, because he hated Kṛṣṇa so much, and he stood up in the assembly and began blaspheming Kṛṣṇa. So what happened there?

Kṛṣṇa artfully cut off his head—artfully, I say because it was a yajña, he didn't want to spill any blood. So He's so precise in the way He chopped off his head. Sorry, I know it's a family show that no blood hit the ground. What's deeper and what's related to this conversation is that Śiśupāla, in the last moment before his head was severed, drank the beauty of the face of Lord Kṛṣṇa. What's more, he had been chanting Kṛṣṇa's names, and this I brought up at the Japa circle this morning, as mentioned by Rūpa Gosvāmī, there are two main ways that one becomes perfect in this life: one is by saying the names of the Lord, and the other is by seeing His beauty, because it's unparalleled. Rūpa Gosvāmī uses this as proof because Hiraṇyakaśipu saw Lord Nṛsiṁhadev, Rāvaṇa saw Lord Rāmacandra—no liberation. But when Śiśupāla saw Kṛṣṇa and chanted His names, he was liberated at that point.

So there's a way in which Kṛṣṇa is Bhagavān Svayam. We have the description of Lord Rāmacandra within the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, but it's by way of comparison to take us through the rasas and bring us to the ultimate conclusion that Kṛṣṇa is the reservoir of all rasas. What's more, His beauty is incomparable even to His other forms. Let's not get it wrong. They're all Kṛṣṇa, but only Kṛṣṇa is Kṛṣṇa, and only those killed by Kṛṣṇa are completely liberated.

(excerpt from the talk)

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