The Krishna World Could Never Find

The Krishna World Could Never Find  

By Yajush Chaturvedi

Worshipping Krishna: A Defence Mechanism

For centuries and eras world has lived in a state of perplexity and confusion regarding living and defining life but has somehow managed to gain the utmost clarity on who to worship and form religions around. What is religion really if it hasn’t brought clarity yet? Asking and dwelling on this question demands a certain level of clarity in itself and hence the question goes unasked and the answer barely escapes its way out through the narrow lanes of adamant beliefs and faithful rodomontade. And even though there is very little space for anything unconventional and unorthodox and incomprehensible to a mediocre mind, There are certain characters who are just impossible to avoid and to be left out from the shape that society takes with time despite their being exactly those adjectives mentioned earlier to a common mind. Krishna was one of those kinds but the only one of his own. 

Today there is a huge sect of Vaishnavites and even others as well who worship Krishna posing utmost reverence to the being but the fundamental question to be asked is: “Is the worship of Krishna a way to pay him respect and reverence or is it a means to have a defence mechanism in place to never indulge in the incomprehensible being that he continues to be to humankind?” - This question arises when we see absolutely nobody emanating what Krishna gloriously stood for throughout his life be it on and off the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Furthermore, Seldom to never do we find anyone bowing down to both the Krishna of Gita and Krishna of Bhagwat as a whole with complete consciousness and acknowledgement of both. The whole of Krishna has never been acknowledged, people have merely drawn and chosen parts of him that can keep them in their comfort zone even though from the very first verse when he starts to recite the ultimate wisdom to Arjuna, he constantly only emphasises and reinforces seeking more and more discomfort and going beyond the known and comfortable to achieve the ultimate. Knowing of this noncompliance to his core being answers that people are not really interested in Krishna the being and what he wanted the world to learn but they are merely interested in Krishna, the religion, the conveniently fabricated Krishna who can propagate the opposite of what the real one stood for. Hence, worshipping a part of Krishna in utmost madness is a lot easier than understanding his complete being, his core. This reminds us how vividly and rightly Arjuna after being stunned by hearing the revelations coming from Krishna describes the feeling in chapter 10 of Gita :

सर्वमेतदृतं मन्ये यन्मां वदसि केशव |

न हि ते भगवन्व्यक्तिं विदुर्देवा न दानवा: || (shlok 14)

Translation: "Everything that You have said to me, O Keshava, I accept as the truth. Neither the gods nor the demons, O Lord, know Your manifestation."

स्वयमेवात्मनात्मानं वेत्थ त्वं पुरुषोत्तम |

भूतभावन भूतेश देवदेव जगत्पते || (shlok 15)

Translation:  “Indeed, You alone know Yourself by Your inconceivable energy, O Supreme Personality, the Creator and Lord of all beings, the God of gods, and the Lord of the universe!”

Although in the course of further fighting the Mahabharata with Krishna by his side, Arjuna was able to absorb the stark revelations gradually, this remained unrecognised by mankind for eras to come. Let us understand certain aspects that may help us gauge how the real Shri Krishna - the Krishna of both Bhagwat and Gita as a whole, remained untapped and locked away despite so much reverence and following :

Mankind too afraid of the inevitable oneness

अवजानन्ति मां मूढा मानुषीं तनुमाश्रितम् |

परं भावमजानन्तो मम भूतमहेश्वरम् || (chapter 9, shlok 11)

Translation: “Fools deride Me when I take on a human form, not knowing My higher nature as the Supreme Lord of all beings”

When Krishna said this, did he just expose him as the ultimate God to Arjuna? No. Krishna was unique not because he had magical strengths. It was because despite being in a human form, he was one with the ultimate so much so that when he told Arjun to surrender to his feet, he couldn’t even draw a distinction between himself and the ultimate he was talking of. Now this makes him godly to us. People sometimes contest how a person telling others to fall on his feet can ever be a god. I believe that’s precisely why he is one today. Krishna knew how limitless he was, he knew how endless he would be and how unmeasurable his being was. he was expanding every moment on this planet. Just like the universe is. he was encapsulating everything that was in his purview into his love. The stories of his having so many romantic affairs where every woman knew of this strange polygamous nature of their love is a part of it. Krishna was oozing with love and had so much of energy and love that he was sharing his being with everyone who wanted a share of it.  He could just never be unloving. Whoever interacted with him felt so loved by him that they could never find such unconditional love elsewhere. What Krishna taught is not unique to him but the way he taught it all is what makes Gita so unique. For context : The greatest distinction between Ashtavakra Gita and Krishna’s Gita is that Krishna acted as a friend, an equal who was standing behind his friend to support him in driving his chariot. On the contrary, Ashtavakra Gita is a conversation between a teacher and a student although very soon they both become equal as soon as Janaka learns of his master. Krishna has taken up an assignment of teaching so monumental to a friend who is adamant, proud and almost not ready to listen while any other text atleast had the student's focus in place voluntarily as a basic need.

मया ततमिदं सर्वं जगदव्यक्तमूर्तिना |

मत्स्थानि सर्वभूतानि न चाहं तेष्ववस्थित: || (chapter 9, shlok 4)

Translation: “By Me, in My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them.”

This particular shlok corroborates a very important fact I’m speaking of today. Here Krishna is clarifying that he finds himself filled with the whole expanding universe but his “I”, his own being is nothing and nowhere. This is a revelation for those who could understand this. Krishna is clearly stating that “I” for him does not exist. It is all One that he can see outside and feel inside. He finds absolutely no distinction and demarcation between himself and the whole. This is the power of his philosophy, this is what makes ego vapourize.

Now knowing Krishna’s immense inclination towards onness, let’s see how threatful it is for humans. From the oldest record of any anthropological evidence, civilisation began on the concept of overpowering other species or one or many of our own. At the onset of civilisation, families or small groups of early ones sought security and power over other groups and the more the power, the more was the reward of territory which was ultimately an area to exploit food and resources for sustaining life. Early civilisations were in dire need of trees for wood and fruits, wildlife hunting and gathering and an ample amount of stones and rocks that could be turned into tools. It was only thousands of years after when the concept of “settling down” came into being. This was made possible only because of agriculture. Now man could abstain from putting so much effort in running after preys so much and putting life on the line. Vegetation in a systematic manner could now sustain nutrition. This is the place in history where philosophy, stories and reasoning started to emerge and this was the point which presented an opportunity for a wild species to become enlightened. To understand itself and the world inside out and become truly one with it. The absolutely urgent task of sustenance was now been taken care of and this was an opportunity to become a human being for humankind. To the misfortune of humanity that never became reality. The instinct of overpowering others never halted and we never came together as “one” really despite all the mandatoriness of killing and subduing others being taken away mostly. The constant wars and battles for power, resources and relevance continued throughout our history and to this day. That’s why I feel mankind is an uneven plateau of conscious beings. Some have touched the heights of awareness and others have dug as deep as they could in unawareness. 

We create gods out of Krishna, Mahavira, buddha and Jesus so that we can create demarcations between us and them just like we love creating among us. It is a license to stay unenlightened like “they are Gods, we are not hence we can stay as we are without any shame”. In many instances, saints like Jesus to never let this happen clearly stated that he was only a son of God like everyone is and not the God himself. His philosophies are beautiful and try to convince how everyone is a child of God, the ultimate. When you are children of someone, you are part of them. You have come through them in this world. Jesus wanted so badly to never become the praying object so that people could think of themselves as being one with him, that he was among them and he was achievable. Sadly each time such sacred attempts have been thwarted by us. I believe similar is the case with Krishna. Throughout Gita, he is being a friend and after a certain point, he is trying to teach Arjuna how not only he is his friend but he is one with him.  This oneness is too complex for humanity for now and that’s why Krishna will remain a God and will never graduate to become our friend and eventually us.

Although Krishna is as lucid as always, Kabir fermented and presented the thought a little easier by saying:

कबीरा कुआँ एक है, पानी भरे अनेक,

भांडे ही में भेद है, पानी सब में एक|

Translation: One well, many draw water, Pots keep differing, water is one.

Krishna: Too Practical To Fathom

Discrimination, the quest for power and influence, money and fame, security, fear and insecurities are so big in people’s minds that Krishna becomes almost irrelevant when he tries to reason with such sharp logic and practicality in Gita. You see, freedom is the highest logic there is. humans were given reasoning ability in the hope that they would become free of all animal instincts by applying logic. Instead today we have designed a new jungle made up of concrete but it is still a jungle undoubtedly hence for a mediocre mind, the “practical” way of living is paving a path for oneself to attain power, money and security from others and comforts here include all kinds of lurements that are responsible for enslaving one's mind with addiction. All the decisions that are considered practical and ideal ways of living are drawn towards these only. The truth remains today is that we are still living with instincts of thousands of years ago. There are groups, bigger groups and then there is a leader who is ready to go to any extent to sustain that position and feed the population that declares him above others. Law and order have decreased open killings but the constant reports of rapes, murders, communal violence and wars are a clear sign of latent aggression which still dwells inside this race and is undirected or misguided. At least we have understood that curbing somebody’s freedom to attain potential enlightenment is the biggest way you can harm the other person, that’s why jails are so successful a punishment although after a certain level of enlightenment, nothing can restrict the expansion of a being and Socrates, Osho, Bhagat Singh, Jesus, Epictetus or even Prahlad are testaments to the fact. Krishna on the very contrary to what today’s practically says, was a complete "non-violent pacifist" who promoted freedom within and oneness with the ultimate. Some argue that he was a promoter of the war of Mahabharata which is true but the fact remains that he was the biggest pacifist the world has ever seen because as a very famous Indian philosopher Osho Rajneesh describes - “ Only a true knower of what non-violence really means can give such beautiful reasonings and definitions to violence”. Krishna was a pacifist but a capable one. He considered Kauravas as a part of his body too, but a part that had become cancer. Cancer needs to be cut out before it spreads so into your body that it kills even the good parts. Hence Mahabharata was not a violent war, it was a holy war. A sacred battle where the gone-case Kauravas had to be killed. Just as doctors try their best to save a limb before amputation, Krishna too tried to observe Duryodhana and Dhritrashtra very closely but this party had simply gone out of their hands to become righteous. They were too engrossed in Adharma that they had to be slain. Hence the war has to be fought not to win or kill the other party but to simply avoid and stop the evil to win and when a war is fought with this knowledge, Gita tells how it can never incur sin. Such a war is actually a revolution. To make the case stronger against evil, like antibodies, goodness must empower itself. The ideal case will be when there is no. disease in the body because the immunity is so very strong.  Krishna's reasoning ability was and still is just too complex for us to understand because we are busy worshipping him but never really knowing his glory. 

The Credibility Crisis of Krishna :

We often see film actors being taken for granted for their intelligence and prowess in knowledge across domains other than their own. It is hard for a person with shallow intellect even to assume that Jackie Chan playing a comic role in a blockbuster film can be a person of great intellect who finds interests in astrophysics, metaphysics and philosophy. It's just comfortable to presume he is an Asian guy who is jumping around and enjoys vanity and has as much sense of the world as his character has in the comedy film he is working on. The tragedy of mankind is that we live in perceptions. The perceptions are based on the limited exposures and even more limited understanding of what is happening around while being exposed to dynamic circumstances. The tragedy is that the Krishna I speak to you of has suffered a credibility crisis due to the overburdening of the stories of his sheer innocence and notorious childhood. It has been another way of having a defence mechanism against his teachings.

 Surdas in his way tried to bring to the world a part of Krishna where people can begin, he only tried to bring Krishna to the masses from a level where an average intellect can be introduced to his being and gradually climb up to the pinnacle of wisdom and completion that he was. Surdas’s stories took an adverse turn in my opinion as people got stuck to Bal Krishna. This made him the Krishna who was comfortable to be hanged on the living room walls and be looked at with ease without many intriguing revelations coming out of the pictures and paintings that can challenge one’s loose way of life. Hence, firstly Krishna was popularised mostly in the form of Bal-Krishna and then was conveniently overlooked because the child in our society of mankind especially in indian is often overlooked for her intellect anyway, there is a general tendency to think there is nothing a child can teach instead it has to be the other way around till perpetuity. This causes Krishna’s wisdom to go diluted and mostly unexplored as he remains a child with lesser intellect on the walls of the houses craving dairy and a mere Jhoola/baby-swing in the temples.

Fear of Krishna:

People are often insecure about their funny positions, especially when they are in power, at least on the peripheries. When the truth of Krishna of Gita finds its way to people, they are unable to adjust to its burning command of change. Krishna’s thoughts demand not just change but revolution as those thoughts were sung amidst a great war. But, People can't change, they are too lazy, greedy and insecure to change. This fear of truth that makes people so uncomfortable is the reason why we have been unable to produce more people like Krishna, Swami Vivekananda and Shankaracharya because the one thing common among these three names is that they were fearless, they were courageous, creative, and unapologetically honest disregarding all the impulses that can hinder progress. A an average human who is product of the society perceives this honesty as a challenge and threat to the society where he has finally adjusted and has found a position in. He is at last enjoying the reverence from the believers of this fake world, he had worked hard to first adjust and then climb the intangible chain of hierarchy of humans. Finally, someone is ready to clean his backyard without challenging him and give him food without asking him to wash the dishes. He has finally found the wealth that can allow him to get reckless and lazy and finally make him feel on top of the world that is created around him now this Krishna of the Gita has come to destroy his sense of entitlement, he has come to reveal to the world that he is not really the boss. This is a big shaking point for many and hence, religion that destroyed the true knowledge was perpetuated by the royalty in history by the clergy. The king made sure he remained the king and, others deep in their bones accepted this fact as part of their religion but someone stood smarter than the king, the priests and the Mahapurohits made their way to the top so subtly that they never had to face any challenge and never had to fight to defend the kingdom and yet live worshipped even by the king.

Krishna’s fabulous intellect also caters to the Arjuna of the initial phase of Gita who is engrossed in the fact of being a Kshatriya and has all the wrong ideas about the world, krishna is capitalising even on Arjuna’s misconceptions. He later described how the varna system is completely unbiased and non-discriminatory. Varna system from which castes drew is merely a division based on the nature of someone and not calibre. Krishna presents the Varna system as an equal plate which is horizontal and not vertical but humans being humans continued to draw imaginary power from this too and today we see devastating effects of this. After all, how can someone who is stating oneself as uniform with the whole cosmic ultimate reality bring discrimination? It is obviously a false allegation and an exploited play of words. Unfortunately, today humans have been successful in creating a world where even God can be compromised to live below them in heirarchy even if that demands humans to worship God at the first place. It is smart.

Moh

To understand moh in its entirety, one must indulge in Vedant but to understand why Krishna is not understood, there is a need to touch the peripheries of the subject. Moh is anything that stops one from doing the right thing and it is riding on the back of attachment. 

सुखदु:खे समे कृत्वा लाभालाभौ जयाजयौ |

ततो युद्धाय युज्यस्व नैवं पापमवाप्स्यसि || ( chapter 2, shlok 38)

Translation:  “Having made joy and sorrow, gains and losses, victory and defeat, engage in the fight you! Fight for the right with this understanding and you shall never incur a sin.”

The iconic scene where Arjun had fallen to the ground losing all his strength in his feet was never a sign of exhaustion but obviously weakness in his heart. The reasoning of Krishna is so very strong that it can snap anyone out of a deep sleep of unawareness in a moment. It is just iconic how Krishna handled Arjun on the battlefield in chapter 2. Krishna is fighting the Moh inside of Arjuna, the Moh that tells Arjun not to fight and abstain from killing his supposedly own. He is bewildered and misinformed that he is the doer and anything at all is his own. He is shaking not because he is incapable of fighting but because he has an attachment that is giving rise to fear of loss. Arjuna expresses how either way he'll lose, he expresses if he fights on the one hand he will kill his own and on the other hand, he will be slain if he does not and either way seems like a defeat to him. Here Krishna tells him the brittle nature of human emotions. He explains how he is not really the doer as the circumstances have presented themselves in front of him which was something to have happened due to a divine planning to be put simplified. He is only an instrument through which it is all unfolding, the doer is not him but the ultimate itself and hence his duty as a Kshatriya on the battlefield is to fight for the right and win. Krishna tells Arjuna how his emotions are worth nothing but are mere distractions and his fears and greed about losing or winning respectively are of no meaning. Such reasonings with convincing logic are hard to find in the “practical” world of today where everyone is attached to not just other humans but also objects. A famous Indian philosopher Prashant Tripathi popularly known as Acharya Prashant also tells how tough of a job Krishna had to do on Kurukshetra as he had to put sense into characters like of ones in Mahabharata who were so deeply engrossed in Moh and Maya while comparing how it was relatively easier for Rishi Ashtavakra as he was dealing with a more sincere and a wise and grounded student like of Janaka. Today’s world is similar to the world of Indraprastha rather we are even worse off than they were and hence Krishna’s job is the toughest today.

न कर्मणामनारम्भान्नैष्कर्म्यं पुरुषोऽश्नुते |

न च संन्यसनादेव सिद्धिं समधिगच्छति || (chapter 3, shlok-4)

Translation: "A person does not attain freedom from action merely by abstaining from actions; nor does he attain perfection merely by renunciation."

In this shloka, Krishna has clarified that even not acting when necessary is an act performed out of  Moh which is sinful. Even renunciation cannot free you from your duties, what must be done will be done in some or the other way neither can you delay it or avoid it. Hence acting and not acting are both acts of Moh depending upon the situation. Sometimes not acting is a bigger act of violence than actually picking up the Shashtra. Therefore, Nobody can escape one’s duties ever, not even by practising complete renunciation because the impact of not acting for dharma will not leave you merely by not acting and practising utmost renunciation.

Krishna: The Only Being Who Saw The World In Completion

Humankind has lived in a concept of duality. Duality in beliefs, duality in approach towards life, relations and self. Duality is a trade and humans are obsessed with trade. There is good and bad, kind and evil, God and the devil etc. Krishna was beyond this duality that a person perceives in and around him. He was one, He was whole and complete with no voids whatsoever that could compel him to trade anything to gain something in return. He needn't trade as there was nothing he had in spare to be traded to fill a place for a deficiency, he was balanced in the most extraordinarily abundant way. The world particularly the clergy had exploited Krishna to sell stories of him that could mesmerise and entertain people and never let them reach the man, the Krishna who was not a character in a movie or a comic book or cartoon but a man who reached such a level of balance in his being that he became the totality, the godlike who went so beyond a mediocre mind’s reach that worshipping him was the only way to acknowledge and identify him. 

Krishna promoted such a religion where there was no concept of duality or discrimination but there was only oneness. He was such a man who was as happy and content being in a state of war as he was while closing his eyes for a nap on the lap of his mother. He felt as safe as an unborn while facing every modern weapon of the era. Courage is a quality one finds while being courageous many times. It is a state of bliss where fear and insecurity are simply not present and whatever unfolds, everything is balanced out. Krishna reached this state of consciousness many saints could only dream of. Even Buddha or a Mahavira found nirvana secluded from the world of materials. Krishna was in fact the only God who lived happily even while being at the centre of all the material and materialists. Every religion separated life and made parts of it that could suit their philosophy and understanding. For example, many religions talk about the afterlife which they promote as the real goal of the being of a human they promote the idea that excelling in the afterlife is the real goal, and hence the life of today, now and present needs to be lived in a state of sacrifice, suppression and coping from the fact that there is a sheer misery in the present and that all voids that there are will be filled eventually in the afterlife or in the perpetuity. Krishna was a religion in himself, his eyes were glittering with the joy of being in the now, he did not dream of running away to a place where one can find solace, instead, he created an oasis of solace amid utter chaos and now this presents him as the ultimate and supreme level of contentment and consciousness of the beyond that need not be even named. 

Death

When Arjuna is shivering to the ground and is unable to perform his duty out of fear, Krishna clarifies the ultimate concept of Death. He tells Arjun that thinking you can kill someone or someone can kill you is bogus. He goes on to explain death in many ways, similar to the Law of Conservation of Energy where he signals that there is something in us that is uniform throughout time, body and circumstance and our reactions to it. That something is immortal and the real you is actually that. Science identified it as energy and Krishna in some ways refers to this as spirit or soul.  

अव्यक्तोऽयमचिन्त्योऽयमविकार्योऽयमुच्यते |

तस्मादेवं विदित्वैनं नानुशोचितुमर्हसि || (chapter 2, shlok - 25)

Translation: The soul is spoken of as invisible, inconceivable, and unchangeable. Knowing this, you should not grieve for the body.

Mankind has confused the concept of rebirth with something else. Advait Vedant simply calls the soul as something “constant” and one with the ultimate. This body is the instrument that will face circumstances and will shed off one day only to become something else, probably a tree and a fruit hanging low on its branches and herbivore consuming it and later procreating more of itself and so on your soul keeps on distributing only to one day once again pack inside a human body after a full circle only to create a little bit more of ruckus and a little bit of hope in the world again to only to go back in the circle once again. This is how the whole universe is one, the castes, religions, species and all the categories do not matter more than academically. A Brahman is made of the carcass of an animal or vice versa. There is nothing to boast here and there is nothing to hold. This is a cycle of endless circles and however one feels about one’s own death is only a way of looking at the inevitable, the most practical event ever, the only communist. Hence, here comes Maya. Maya is the wrong idea of oneself and the world around. It suggests that something can be owned or something can be lost. Whereas everything is just neutral, emotionless and a number zero really. One can feel bad about zero being zero but it is how it is, zero doesn’t care. There is a reason why only India could give zero, this is only because we are the closest to the real practicality and ultimate rationale. The outcome of living a life with pseudo-practicality is fear. Fear is the only outcome of the concept of possession and relating with “I”. Arjuna is fearful and as Krishna his dear friend deflates his bubble of wrong ideas he becomes more and more comfortable to reach his dharma. the idea of rebirth as we know it today is fear and greed packed into an idea. we want to believe that even after death there will be something left of us, something that will still keep on gaining from the deeds of today. this is something that feeds the institution of religion, something that just exploits one's fears rather than resolving them. The idea that you as an individual will become something after death is a sham and it can only draw one to patronize lies in the name of respite in the afterlife.

Krishna Never Left The World:

यदा यदा हि धर्मस्य ग्लानिर्भवति भारत |

अभ्युत्थानमधर्मस्य तदात्मानं सृजाम्यहम् || (chapter 4, shlok-7)

Translation: “Whenever there is a decline in righteousness and an increase in unrighteousness, O Arjun, at that time I manifest Myself on earth.”

There is a reason why this shlok from chapter 4 of the Gita became so popular among all and became almost the only one to reach the masses. There is a reason why you are made to believe Krishna even left in the first place that he needs to return. Look around you, don’t you feel it is time for him to present his godliness already? Wars are happening around the world over land, resources and religion and where is Krishna then? Well, these wars were never off the charts of the world we live in. These wars have been taking place for centuries and not even the reasons have substantially changed. Corruption of society and mind has been taking place since eternity and there is no way the Dharma that Gita spoke of can find its way in such a world. Instead, the world wants you to believe Krishna is gone, at least for a while and for now, no one is watching so you can push the limits of evil in you for some time. The truth is Krishna is omnipresent because we dwell in him like he said, we are a part of him just as we are part of the whole cosmic ultimatum and he will only present himself to Arjun. Arjun had some amount of sincerity in him and he could absorb the teachings of Krishna reasonably to an extent that could win him the Mahabharata. It is said even Arjun could not fully understand and absorb Krishna in his entirety. He could not become the next Krishna, he simply remained Arjun as his vision of seeking clarity was so murky due to his ego and shallowness of understanding that he only could get to such a place where he could win the war of Mahabharata but not win his own instincts over completely but yet he remains one of the greatest students, the mankind as seen. But to say the least, the real “Darshana” or meeting ground with Krishna lies on Kurukshetra which sure lives and remains all around us, we just have to become sincere Arjuna rather than Duryodhana who chose everything to help him fight the battle but Krishna himself.