---
section: Library
booktitle: "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy"
booktype: "Translations"
bookcode: "KRISHN"
dategiven: "29 September 1970 am"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #8"
chaptertitle: "He Alone Wins who does not Want to Win"
acode: "7009290"
shorttitle: "KRISHN08"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy: Chapter #8"
---

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<p class="question">QUESTIONER: KRISHNA'S LIFE, PARTICULARLY HIS CHILDHOOD, IS FULL OF STORIES OF HIS EXTRAORDINARY HEROISM. HE KILLED THE TYRANT KIND KANSA AND DESTROYED DEMONS LIKE KIRTI, AGHA, BAKA AND GHOTAKA; IN A DUEL HE DEFEATED POWERFUL WRESTLERS LIKE CHANOOR AND MUSTIKA. HE SUBDUED A VERY VENOMOUS SNAKE KNOWN AS KALIA, AND PUT OUT A WHOLE FOREST FIRE SINGLE-HANDED. DO YOU THINK THESE ARE TRUE STORIES OR MYTHICAL ONES? AND WHAT DO THEY SUGGEST AND SYMBOLIZE?
IN THIS CONTEXT I WOULD LIKE TO RECALL YOUR WORDS, "WHEN KRISHNA SAYS THAT HE IS HERE TO DESTROY THE WICKED, HE ACTUALLY MEANS TO CHANGE THEM, TO REFORM THEM." BUT THESE STORIES CLEARLY SAY HE REALLY DESTROYED THEM. PLEASE EXPLAIN.</p>


In this connection it is necessary to understand one thing which has always puzzled people who wanted to understand Krishna. How is it that Krishna, in his teens, fights and defeats such powerful persons as those you mention? And people had only one way to solve this puzzle, and that was to accept Krishna as an incarnation of God -- omnipotent, all powerful, capable of doing anything he wants to do. But in its depths it means the same thing, that the strong defeats the weak, that a great power wins over a small power. They say that though Krishna is young in age, he is so powerful that even demons are no match for him. But in my view such interpretations do scant justice to Krishna's life. Basically these interpretations stem from confused and wrong thinking. They stem from the general belief that the strong wins over the weak.


I have something entirely different to say here, and it is necessary to understand it. In my view, he alone wins who does not desire to win, and he who wants to win loses. All these stories, as I understand them, say the same thing, one with no desire to win is going to win and one desiring to win is going to lose. In fact, defeat is hiding itself in the very desire to win, in the depths of this desire. And absence of this desire to win means the person concerned has already won, that he does not need it anymore.


You can understand it in a different way. If someone is desiring and striving to win in life, it means that deep down he is lacking something, that he is suffering from an inferiority complex. Deep down, such a person is aware of the inferiority he is trying to cover through winning. And if, on the other hand, someone is not out to win it means he is already established in his eminence, there is not even a shade of inferiority in him to disprove by resorting to winning.


It will be easy to understand if we look at it from the Taoist viewpoint. One day Lao Tzu told his friends, "No one could defeat me all my life."


One of his friends rose from his seat and said, "Please tell us the secret which made you invincible, because each one of us wants to win and no one wants to be defeated in life."


Lao Tzu began to laugh, and he said, "Then you will not be able to understand the secret, because you don't have the patience to hear the whole thing. You interrupted me when I had not completed my statement. Let me complete it. I say, no one could defeat me because I was already defeated. It was difficult to defeat me because I never wanted to win." Then Lao Tzu told them they were mistaken if they thought they could understand his secret.


Your very desire to win is going to turn into your defeat. It is the craving for success that ultimately turns into failure. Your excessive desire to live lands you in the grave. Your obsession for health is bound to turn into sickness. Life is very strange. Here we miss the very thing that we crave for and cling to, and we find what we don't seek. If one does not seek anything, it means he does not lack it, he already has it.


I will not say that Krishna wins because he is very powerful. It would be the same old logic that the big fish devours the small fish. There is nothing extraordinary in it if Krishna won because of his strength. Then the demons would have won if they had been stronger than Krishna. It is the simple arithmetic of power. But up to now people have interpreted Krishna's victory in these very terms, because they did not have any other criteria.


Jesus says, "Blessed are the meek, because they shall inherit the earth." It is a very contradictory statement, that those who are humble will own the earth. But it is true. Krishna wins because he does not long to win. In fact, a child is not concerned about winning, he is only interested in playing the game. The desire to win, to conquer, is a later development in the life of man, when his mind is diseased. For Krishna everything is play. It is play for Krishna even when he is fighting powerful demons and others. On the other hand, the demons are anxious to win, and that too against an innocent and meek child who has no idea of victory or defeat, who takes everything as play. And the demons are defeated at his hands. That is as it should be.


In Japan there is an art of fighting which is called judo. There is another, similar, known as ju-jitsu. It is good to know and understand them. Judo is an art of wrestling, but it is a very strange and unique way of wrestling. Its rules are quite contrary to the ordinary rules of games with which we are familiar. If I have to fight you in a wrestling bout, I will strike you, attack you first and you will do everything to defend yourself. In the same way you will strike me and I will defend myself. This is the general rule of fighting all over. But judo has just the opposite rules.


The main rule of judo says: never attack; one who attacks will court defeat. Because it is believed that much energy is spent in attacking, it is always good that I provoke my opponent to attack me and I remain at ease, relaxed. I should do nothing on my part except provoke the contestant to attack me. While I should incite his anger, his hostility, I should take every care to keep my own peace in spite of my opponent's provocations. And another rule of judo says that I should not resist at all if my opponent attacks me, strikes me. On the contrary, my body should remain in such a relaxed state that it wholly takes in and absorbs the attack. It is strange, but true.


This is the secret of judo. Do not attack on your part, provoke your contestant to attack, and if attacked take in the attack with perfect ease and absorb it.


Do you know that if you travel with a drunkard in a bullock cart and the cart falls in a ditch, you will be hurt while the drunk will come out unhurt and unscathed? And do you know why it is so? Is it that the drunk is unhurt because he is the more powerful? And you are hurt because of being weak? No, it is not so. When the cart meets with an accident you are quite conscious, which makes you nervous about the hazards of the accident. You think you are going to be hurt, and therefore your whole body becomes tense and rigid with a view to saving itself from the impending hurt.


On the other hand, the drunkard has no idea the cart has fallen; for him it makes no difference if the cart is on the road or in the ditch. He does not make any effort to protect himself; on the contrary, he cooperates fully with the falling cart, with the whole accident. He does not resist in any way, and it is for this reason that he remains unhurt. When a drunkard falls, he falls like a bagful of cotton; he is not hurt.


Look at a child: he falls every day and does not break his bones. An old man falls and soon goes to the hospital. What is the matter? Is the child stronger than the grownup? No, the child remains unhurt for the simple reason that he does not resist, that he cooperates with the fall. He accepts it. It is this acceptability, and not strength, that helps him. Judo says that if someone hits you, you should accept it without any resistance. Judo is difficult; it is arduous to learn this art. In a judo contest you have neither to be on the offensive not on the defensive, because both ways energy is wasted. Rather than hitting your contestant you have to provoke him to attack you, to hit you, and be in complete readiness to receive and absorb it, In short, you have to fuse with it. If you do so, you not only go unhurt but you also gain the extra energy that comes with the opponent's attack. So it often happens in judo that a weak contestant wins and his very strong opponent loses.


I don't say that Krishna knew judo. But in fact, every child knows judo in a way; judo is his secret If Krishna won against his powerful enemies, the reason was that for him fighting was a play, play-acting, fun. I don't say that all these stories about his heroism are historical; I am not concerned with their historicity. I am investigating their psychological truth.


It has to be remembered that Krishna is not aggressive; he is not on a mission of conquest. It is always others who attack him with a view to destroying him. And I can say that if a Muhammad Ali comes to fight with a child like Krishna he is bound to be defeated. His act shows he is intrinsically weak and afraid, that he utterly lacks self-confidence. He is already a vanquished man; he need not go after a fight. He should have accepted his defeat before the contest.


When one thinks of attacking and defeating another, it means one has already accepted one's inferiority before the other. One who is really strong and great cannot think of fighting and subduing anyone, because he does not find himself inferior to another in any manner. He does not need to defeat someone to buttress his self confidence; he is sufficient unto himself. It is always the inner feeling of inferiority that makes one aggressive and violent.


The secret of Krishna's victory over his very powerful adversaries lies in his being a child, soft and weak. It lies in his not being fond of fighting and defeating anyone. It lies in his utter desirelessness. Whether these events are historical or not is not my concern, but I hold that the whole philosophy of judo, the active art of jujitsu, begins with Krishna's life.


I would say that Krishna is the first master of ju-jitsu. No one in India, China or Japan knows the secret of Krishna's amazing victory over his adversaries. That he does not want to win is his secret. He takes everything -- even an enemy's attack -- as a play, and he responds to it with utter playfulness. On the other hand, his attacker is tense and anxious, anxious to win, anxious for his life; he is divided and broken, and so he is bound to lose before Krishna. It all means that it is difficult to defeat a child.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: KRISHNA IS SAID TO HAVE SHOWN YASHODA, HIS FOSTER MOTHER, THE WHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE ENCLOSED IN HIS MOUTH. HE IS ALSO SAID TO HAVE GIFTED HIS DIVINE EYE TO ARJUNA TO ENABLE HIM TO SEE HIS UNIVERSAL FORM. IT IS ALSO SAID THAT KRISHNA TOOK BACK THE DIVINE EYE FROM ARJUNA AFTER HE HAD SEEN HIS UNIVERSAL FORM. PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE EPISODES.</p>


We don't have the eyes to see it, but the universal form of the divine exists everywhere. If we had eyes we could see the universe all over. Krishna is just an instrument for Yashoda to see the whole of the universe in his mouth. By and large, every mother sees the vision of the universe epitomized in her son. Every mother has the vision of the supreme in her son. It is another thing that she loses this vision with the passage of time, but at some stage she has it for sure.


Yashoda could see the universe, the universal form of the divine and the divine itself in the mouth of Krishna; so does every mother, more or less. But Yashoda could see it fully because she is a perfect mother. And Krishna could be a right vehicle for it because he is a perfect son. There is nothing miraculous about it. If you can see me with very loving eyes you will see the divine in me too. All you need is to have eyes that see.


And secondly, a right medium is equally necessary. Then you can see the face of the whole universe enclosed in a small fruit or flower. Here, the whole, the immense, is hidden in every atom. The whole of the ocean is ensconced in a single drop of water. If you can look deeply and totally into a drop, you will see the whole ocean hidden in it.


Arjuna too, could see, because he is in such deep love with Krishna. It is a rare kind of friendship that exists between him and Krishna. It is no wonder that Arjuna, in a moment of deep intimacy with Krishna, sees the universal form of the divine in him.


It is not that such a thing has happened only once, it has happened thousands of times. It always happens. It is a different thing that all of the instances have not been recorded.


It is good to understand if the divine vision, once gifted, can be withdrawn. Divine vision, really, can neither be given as a gift nor withdrawn. It happens in some moments and it can be lost again. It is really a happening. In some moments you touch the peak of your consciousness where everything is seen so clearly. But it is very arduous to live on that peak; it takes millions of lives to deserve it, to earn this blessing. Ordinarily one has to come down from that peak again and again. It is as if you jump off the ground. and for a moment, like a bird on the wing, you are out of the gravitational pull of the earth -- but only for a moment. With the passing of the moment you are back on the ground again. But you have known how it is to fly like a bird on the wing for a moment.


In the same way consciousness has its own field of gravitation, its magnetic pull which keeps it down. In a particular situation your consciousness is able to take such a high jump that, like a flash of lightning, you can have a glimpse of the immense, and then you return to the earth. For sure, now you are not the same person you were before you had the glimpse. You cannot be the same again, because even a momentary glimpse of the immense is enough to change you; you are now a different person. But the glimpse is again lost.


It is as though I am walking on a dark night and there is a sudden flash of lightning which enables me to see clearly the flowers and the hills before me. With the lightning gone, the flowers and the hills are again enveloped in darkness. But now I am not the same person I was before the lightning occurred, although I am back in the same darkness. It is even worse. Before the lightning, I was not aware that there are hills and flowers and trees, but now I am aware that they are there. Although the darkness is as deep as before, now it cannot deprive me of my awareness of the hills and trees and flowers; now they have become parts of my being. Whether I see them again or not, I know in the depths of my being that they are there, that they exist. Now the fragrance of the flowers will reach me even in the dark, and the winds will bring me a message from the hills. Darkness can hide them from me, but it cannot erase my awareness that they exist.


No one can give you the divine vision, but Krishna seems to be telling Arjuna that he will give it to him. This is what creates difficulty for you. Really, human language suffers from obscurity; it still lacks clarity of expression. We have to use words that don't have the vitality to convey what one really means to say. One often says, "I gave so and so my love." But love cannot be given, it is not a commodity. Love simply happens; it is neither given nor taken. But putting it into words, a mother says, "I give so much love to my son." It is a wrong statement. Love has just happened between the mother and her son.


It is the same linguistic clumsiness that has led to this question with regard to Krishna's statement about divine vision. It is nothing more than that. Like love, it happens; it cannot be given or taken. And like love, it can also be lost. Heights are attained and lost; it is difficult to stay at great heights. Hillary and Tensing climbed Everest, hoisted a flag there, and then returned to the plains. It is hard to live on Everest, or on any great height for that matter. It is possible, however, that some day we will manage to live on Everest for a long period. But to live at the peak of consciousness is still more difficult, tremendously difficult. But it is not impossible. People like Krishna live there. People like Arjuna once in a while leap to it, see it and drop back to the earth.


Divine vision happens; it is not a thing to be given or taken. But our language thinks in terms of give and take, and therefore this difficulty has arisen. It would be correct to say that divine vision happened between Krishna and Arjuna in that moment. Krishna was the instrument, the medium, and Arjuna was the one who took the jump. But in ordinary language we will say that Krishna gifted him with divine vision. As I said, if someone with open and loving eyes looks at me sitting here, something will happen to him. But when it happens he will say that it is a gift from me. But who am I to gift it? -- although I will say it the same way if I have to say it in words. But in reality I cannot gift it.


Chemistry has a term known as catalytic agent, and it is significant. A catalytic agent is one whose very presence causes something to happen. It facilitates and accelerates the process of this happening, although it does not do anything in the matter and remains completely unaffected itself. For example, if we have to produce water by combining hydrogen and oxygen, then we will need the presence of electricity for this combination to take place. Without the presence of electricity hydrogen and oxygen will refuse to combine and turn into water.


It is because of lightning in the sky that the elements of hydrogen and oxygen in the clouds combine and produce water and rain. Without the aid of lightning, clouds would not turn into rain. But no one can say that electricity does anything to affect this change; it does nothing. On its part electricity remains absolutely inactive and unaffected by this process of hydrogen and oxygen combining and turning into water. Its presence is enough to do the miracle.


There are many catalytic agents like electricity known to the science of chemistry, and all investigations show that catalysts lose nothing in the process; neither do they lose or do anything.
Krishna is such a catalytic agent.


A Master, a guru, is an illusion. There are no Masters in the world, they are all just catalysts. In the presence of someone your consciousness can attain to a height which may not be possible without that presence. But Arjuna is bound to feel that Krishna favored him with divine vision. When something like this happens to Vivekananda in the presence of Ramakrishna, he is certainly going to say that it was Ramakrishna's gift. And if Ramakrishna does not want to get involved with linguistic nuances, he will okay it too. Except people like me, no one wants to get involved with linguistic finesse; the language of give and take is enough for them. That term "give and take" is not appropriate here, but we really don't have a suitable word to express such transcendental experiences.


Ask a painter like Van Gogh if he has painted a certain picture. He will say, "No, I did not paint it, it just happened through me." But you will say; "What difference does it make?" It really makes a great difference. Maybe Van Gogh, to escape the trouble of linguistic finesse, tells you that he painted the picture. In a way it is not wrong: he did paint it and people did see him paint it. But Van Gogh knows in his innermost being that he is really not the creator of this painting; he is just an instrument, a medium. It is a happening and not a doing. It emerged from his innermost being, from the unknown, and he only became its medium, its vehicle. Van Gogh will say, "I was just a witness to its manifestation."


This happening of divine vision between Krishna and Arjuna is not a solitary event; it has happened any number of times. This is what happened between Buddha and Moggalayan, between Buddha and Sariputta, between Mahavira and Gautama, between Jesus and Luke, between Rama krishna and Vivekananda. It has happened thousands of times, and it is not a miracle. Miracles simply don't happen. It is our ignorance which takes something to be a miracle; otherwise, miracles have no place in existence. Whatever happens is a scientific phenomenon, a fact, a truth. Everything in existence is real and true, but we in our ignorance see it as something miraculous.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: IS DIVINE VISION REALLY FRIGHTENING? HOW IS IT ARJUNA WAS SCARED BY IT?</p>


You want to know if divine vision is frightening, because Arjuna was scared. It can be so, if one is not prepared for it. Even happiness, if it comes to you unexpectedly. will suddenly frighten you. People who win lotteries should know this. Poverty does not kill somebody as much as wealth if it floods him all of a sudden.


I love to tell this story again and again. Someone won a lottery. His wife became very anxious, since it was far too much money for her poor husband. The lottery was worth one hundred thousand dollars. Even five dollars was a big sum for him, and here he was going to get one hundred thousand in a lump. But luckily the husband was not present in the house when the news arrived; he was in his office where he was a petty clerk. So she rushed to the local church and told the priest, "My husband has won a lottery worth one hundred thousand dollars. It is too much money for him. Soon he will return from his office, and I am afraid this happy news might kill him. Can you do anything about it?"
The priest said, "Don't worry, I will come to your house soon."


The priest came. The woman asked him what he was going to do. The priest said, "I have thought out the whole plan. He will receive his happiness in installments." When the old man came home, the priest told him, "You will be glad to know that you have won a lottery worth fifty thousand dollars."


The clerk said, "If it is true, I will donate twenty five thousand to your church." Hearing this the priest died of heart failure. Twenty-five thousand proved too much for the poor priest.


What happened to Arjuna was very sudden It was not so with Sariputta and Moggalayan; they had long prepared themselves for it. People on the path of meditation are never scared by experiencing the divine. But it is really shattering for those who have not been through meditation, because the experience in itself is so great, so sudden and so blissful, that it is very difficult to bear it. Its suddenness and the excessive joy it brings with it can choke your heart, can even kill you.


Suffering does not scare us so much, because we are so used to it. In a way we are always prepared for it; in fact, we go through it every day. We live in suffering from morning to night. We grow with suffering; we are brought up with suffering. Suffering has become the way of our lives. So we are capable of handling the greatest misfortunes and the sufferings they bring with them; it does not take more than a few days to adjust to them. But happiness is not the way of our life; even a small dose of happiness can make us restless. And it was not an ordinary happiness that dawned on Arjuna; it was an avalanche of bliss. And as it came very suddenly, it had great intensity. So he was scared and he almost shouted, "Stop it! withdraw it! I can take no more!" It was natural, very natural. It is ironic, but it is so.


There are many strong people in the world who can cope with the greatest suffering, but there are not many who can cope with a great measure of happiness. Although we always pray for happiness, we will scream with terror if we come upon it suddenly. That is why God grants us happiness in installments, in small measures, in a very miserly manner. And whenever happiness comes suddenly and in large measure, it scares us.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: THE LAST PART OF THE FIRST QUESTION REMAINS UNANSWERED BY YOU. ACCORDING TO YOU, WHEN KRISHNA SAYS HE IS HERE TO DESTROY THE WICKED, HE REALLY MEANS TO CHANGE THEM, TO TRANSFORM THEM. BUT THE MANY STORIES OF HIS LIFE CLEARLY SAY HE ACTUALLY DESTROYED THE WICKED.</p>


It would be good to understand this matter.


What seems to us as killing is not really killing in the eyes of Krishna. Those who understand the GEETA will understand. What we think of as killing is not actually killing. To Krishna nobody is ever killed; nobody can ever be killed. But then, what is it that Krishna does We find him killing any number of demons and monsters in the stories of his life.


To understand it you will have to go with me into the very depths of the matter; to understand it we will have to go into a few things, a few sutras that will even go beyond your understanding.


If you understand it rightly, in terms of the science of religion, then it means only this much: Krishna uprooted the physical organization of a particular demon or wicked person, destroyed the whole system of his conditioning, his body and mind together, and released his inner soul from bondage. In terms of religion it means only this much. If Krishna sees that a particular person cannot be transformed with his existing body-mind, then it is better to release him from its clutches and send him in search of a new body which will be helpful in his future growth. If the physical frame of a person is so dulled and deadened that it rejects all change, then it is necessary to help him find a new form for himself.


Let us try to understand it with the help of an example. If we want to educate an old person who is illiterate, from the beginning, from the very abe, we will find it an impossible task. It is really a hard job to educate a grownup. He is so heavily conditioned, his sensibilities are so dull and dead, his old habits are so entrenched and strong that it possible to free him from his age-old conditioning and habits. Even if the person concerned is willing to learn, he cannot. But now science is going to create conditions in which it will be possible to provide an old person with the body of a child, so that he can learn everything from the beginning. And it will be great. This is what Krishna is doing in the case of some hardened wicked people. He releases them from their old bodies so they can begin their life's journey anew.


It is strange but significant that Ravana feels grateful to Rama after being killed at his hands on the battlefield, and he thanks him profusely from his deathbed. Similarly, all those who were killed by Krishna felt grateful to him. This feeling of gratitude arose from the very depth of their souls, because they felt free of a prison whose walls were as strong as granite, and they also felt they could begin their journey afresh, from abe. But to us it appears that they are simply finished. If you want to know my view about it, I will say that Krishna gave them a fresh opportunity to begin their life anew, and live it in a right way. He gave them a clean slate to write on.


In Krishna's view, in my view, nobody dies; there is no way to die. Death is a lie. It does not mean that you should go on a killing spree and kill people with abandon. Of course, the day you come to know that no one dies, you will acquire the right to kill, because then killing will have altogether a different meaning. But then you, on your part, should have the readiness to die, because this readiness alone will prove that you really know that death is a misnomer and that nobody really dies.


Krishna has this readiness in full measure. Every now and then he enters the den of death with a smile on his face. That is the only test. He is yet a child, and he fights and wrestles with a terrible snake known as Kalia. As a child he fights with the most powerful demons. What does it all mean? It means that no one dies and that death is a lie, an illusion. It means that although death has an appearance, it has no reality. And if we know that death is a lie then we can realize the need to change our bodies.


Try to understand it in another way. If somebody's kidney fails to function, the surgeon transplants another kidney in its place, and we don't object to it. But in a way your body has been changed. Your lungs go out of order and are replaced by lungs of plastic; that too amounts to a partial change of the body. At the moment we change the body in parts, but very soon we will be able to change the whole of the body. There will be no difficulty. Up to now it has been the job of nature to change our bodies, but now science is taking over from nature. Science had not developed so much in the times of Krishna, so he had to kill a wicked person and ask nature to provide him with a new body so that he could begin his life afresh. In the future, however, it will be quite possible to change the whole body of a seasoned criminal who refuses to change his ways in any other way. We will not punish him, we will simply change his whole physical frame. It will be done in a laboratory for human beings. And then we will understand Krishna fully. At the moment we don't have the full facts in our hands.


Therefore, I do not accept the allegation that Krishna destroyed the wicked; he just transformed them. In other words, Krishna started them on a new journey of transformation. He sent them back to the workshop of nature with a request to remake them with new bodies, new eyes and new minds, so that they could begin life once again from the beginning.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: DO YOU THINK THAT THE PAST CONDITIONING OF THE SUBTLE BODY AND ITS MIND CHANGES WITH THE CHANGE OF THE GROSS BODY?</p>


They don't change on their own, but It makes a great difference if one has the rare opportunity of dying at the hands of a person like Krishna. And this opportunity comes once in a long while as a result of great meritorious karmas.


Ordinarily, after death, one's mind does not undergo a change, only the body changes. Except the body, nothing of one's subtle form changes with death. But a death at the hands of a person like Krishna is in itself a great phenomenon, because it happens in the presence of a catalytic agent. If you die in the presence of such a being, his vibes will go with your subtle body. And with the removal of the gross body, which was an impediment in the way of your meeting with Krishna, and with the assimilation of Krishna's vibes by your subtle body, your meeting with Krishna will be much facilitated. And that meet Ing will yield extraordinary results for you.


Such a meeting with Krishna is available to Arjuna in a very normal way, because Arjuna is quite capable of getting out of his body. In deep love everyone is capable of taking such a jump, but it is Impossible if you are in a state of deep enmity. In a state of enmity your body becomes a strong prison for you; you can never walk out of it. This is the difference between love and hate. If you and I are in love with each other, we can walk out of our bodies and meet and mingle in a space where subtle bodies meet. But if we are enemies, we will be like prisoners in our bodies, we can never walk out of them and enter the space where two lovers meet. In the case of enmity we can meet each other only on the physical level and not beyond it. But in love we can transcend our bodies.


It is not necessary for Krishna to kill Arjuna with a view to transforming him, because Arjuna is full of love. But if someone is full of hate, it becomes necessary to give him a change of body so that he can be in a position to be transformed. His physical prison has to be demolished so that he comes out of it. Then he will be in the same space in which Arjuna is as a lover of Krishna. It is necessary in the case of the wicked. and it is an act of compassion on the part of Krishna. Krishna is equally compassionate with both the good and the wicked. Whether one is good or wicked does not make any difference in the compassion of Krishna.


But as I told you earlier, it is something that will go beyond your understanding. So don't try to understand it, just hear it and forget it.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER ONE OF MARSHAL MC LUHAN'S MAXIMS SAYS: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE. SOME CRITIC SUBSTITUTED "THE MASSAGE" FOR "THE MESSAGE" AND THUS GAVE AN ALTOGETHER NEW MEANING TO THE MAXIM. IN THE SAME WAY CAN WE CALL KRISHNA'S FLUTE A BEING'S LOVING CALL TO GOD? THEN I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS THE MEANING OF KRISHNA BLOWING HIS CONCH, PANCHJANYA, ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF KURUKSHETRA. AND IS IT SOMETHING SYMBOLIC THAT HE CARRIES HIS FLUTE AND A WEAPON LIKE THE SUDAR SHANCHAKRA TOGETHER? THERE IS A SHLOKA, A STANZA IN THE BHAGWAD'S CHAPTER ON MAHARAAS, WHICH DESCRIBES KRISHNA'S PLAY WITH THE GOPIS IN THESE WORDS: YATHA ABHRAKA SWAPRATIBIMBA VIBHRAMAH -- AS IF THE CHILD IS PLAYING WITH HIS OWN SHADOW. WHAT IS THE UNDERLYING MEANING OF THIS METAPHOR? AND A MYSTIC HAS SAID THAT "LIVING BEING'S EGO IS GOD'S FOOD " IS THIS THE REASON THAT KRISHNA SUDDENLY DISAPPEARS, FROM THE MIDST OF THE DANCING GOPIS IN MAHARAAS?</p>


Marshal McLuhan is a great thinker, and his statement that "The medium is the message" is highly significant. He came out with something which is quite new. Before McLuhan it was thought that the medium and his message were separate things. It was thought that although the message comes through the medium, still the message is not the medium, nor is the medium the message. The dualistic mind has always thought like this; it always divides everything in two. It says that the body and mind are two separate entities -- the body being the medium and the mind its message. It says that movement and the mover, light and the lighter are different. In the same way the world and God are two. And this dualistic approach has dominated up to now, resulting in the belief that the message and the medium are separate.


I consider McLuhan to be a non-dualist, an advait-wadin. He himself might not be aware of it, but I call him so. For the first time he has brought the non-dualistic approach to the matter of the medium and the message. He means to say that what you say and the way you say it are the same, are not different.


To understand this maxim of McLuhan's we need to go into it in depth. For instance, when a sculptor sculpts a statue, he is separate from his creation. We can see it clearly. As the statue is complete it stands apart from the sculptor; they are two separate entities. And it needs a profound monist, an adwait-wadin, to say that the sculptor and the sculpted, the statue, are one. It will be difficult for us to accept it. Our eyes, our intellect, our mind will refuse to accept that they are one. To say so seems to be utterly fantastic. Tomorrow the sculptor will die, but his statue will remain. It needs very penetrating eyes to see and to say that the sculptor will live as long as his handiwork lives. Even if the artist moves away from his art in space, he will remain one with it spiritually. There is an inner unity between the two which will last forever, which cannot perish.


The example of a dancer and his dance comes closer. It also comes very close to Krishna. And it is easier to understand. Are the dancer and his dance separate from each other? If you separate the dancer from his dance, the dance will immediately disappear. And in the same way if you detach the dance from the dancer, the dancer will be a dancer no more. So the dancer and the dance are one. The flute and the flute player are one. The singer and his song are one. Similarly, God and nature are one and the same.


The message and the medium are one. To know that the medium is the message, it is necessary to have a wide range of view. It is easy to understand that the dancer and his dance are one. But if one is a hard-headed dualist he will divide them into two; it is not difficult. He will argue that while the dance is an external act, the dancer is the inner being, who is not dancing, who stands still in the thick of the dance, which is happening on the outside. The dualist can say that the dancer, if he wants, can observe his own dance, can be a witness to it. In that case the dancer and the dance are separate from each other.


How you look, how you observe is the question. Seen with superficial eyes, even one will seem to be two, and seen with insight two will become one.


You are playing a flute. Can you tell where your lips separate from the flute? And if they are really separate, how can your lips play the flute? Then there is an unbridgeable gap between the two which will make flute playing impossible. After all, notes will come from you and they have to reach the flute. If you and the flute are really separate then you cannot play it. No, they only seem to be separate; really they are not. In fact, the flute is the extension of your lungs, throat and lips; it is their instrumental form.


Let us understand it in another way which will accord with McLuhan. We look at the stars with the help of a telescope, and the stars that were invisible to the naked eye become visible at once. Can you say that the telescope and the eyes are separate? No, the telescope is an extension of the eyes made possible by science. Now, with the help of the telescope your eyes can see much more than they saw before. Or, I touch you with my hands. Is it I who touch you or is it my hands that do so? Apparently my hands touch you, but is there a distance between me and my hands? Where do my hands separate from me? No, my hands are extensions of my being, they are not different from me,


Even if I touch you with the help of a stick, it is again I who touch you. The stick is just an extension of my hand. And when I speak with you through the telephone, the latter becomes my own extended form. It is the same as when I look at the stars with the help of the telescope -- the latter is the extension of my eyes. Even the stars are not separate from me. Or are they? There must be some inner connection between the stars and my eyes; otherwise, how can I see them with my eyes? I cannot see them with my ears. For certain there is some intimate connection between my eyes and the stars. Therefore, not only the telescope, even the stars are extensions of my eyes. Or, seen conversely, my eyes are extensions of the stars.


This is the vision of the non-dual, the advait. Then all things are extensions of one and the same. And there is an inner harmony permeating them all. Then the medium is the message, and the message is the medium.


It is right to ask if Krishna's flute and its songs are prayers to God. I will not say it is a prayer, because a man like Krishna does not pray. To whom is he going to pray? Prayer creates a distance, a separation between the one who prays and the object of his prayer. Prayer is dualistic. And it would be good to understand this point clearly.


Prayer is dualistic; Krishna cannot pray. Playing the flute, Krishna is in meditation, because meditation is non-dualistic. There is a basic difference between prayer and meditation. Prayer is the discovery of the dualist who believes that he and God are separate, that God is somewhere far away in the distant heavens, and that he needs to pray for his mercy, for his grace, or whatever. Prayer is a kind of supplication. Meditation is a non-dualistic state: it says God is not somewhere else, away from me, nor am I here, separate from him; whatever is, is one whole. So Krishna's flute is not a prayer, it is the voice of meditation. It is not a supplication to some God; it is just a thanksgiving, directed not to God but to oneself. The musical notes of the flute are an expression of gratefulness, utter gratefulness.


It is only in gratefulness that one is free and expansive. In prayer you are inhibited and afraid, because prayer flows from some desire and desire creates fear. You are afraid if your prayer is going to be heard at all. You are also afraid if there is someone listening to your prayer or if it is being lost in the wilderness. In thanksgiving you are fearless and free, because you don't want anything in return. And you are not afraid about its acknowledgement it is just an outpouring of your heart. It is not addressed to someone; it is unaddressed -- or, it is directed to the whole. The winds will hear it and carry it on their wings. The skies will hear it, the clouds will hear it, the flowers will hear it. It is not a means to some end; it is an end unto itself, Prayer is enough unto itself. Playing the flute is all and everything.


It is for this reason that Krishna plays his flute with immense bliss. Meera could not dance with that abandon and blissfulness, because there is no meditation in her dance. Her dance is a kind of prayer, a prayer to her beloved Krishna, who, in spite of all her closeness, all her intimacy with him, is separate and distant from her. Meera's dance lacks that freedom there is in the dance of Krishna. There is an ache of separation in the songs of Meera; they are wet with her tears. Her songs are addressed to Krishna for whom she makes a beautiful bed and awaits with utter fondness. Her songs have a purpose, and therefore are tinged with her desire and fear. Krishna is utterly free from desire and fear. His songs are not addressed to any God, they are God's own songs. There is no cause behind Krishna's flute; it is causeless. He is utterly fulfilled, and he is celebrating this fulfillment with flute and dance.


Usually we associate the flute with a state of ease. We say in a Hindi proverb that "So-and-so is playing a flute of ease". It means that someone is at ease, and now he has nothing more to do except play his flute. It is an act without a purpose, and so it is an act of real thanksgiving.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: YOU OFTEN SAY THAT PRAYER IS A STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS. AND YOU ALSO SAY THAT PRAYER IS A STATE OF GRATEFULNESS. THEN HOW IS IT THAT PRAYER IS NOT NON-DUALISTIC?</p>


No, I never say that prayer is a state of mind, I say that prayerfulness is a state of mind. My word is not prayer, it is prayerfulness. And there is a great difference between prayer and prayerfulness,


Someone offers a prayer in the morning; it is a kind of ritual. Another person is prayerful even where he just rises from his seat and walks in the garden. He is prayerful, in a state of prayerfulness even as he ties the laces of his shoes. And when he takes off his shoes and puts them in their place, he does so as if he is handling an idol of God. This man is prayerful. When he stops by a flower on the road-side, he stands there as if he has come across God himself. This man is prayerful; he is not praying. He never prays, yet he is in prayer, in a state of prayer. I don't call prayer a state of consciousness; prayerfulness is that state. A prayerful heart is altogether different; such a heart is in meditation. To be prayerful and to be meditative are the same.


Only he who goes to prayer is not prayerful. How can a prayerful person pray? He lives in prayer; he is prayer itself, and he does not do anything except prayer. And one who prays does many other things at the same time. He runs a shop, he competes with others, he is jealous, he is angry, he hates, and he and one things -- one of which is prayer. Prayer is a small item in the long list of hi activities.


Prayerful is he who is prayerful even when he is selling tea in a tea shop. Kabir is prayerful. He is a weaver by trade, and he has attained to the highest in life, he has found God. Yet he continues to weave and sell clothes. Someone asks him why he does so even after attaining to lofty sagehood. In answer Kabir tells him, "It is my prayer." Kabir says, "It is meditation when I walk, it is meditation when I eat, and it is meditation when I weave the cloth." He says, "O monk, the enlightenment that is natural, is of the highest. Whatever I do is meditation, prayer and worship. When Kabir goes to the market with a bundle of cloth to sell, he goes there dancing. He addresses his customer as Rama, his God, and tells him that he has woven this piece of cloth especially for him, that he has interlaced it with prayers. For him both the seller and buyer are God; it is God who sells and it is again God who buys.


This is what I call a state of prayerfulness, a state of consciousness. And this is what I call prayer.


No one ever sees Kabir praying. He never goes to a temple or a mosque, as others do to say their prayers. He says in one of his beautiful poems, "O priest, is your God deaf that you shout your prayer to him? I don't even say my prayer and he hears it; I don't even utter a word and he understands it. So why do you make so much noise about it?" Here Kabir is kidding those who have turned prayer and worship into a ritual. And he can well joke at their expense because he is really prayerful; otherwise, he cannot poke fun at them.
So I stand for prayerfulness, and not for prayer.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: A PART OF THE QUESTION STILL REMAINS UNANSWERED. IT IS ABOUT KRISHNA'S CONCH, PANCHJANYA, AND HIS WEAPON, CHAKRASUDARSHAN. AND WHAT ABOUT THE BHAGWAD'S DESCRIPTION OF MAHARAAS -- THE GREAT DANCE -- AS A CHILD'S PLAY WITH HIS SHADOWS?</p>


Everything associated with Krishna has a symbolic meaning. Man has five senses, five doors through which he expresses himself and relates with the rest of the world. These are eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin. We know and experience everything through them, and it is through them we go out into the world and relate with it.


When the storyteller writes that Krishna blew his panchjanya on the battlefield of Mahabharat, it only means that he was totally present on the battlefield with all his five senses, nothing more. War is not an occupation for him; nothing is an occupation for him, so whatever he happens to be doing at the moment he does totally. As Kabir goes to the market with his total being to sell cloth, Krishna goes to the battlefield with his whole being. Through the panchjanya he announces his total presence on the battlefield. He is not there partially; in fact, he does nothing partially. Wherever he happens to be, he is there in his totality, with all his senses, with all his being.


Everyone taking part In the war of Mahabharat has his own conch, with a special name and quality of its own. It has its own special sound too. And every conch has a corresponding unity with the personality of the warrior who wears it. But Krishna's panchjanya is unique and incomparable. Except him, nobody is present there totally. And the irony is that he is the one person who is not going to take part in the fight. He is not committed to fight.


The truth is that only he who has no commitments can be total. If you are committed to anything, you are bound to be partial in your endeavor to fulfill it. You cannot stand totally behind your commitment; at least "you" will be left behind. Only the uncommitted can be total; he will be wholly in whatever he does. That is why Krishna alone is totally in the battlefield, although he is not going to take part in the fighting. And the panchjanya heralds his total presence there. He has really nothing to do with the war that is going to be fought on the Kurukshetrai he is neutral. He is not interested in victory or defeat he has no vested interest in either of the two sides of the war. And yet a moment comes and he enters the war with his own weapon, the sudarshan.


This sudarshan too has a great meaning symbolically. The people who wrote the epic of the Mahabharat worked very hard with words. Really, it is the words that constitute the heart of a great poem, and so words are very important. There are words in this epic that have taken centuries of hard work to bring to perfection. The word sudarshan is one such word. Sudarshan, a Sanskrit word, means that which is good looking, beautiful.


It is amazing that a weapon of death and destruction can be beautiful. Death is not supposed to be beautiful, but it becomes beautiful in the hands of a man like Krishna. That is the meaning of Krishna's weapon; it lends beauty even to death. The sudarshan is a very lethal, very destructive weapon, as destructive as the atom bomb. But we cannot give this name sudarshan to the atom bomb. But Krishna does the miracle; he turns death into a blessing. Even death is beautiful if it is in the hands of a Krishna. And by the same logic a flower ceases to be beautiful if it is in the hands of a Hitler. Beauty depends on the quality of the person who holds it. That is how at the hands of Krishna even death is blissful. And people on both sides of the Mahabharat know it; that is why they called his weapon by this beautiful name.


A moment comes when Krishna plunges into battle with a weapon in his hands. This is an expression of his spontaneity. Such a person lives in the moment; he lives moment to moment. He is not tied to the past, not even to the minute that has just passed. And such a person does not promise anything.


Jaspers, a great thinker, has defined man as an animal who makes promises. Some others have defined man as a thinking animal. But Krishna does not fit with Jaspers' definition of man; he simply does not promise. Gandhi may be one of those who fulfill Jaspers' definition of man. Krishna is one who lives in the moment; he accepts what every new moment brings with it. If it brings war, Krishna will accept war and go into it.


Only he who lives in freedom lives in the moment. And one who makes promises is bound by the past, and this past begins to impinge on his freedom and goes on diminishing it. Really, the past hangs heavy on his future; he is fettered by the past.


That is why a moment comes in the war of the Mahabharat when Krishna actually takes up arms and fights, although he has no desire to take part in the war. Those who want to understand Krishna find this event coming in their way again and again. They wonder why he actually takes part in the war. The reason is that such a person cannot be relied upon; he is simply unpredictible. He will live the way a new situation demands; he responds to every situation afresh. And you cannot ask him why he is so different today from what he was yesterday. He will tell you, "Yesterday is no more. Much water has gone down the Ganges. Today's Ganges is quite different from what it was yesterday. Right now I am what I am, and I don't know what I am going to be like tomorrow. I too will know it only when tomorrow comes."


Prediction about men like Krishna is not possible. The astrologer will accept defeat before them. The astrologer is concerned with the future; he predicts your tomorrow on the basis of what you are today. He can say what you are going to do tomorrow on the basis of what you are doing today, because you are bound by time. But astrology will utterly fail in the case of Krishna, because his tomorrow will not flow from his today. Nobody can say what he will do tomorrow, because he lives in the moment. Tomorrow's Krishna may have nothing to do with today's. Tomorrow's Krishna will be born tomorrow. There is no linear connection between the Krishnas of today and tomorrow.


This matter of living has to be understood in some depth. There are two kinds of life. One kind of life is sequential, chain-like, each link is joined with ar:other. It has a continuity. And the other is atomic, atom-like, every moment independent of another. It is not continuous. One who lives a life of continuity will find there is a link between his yesterday and his today; his today comes from his yesterday. His life is a continuation of his dead past his today springs from the ashes of his yesterday. So his knowledge is the product of his memory; it is just a bundle of memories. To say it metaphorically, his life's rose grows on his grave.


The other kind of life is utterly different. It is not continuous; it is atomic. Its today does not come from its yesterday; it is absolutely independent of the past. It springs exclusively from that which is the whole of today's existence. It has nothing to do with the chain of my memories of my yesterdays and their conditionings; it is absolutely untouched by the past. My being today is entirely based in the great existence that is here today, right now; it is existential. It arises from the existing moment, and its next moment will arise from the next existing moment, and so on and so forth.


Of course, there is a sequence in such a life too, but it is never continuous, contiguous. It is each moment's moment. And such a person lives in the moment and dies to the passing moment. He lives today and dies to it as soon as it is gone. Before he goes to bed at night he will die to the bygone day; he does not carry even a bit of it over. And when he wakes up tomorrow, he will live in the moment that will exist then. That is how he is always new and young. He is never old; he is ever young and fresh. And because his being springs from the whole of existence, it is divine.


This is the meaning of Bhagwan, the blessed one, the divine one. His being is atomic, existential, comes from what is, from reality. He has no past and no future, he has only a living present. That is why we call Krishna Bhagwan, a divine consciousness. It does not mean that there is a God sitting in some faraway heaven who has incarnated in the form of Krishna. Bhagwan only means the divine, the whole, one whose being springs from the whole.


For this reason it is so difficult to find any consistency in a person who lives in the moment. And if we try to force consistency on him, we will have to ignore so many episodes of his life, or we will have to establish some arbitrary uniformity among them, or we will have to say that it is all a play, a leela. When we fail to understand this inconsistency, we have to say it is all a play. But the difficulty really arises from our failure to know what it is to live in the moment, to live spontaneously.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: IT IS SAID THAT VALMIKI WROTE THE BIOGRAPHY OF RAMA MUCH BEFORE HE HAPPENED, AND RAMA IS ALSO KNOWN AS AN INCARNATION OF THE DIVINE. SO HOW IS IT THAT THERE IS A SEQUENCE, A CHAIN-LIKE CONTINUITY IN HIS LIFE?</p>


It is a good question that you have raised: How is it that Valmiki wrote the life of Rama even before he happened?


It is possible, it is quite possible to write the life story of Rama, because he is a man of principles, ideals. There is a joke hidden in this anecdote of Valmiki writing the Ramayana long before Rama's existence. It means that Rama is a kind of man whose life story can be foretold. He is like a character in a drama: what he will do and what he will not do can be foreseen. Rama is an idealist, he lives according to some set rules and regulations of life, so in a way his life is pre-planned and pre-determined.


It is not that Valmiki had really written his biography before he happened; it is a very profound and subtle joke which this country alone is capable of making with respect to her great men. And it is so subtle that it is difficult to get it.


It says that Rama's life is so limited and confined, so confined to set ideas and ideals, so sequential that the poet Valmiki could have easily written his story, the Ramayana, even before Rama was born It is like a drama or a movie which is enacted in strict adherence to a written script. So it can be foretold what Rama would do after his wife Sita is abducted by Ravana. It can be foretold that after her return from Ravana's city Rama would put her to some severe test like the fire-test. He will make her pass through fire before admitting her into his palace. Everything about Rama is certain, even this -- though Sita comes out from the fire-test unscathed, Rama throws her out of his house just because a washerman makes a carping remark about her character.
But nothing can be said about Krishna.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: DO YOU INTERPRET KRISHNA IN THE TERMS OF MARTIN BUBER?</p>


No, not so. Martin Buber is, after all, a dualist; he is not a monist, a non-dualist. In fact, the roots of Martin Buber lie in the Jewish tradition. He stands for perfect intimacy between "I" and "thou, but he is not prepared for the annihilation of the "I and thou". It is so because the tradition itself to which Buber belongs, cannot go beyond dualism. The Jews crucified Jesus because he said things which transgressed the concept of dualism. He said, "I and my father in heaven are one."


It proved to be dangerous. Jewish tradition failed to understand it, and the Jews said, "We cannot tolerate it. Whatever you say, you cannot be equal to God. He is far above you; your place is at his feet. You cannot say that you are God. This is blasphemy."


The same Judaic tradition of thinking is responsible for the persecution and killing of the Sufis by the muslims. When Mansoor said, "Ana'l haq -- I am God", they could not take it. They said, "Howsoever high you rise, you cannot be God." And they crucified him, very brutally. Mohammedans could not give the status of God even to Mohammed; they called him the prophet, the messenger of God. They believe that man and God are two. While God is supreme, man can only have his place at his feet. His feet are the limit of man's greatest height.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN SOMEONE SAYS, "I AM GOD"? DOES HE TURN INTO A SUPERMAN?</p>


It is wrong to call him superman. When I say that the "I" turns into God, it means that the "I" has ceased to be. Not only "I", even the man has ceased to be. When "I" becomes God, then only God remains, the man ceases to be. It is sheer transcendence, after which nothing survives.


It is possible with regard to Rama; his story can be written before he happened. It is really a serious joke. But we are a serious people, and we fail to appreciate the joke. Particularly people interested in Rama are very serious, and therefore, instead of taking the joke as a joke they go on interpreting it seriously. The joke is: "Rama, you are such a person that a poet like Valmiki can write your story even before you appear on the scene. There is not much in your life."
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: WHAT IS THE PLACE OF MEMORY IN WHAT YOU CALL A SEQUENTIAL LIFE AND IN A LIFE OF SPONTANEITY?</p>


While a life with sequence follows its memory like a slave, a spontaneous life uses it like a master. This is the difference. If you live a natural life, if you are renewed from moment to moment, it does not mean your memory is wiped out -- it is rightly stored in your mind, and you can use it as you like. It is as if many things are stored in the basement of your house and you can take out anything you need from this store. That is why Buddha has called it an agaar, a storehouse of memories, of consciousness. One who lives spontaneously also needs his memory. If he is in town and wants to return to his house in the evening, it is his memory of the house and the way to it that will enable him to do so. And he will use it rightly.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: DO NOT OLD MEMORIES CREATE A PROBLEM FOR KRISHNA WHEN HE IS EXPLAINING THE GEETA TO ARJUNA?</p>


It is a different matter, an altogether different matter, What I am explaining to you right now is that some, one who lives spontaneously does not lose his memory; on the contrary, his memory will be fully alive and fresh. And his consciousness, which is being renewed every moment, will be the master of this memory and use it the way he needs it. On the other hand, one who lives a sequential life, a life of continuity with the dead past, will ever remain old and stale, will not know what renewal is, will remain a slave of his memories, which really rule over him and his activities.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: DOES NOT KRISHNA, IN HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH ARJUNA, MAKE USE OF HIS PAST MEMORIES? IS HE ALWAYS YOUNG AND SPONTANEOUS?</p>


He is always spontaneous, but he does use his memory. I say again that only Krishna uses his memory as its master. So fat as you are concerned, you are not the master of your memories; you are a slave in their hands and they use you as they like.


Someone is sitting with you in the bus, and you inquire about his caste. He tells you he is a Mohammedan. Your memory already has something regarding a Mohammedan, what he is, how he is, and you will immediately impose your memory, your idea of a Mohammedan on this man who may have nothing to do with this Mohammedan of your memory. Maybe the Mohammedan of your memory lives in your village, is a hoodlum, and burned your village's temple. Although this man sitting next to you has nothing to do with the hoodlum of your village, you will move away from him scornfully. Now you are a slave of your memory.


This is how Hindus kill Mohammedans in India and Mohammedans kill Hindus in Pakistan. This is memory's handiwork, and this is sheet mad ness. You live by your memory; you kill somebody in the place of somebody else. What is common between two Mohammedans? What is common between two Hindus? Everybody is his own man. But you will impose your memory, your idea of one Mohammedan on every Mohammedan. This is utterly wrong and stupid. You are being used by your memory; you are its slave.


If you are the master of your memory, you will say that although the man sitting next to you is a Mohammedan. he is different from the village hoodlum who burned your temple. Then you will not judge him, and you will not move away from him in scorn and anger. You will not be ruled by your prejudices; you will observe and understand this man anew and on his own.


While a person who lives a natural and spontaneous life is the master of his memory, the person who lives a sequential life is just a slave to his memory.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: YOU SAY THAT IF SOMEONE DIES AT THE HANDS OF KRISHNA IT MEANS THAT HE HAS EARNED IT THROUGH MERITORIOUS KARMAS. TO HEAR YOU SAY IT GIVES RISE TO A BLISSFUL PAIN IN MY HEART. SO I VENTURE TO ASK IF ALL YOUR PLAY-ACTING IS WITHOUT CAUSE?</p>


It is utterly without cause. Yes, it is absolutely causeless. And you are right, it is all play-acting.


And when I talk about meritorious acts and their consequences, it means this: in the manifest world nothing happens without a cause. If in this world of cause and effect you happen to come across a person like Krishna, it is never accidental. Nothing in this wide world is accidental. Not even accidents take place accidentally, so how can a death at the hands of Krishna be accidental?


Really, nothing is accidental here. If I hug someone and quarrel with another, if I love someone and hate another, if I am a friend to someone and an enemy to another, each one of these acts has stemmed from my infinite past existence; there is nothing accidental about them. I repeat, nothing is accidental in this manifest world. And that is why, when something happens without reason, it seems to be a miracle, something coming from the other world, the unmanifest world.


The being of Krishna is absolutely causeless, but Arjuna's relationship with Krishna is not. As far as Arjuna is concerned, his relationship with Krishna cannot be without cause, without a reason, a purpose. This is rather difficult to understand, so I will go into it at some length.


Our relationship with a person like Krishna is like one-way traffic. You can love him, but it cannot be said that he will also love you. All that can be said about him is that he is loving, that he is love itself; hence, when you go to him you will easily avail of his love. It may seem to you that he loves you, that he is related to you, but that is not a fact. He is simply loving; his love will shower on you when you are in his presence. It is as if you go out of your house on a cold morning and the light of the sun envelopes you, warms you and cheers you. From your side you can be in love with Krishna, but from his side Krishna is not going to be in a love relationship with you. It is always one-way traffic, although you can think that Krishna loves you. He is love and this love is available to everyone who seeks it.


If Krishna kills someone, he does it without cause. But you cannot say the same thing in regard to the person who has been killed by Krishna. His death, from his side, is not without cause. This man had been living a sequential life, a life connected with a long dead past; he was not living a spontaneous life. How can the life of a demon be spontaneous? And whoever is not spontaneous is no different from a demon. His life is inextricably bound up with his past; he lives through his dead past.


If such a person dies at the hands of Krishna it means that his death is a link, the latest link in the long chain of his past. His death flows from his past, although it is causeless for Krishna, from Krishna's side. Krishna would not have gone searching for this man in order to kill him; on the contrary, the man himself came to him to court death. This is altogether a different thing.


Similarly, whosoever goes to him, Krishna's love is spontaneously available. If he had not come, Krishna would not have gone searching for him. Even if no one goes to Krishna, and he is sitting alone in a forest, he will be loving, and the solitude of the forest, the emptiness around him, the entire void of the cosmos will be the recipient of his love. It will make no difference for him and his love if someone is near him or there is nothing or no one.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN SAYING ABOUT KRISHNA AND HIS MYRIAD VIRTUES HAS SWEPT US OFF OUR FEET, AND WE SEEM TO HAVE TURNED INTO HIS DEVOTEES. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THERE ARE NO INADEQUACIES IN HIS LIFE? IS IT NECESSARY THAT WE JUSTIFY HIS EVERY ACTION WHETHER IT IS DANCING WITH THE GOPIS OR HIS STEALING THEIR CLOTHES OR GOADING PIOUS YUDHISTHRA TO LIE ABOUT THE DEATH OF ASHWASTHAMA? AND CAN WE CALL IT A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH?</p>


Your question is right. It is good to know why we don't find shortcomings in Krishna's life. But do you think it is scientific to purposely go in search of shortcomings? It would be unscientific if we decided to find fault with him it would be equally unscientific if we decided not to find fault with him. Every approach with a pre-judgment or prejudice, whether for or against, is wrong and unscientific.


Then what is a scientific approach? It is scientific to see Krishna as he is. And whatever I have been saying about him here is exactly as I see him. It would, of course, be unscientific if I asked you to see him the way I see him. You ate free to see him in your own way. It is okay if you find fault with him, and it is okay if you don't find fault with him. I have no desire whatsoever for you to accept what I say about Krishna. But I am free to see him the way I see him. It would be unscientific if I tried to see him differently.


It is good to know what a scientific approach is. Is it necessary to apply what we call the scientific approach to anything and everything in the world? There are things in this world -- are there not? -- which defy the scientific approach; it would be utterly unscientific to apply this approach to them. And certainly. there are a few things that go beyond the scientific approach. For instance, we cannot think about love in a scientific manner; there is no way to do so. The very phenomenon of love seems to be unscientific. And if we try to examine love scientifically we will have to deny it altogether. We will then have to say that nothing like love exists in this world. The very existence of love is against science.


The difficulty is that either we approach love unscientifically -- and that would be really scientific -- or we deny love altogether. It would be scientific to see love as love is.


We can look at it from another angle. As I said earlier, eyes see and ears hear, and if we try to see with our ears and hear with our eyes it will be utter madness. It is madness to look at things we hear as though they have been seen. Eyes will just say that ears don't see. And it is true. And since eyes don't hear they cannot accept that ears hear. So the eyes can come to only two conclusions: one, that the ears don't see -- and that would be right -- and the other, that the ears don't hear -- and that would be wrong.


The scientific process is such that it cannot grasp anything but matter. Science is confined to the understanding of matter; it cannot go beyond the material world. As eyes are confined to seeing light and ears to hearing sound, the methodology of science is such that it can only know matter and nothing else. Then there is only one possibility left: the scientist can say that there is nothing in the universe except matter. And some scientists have really said so.


But as scientific knowledge is growing, science finds itself in deep waters, because it has reached a point where matter has ceased to be matter. In the course of the last two decades, science has had to accept there is something beyond its grasp. If scientists don't accept this, then the very basis of all they have known becomes doubtful. If they deny the existence of the electron, which seems to be beyond their grasp, then the existence of the atom, which is within their grasp, becomes suspect, because the electron is the basis of the atom. Therefore, with humility, science now accepts that there is certainly something which is eluding its understanding, but it is not yet ready to accept that anything is unknowable. Science still believes that sooner or later it is going to know it, and it will continue to press its efforts in that direction.


Maybe science will know many more things; maybe it will know the secret of the electron, but it does not seem probable it will ever know love. It is impossible to find love in a scientific lab. If it goes in search of love, it will surely come across the lungs, but it will never find the heart. That is why it believes the lungs are all there is, and there is nothing like the heart the poets talk about. But the experiences of even an ordinary person say for sure that there is something like the heart. There are many moments in our lives when we live not by the lungs alone, but by something much more than the lungs, and that is our heart. And sometimes this heart becomes so important for us that we can sacrifice everything, including the lungs, for its sake.


Someone dies for love. He dies for the sake of the heart that does not exist in the eyes of the scientist. What will you say about this man? How can you deny the fact of his death? Someone, a Majnoo, is madly in love with a Laila. He is mad to win the heart of his beloved. You can say that this madness is wrong, but in spite of what you say, it is there Majnoo exists.


He may be wrong; he may be mad, but he is what he is. He lives for Laila, he sings in her memory, he is poetic about her. An examination of his lungs will not reveal any of these things, neither the presence of a Laila or his love for her. An investigation of the lungs will only reveal the breath and blood that circulate through them, the oxygen and other substances, but it will miss the very thing for which Majnoo is ready to give up his breath and his blood, even his whole life.


So there are only two ways to solve this difficulty. Either we deny love or we refuse to look at it with the eyes of a scientist. But how can we deny the existence of love? It exists. But then we look at love in a way that is not scientific. So we accept that we cannot bring the scientific approach to bear on each and every thing in the world.


If we look at Krishna with the eyes of science, he will be nothing more than a great man with his black and his white shades. But remember, he will then completely cease to be Krishna. The Krishna that I am talking about here is not a great man; he is a phenomenon, an event. And we cannot understand this phenomenon scientifically. And you know well that I am not against science. On the contrary, I am all for science. I walk with science to the extent where it begins to falter and fall down. I drag it into spaces where even its breathing stops. I can be charged with being too much on the side of science; I will never be charged with being less on its side. I try my very best, but there is a limit beyond which science cannot go. Will it be right to stop with science, to give up my efforts and go no further?
But I see there is a vast space beyond science.
<p class="question">QUESTIONER: IS IT POSSIBLE THAT SOMETIMES MIND AND HEART, THOUGHT AND FEELING, MEET AND MINGLE WITH EACH OTHER? PERHAPS THEY DO, AND IT IS GREAT. PLEASE COMMENT.</p>


It is possible that once in a while mind and heart, thought and feeling, get together and become one. In their depths they are already one; they are separate only on the surface. It is like the branches of a tree are separate from one another, while their trunk is one and the same.


Similarly, our thoughts and feelings are like branches of our being, which is one. Mind and heart are separate only on the surface; in the depths they are united and one.


The day we know that mind and heart are one, we also know that science and religion are not separate. Then we know that science has a limit beyond which it cannot go, beyond which the world of transcendence begins, beyond which religion begins.


Krishna is a man of religion, and I am talking about Krishna -- the man of religion. And I talk about him exactly the way I see him. But I have not the least desire that you should see him through my eyes. However, if on your own, you can see in him what I see, even fractionally, it will prove to be a transforming factor in your life.
			

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