Krishna is Complete and whole

Question 1:

If a man has to think, understand, and say something, for him there can be no more meaningful a topic than Krishna. He is the most significant person in all of history. It is not that other significant people did not happen in the past - and it would be wrong to say that significant people will not happen in the future; in fact, any number of remarkable people have walked this earth - but Krishna's significance is quite different. He is more significant for the future than for the past.

The truth is, Krishna was born much ahead of his time. All great persons are born ahead of their time, and all insignificant people are born after their time. It is only mediocre people who are born in their time.

All significant people come ahead of their time, but Krishna came too far ahead. Perhaps only in some future period will we be able to understand him; the past could not do so.

And remember, we begin to worship those we fail to understand in their lifetimes. We worship those who perplex and defeat our ability to understand them. We either praise or slander them, but both praise and slander are kinds of worship. We worship friends with praise and we worship enemies with slander. It is all the same. One who defies our judgment, we call him a god or God-incarnate.

It is really difficult to accept one's ignorance; it is easier to call him a god or God-incarnate. But these are the two sides of the same coin. Such a person is God-like in the sense that we don't understand him, just as we don't understand God. This person is as unknowable and as mysterious as God himself. Despite our best efforts he, like God, ever remains to be known. And all such people become objects of worship.

It is precisely for this reason that I chose Krishna for discussion. He is, in my view, the most relevant, the most significant person in the context of the future. And in this regard, I would like to go into a few things.

With the exception of Krishna, all the remarkable people of the world, the salt of the earth like Mahavira, Buddha, and Christ, stood for some other world, for a life in some other world. They set distant things like the attainment of heaven and liberation as goals for man's life on this earth. In their day, life on this earth was so miserable and painful it was nearly impossible to live. Man's whole past was so full of want and hardship, of struggle and suffering, that it was hard to accept life happily.

Therefore all the religions in the past denied and denounced life on this earth.

In the whole galaxy of religious luminaries Krishna is the sole exception who fully accepts the whole of life on this earth. He does not believe in living here for the sake of another world and another life.

He believes in living this very life, here on this very earth. Where moksha, the freedom of Buddha and Mahavira, lies somewhere beyond this world and this time - there and then - Krishna's freedom is here and now. Life as we know it never received such deep and unconditional acceptance at the hands of any other enlightened soul.

In times to come there is going to be a considerable reduction in the hardship and misery of life in this world and a corresponding increase in its comfort and happiness. And so, for the first time, the world will refuse to follow those who renounced life. It is always an unhappy society that applauds the creed of renunciation; a happy society will refuse to do so. Renunciation and escape from life can have meaning in a society steeped in poverty and misery, but they hold no appeal for an affluent and happy society. A man can very well tell an unhappy society that since there is nothing here except suffering and pain, he is going to leave it - but he cannot tell the same thing to an affluent society; there, it will make no sense.

Religions believing in renunciation will have no relevance in the future. Science will eliminate all those hardships that make for life's sufferings. Buddha says that life from birth to death is a suffering.

Now pain can be banished. In the future, birth will cease to be painful both for the mother and for the child. Life will cease to be painful; disease can be removed. Even a cure for old age can be found, and the span of life considerably lengthened. The life span will be so long that dying will cease to be a problem; instead people will ask, "Why live this long?"

All these things are going to happen in the near future. Then Buddha's maxim about life being an unending chain of suffering will be hard to understand. And then Krishna's flute will become significant and his song and dance will become alive. Then life will become a celebration of happiness and joy. Then life will be a blossoming and a beauty.

In the midst of this blossoming the image of a naked Mahavira will lose its relevance. In the midst of this celebration the philosophy of renunciation will lose its luster. In the midst of this festivity that life will be, dancers and musicians will be on center-stage. In the future world there will be less and less misery and more and more happiness. That is how I see Krishna's importance ever on the ascent.

Up to now it was difficult to think that a man of religion carried a flute and played it. We could not imagine that a religious man wore a crown of peacock feathers and danced with young women. It was unthinkable that a religious man loved somebody and sang a song. A religious man, of our old concept, was one who had renounced life and fled the world. How could he sing and dance in a miserable world? He could only cry and weep. He could not play a flute; it was impossible to imagine that he danced.

It was for this reason that Krishna could not be understood in the past; it was simply impossible to understand him. He looked so irrelevant, so inconsistent and absurd in the context of our whole past.

But in the context of times to come, Krishna will be increasingly relevant and meaningful. And soon such a religion will come into being that will sing and dance and be happy. The religions of the past were all life-negative, defeatist, masochistic and escapist. The religion of the future will be life-affirming. It will accept and live the joys that life brings and will laugh and dance and celebrate in sheer gratitude.

In view of this immense possibility for a good life in the future I have chosen to talk about Krishna.

Of course it will be difficult for you to understand Krishna, because you are also conditioned, heavily conditioned by the misery of life in the past. You have, up to now, associated religion with tears and not with flutes.

Rarely have you come across a person who took to sannyas out of life's joys. Normally, when a man's wife died and his life became miserable, he turned to sannyas as an escape from his misery. If someone lost his wealth, went bankrupt and could not bear it, he took to sannyas in sheer despair. An unhappy person, a person ridden with sorrow and pain, escaped into sannyas. Sannyas stemmed from unhappiness and not from happiness. No one comes to sannyas with a song in his heart.

Krishna is an exception to the rule. To me he is that rare sannyasin whose sannyas is born out of joy and bliss. And one who chooses sannyas for the joy of it must be basically different from the general breed of sannyasins who come to it in misery and frustration.

As I say that the religion of the future will stem from bliss, so I also say that the sannyas of the future will flow from the joy and ecstasy of life. And one who chooses sannyas for the joy of it must be basically different from the old kind of sannyasin who left the world simply out of despair. He will take sannyas not because his family tortures him, but because his family is now too small for his expanding bliss - and so he adopts the whole world as his new family. He will accept sannyas not because his love turns sour, but because one person is now too small to contain his overflowing love - and he has to choose the whole earth as the object of his love.

And they alone can understand Krishna who understands this kind of sannyas that flows from the acceptance of life, from the juice and bliss of life.

If someone in the future says he took sannyas because he was unhappy we will ask him, "How can sannyas come from unhappiness?" The sannyas that is born out of unhappiness cannot lead to happiness and bliss. The sannyas that arises from pain and suffering can at best lessen your suffering, but it cannot bring you joy and bliss. You can, of course, reduce your suffering by moving away from the situation, but you cannot achieve joy and bliss through it. Only the sannyas, the Ganges of sannyas that is born out of bliss, can reach the ocean of bliss - because then all the efforts of the sannyasin will be directed towards enhancing his bliss.

Spiritual pursuit in the past was meant to mitigate suffering, it did not aim at bliss. And, of course, a traveler on this path does succeed, but it is a negative kind of success. What he achieves is a kind of indifference to life, which is only unhappiness reduced to its minimum. That is why our old sannyasins seem to be sad and dull, as if they have lost the battle of life and run away from it. Their sannyas is not alive and happy, dancing and celebrating.

To me, Krishna is a sannyasin of bliss. And because of the great possibility and potential of the sannyas of bliss opening up before us, I have deliberately chosen to discuss Krishna. It is not that Krishna has not been discussed before. But those who discussed him were sannyasins of sorrow, and therefore they could not do justice to him. On the contrary, they have been very unjust to him.

And it had to be so.

If Shankara interprets Krishna, he is bound to misinterpret him; he is the antithesis of Krishna.

His interpretation can never be right and just. Krishna could not be rightly interpreted in the past, because all the interpreters who wrote about him came from the world of sorrow. They said that the world is unreal and false, that it is an illusion, but Krishna says this world is not only real, it is divine. He accepts this world. He accepts everything; he denies nothing. He is for total acceptance - acceptance of the whole. Such a man had never trod this earth before.

As we discuss him here from day to day, many things, many facets of him, will unfold themselves.

For me, the very word "Krishna" is significant. It is a finger pointing to the moon of the future.

Question 2:

No, I did not say that Mahavira and Buddha were masochistic sannyasins. What I said was that sannyas in the past was masochistic. If you look at the lives of Mahavira and Buddha, you will see that they are for renunciation of life. I did not call them masochistic. I know they achieved the highest in life, and their unhappiness is very different. Their unhappiness is a kind of boredom arising from happiness; their unhappiness is not the absence of happiness. No one can say they turned to sannyas for want of happiness in life; it was not so. But the irony is that when there is too much happiness it becomes meaningless. So they renounced happiness. So while happiness became meaningless for them, its renunciation had meaning. They put a pronounced stress on renunciation.

They stood by renunciation.

For Krishna, not only is happiness meaning less, its renunciation is also meaningless. Krishna's understanding of meaninglessness is much deeper. Try to understand it.

If I cling to a thing, it means it has meaning for me. And if I renounce it, then also, in a negative sense, it has meaning for me, because I think I will suffer if I don't give it up. I don't say that the sannyas of Mahavira and Buddha arose from suffering. I don't say so at all. Their sannyas flowed from a condition of happiness. They left this happiness in search of some higher kind of happiness.

So in this matter there is a difference between them and Krishna.

Krishna does not renounce this happiness for the sake of some greater happiness; rather, he uses it as a stepping-stone to reach the other happiness we call bliss. He does not see any contradiction between the two kinds of happiness: the higher happiness is only the extension of the lower. Bliss, according to Krishna, is not opposed to the happiness of this world: it is the highest rhythm of the same music, the same dance. For Krishna, happiness contains some rudiments of bliss: one can have a little glimpse of bliss even in happiness. Happiness is the beginning of bliss; bliss is the climax of happiness.

It is from a situation of happiness that Buddha and Mahavira came to sannyas, it is true, but renunciation remains their stance: they renounce the world; they leave it. Renunciation has a place in their gestalt, and this gestalt assumes a good deal of importance in the eyes of masochistic people. Where Bud&a and Mahavira left the world out of boredom, the masochists thought they had done so because of suffering and pain. Interpretations of Buddha and Mahavira were done by the masochists as well. Not only Krishna, even Mahavira and Buddha had to suffer at the hands of the masochists. Injustice - of course, in smaller measure - was done to these two luminaries in the same way it was done to Krishna.

We are unhappy, we are in misery. When we leave the world we do so because of our unhappiness.

Buddha and Mahavira, however, left the world because of happiness. So there is a difference between us, on the one hand, and Mahavira and Buddha on the other, because the reasons for our renunciation are different.

Buddha and Mahavira are sannyasins of affluence; nonetheless there is a clear cut difference between Buddha and Mahavira, on the one hand, and Krishna on the other. The difference is that where Buddha and Mahavira renounce happiness, Krishna does not renounce it. Krishna accepts that which is. He does not find happiness even worth renouncing, let alone indulging. He does not find happiness even worth renouncing. He has no desire whatsoever to make even a slight change in life as it is; he accepts it totally.

A fakir has said in his prayer, "O Lord, I accept you, but not your world." In fact, every fakir says, "O Lord, I accept you, but not your world." This is opposite to the position taken by an atheist. The atheist says, "I accept your world, not you." Thus theists and atheists are two sides of the same coin.

Krishna's theism is quite unique. In fact, only Krishna is a theist: he accepts what is. He says to God, "I accept you and your world too," and this acceptance is so complete, so profound that it is difficult to know where the world ends and God begins. The world is really the extended hand of God, and God is the innermost being hidden in the world. The difference between the world and God is no more than this.

Krishna accepts the whole. It is important to understand that Krishna does not give up anything, neither pain nor happiness. He does not renounce that which is. With him the question of renunciation does not arise.

If we understand rightly we will see that the individual, the ego, the I begins with giving up, with renunciation. As soon as we renounce something I-ness into being. There is no way for me, for the ego to be if we don't give up anything.

It is difficult to find a more egoless person than Krishna. He is utterly egoless. And because he has no ego whatsoever, he can, with utmost ease, say things that sound egoistic. He tells Arjuna, "Give up everything and surrender to me, come to my feet." This seems to be a statement of great egoism. What greater egoistic statement can there be than to say, "Give up everything and come to my feet"? It is ironic that this statement, which seems so obviously egoistic even to ordinary minds like ours, does not seem so to Krishna himself. He has at least as much intelligence as we have; he should know it is an egoistic declaration. But he makes it with amazing ease and innocence and spontaneity. Really, only a person who is not in the least aware of his me and mine can make such a declaration.

What does Krishna really tell Arjuna? When he says, "Leave everything and come to my feet," he means to say that Arjuna should set aside everything and go to the feet of life itself, should accept life as it is.

It is amusing that Krishna exhorts Arjuna to fight. If we look at the dialogue between the two, Arjuna appears to be more religious, and what Krishna says is not that religious. Krishna provokes him to fight, and Arjuna refuses to do so. He says, "It is painful to kill my own people. I won't kill them even for the sake of a kingdom and a king's throne. I would rather go begging in the streets, rather commit suicide rather than kill my relatives, friends and teachers who are on the other side."

What religious person can say that Arjuna is wrong? Every religious person will say that Arjuna is absolutely right, that he is filled with a sense of righteousness, that he is on the path of religion. He will say he is a sage, a man of wisdom. But Krishna tells him, "You are deluded and you have gone off track. Your sense of religion has utterly left you."

And then he tells Arjuna, "You are mad if you think you can kill someone. No one ever dies. And you are mistaken to think you can save those standing before you. Who has ever saved anyone? And you cannot escape war, nor can you be non violent, because as long as the I exists - and it is this I that is anxious to save itself and its family and relatives - non violence is next to impossible. No, be rid of this nonsense and face reality. Set aside your sense of I and fight. Accept what is facing you.

And what is facing you is not a temple where prayers are made, it is war. It is war you are facing.

And you have to plunge into it. And so drop your I. Who are you?"

In the course of his exhortation Krishna makes a very interesting and significant remark. He tells Arjuna, "All those you think you have to kill are already dead. They are just awaiting death at the most you can serve as a medium for hastening it. But if you think you will kill them, then you will cease to be a medium, you will become a doer. And don't think you will be their savior if you run away from the battlefield. That would be another illusion. You can neither kill them nor save them.

You have only to play a role; it is nothing more than play-acting. Therefore go into it totally, and do your part unwaveringly. And you can be totally in anything only if you put aside your mind, drop your ego and cease looking at things from the angle of I or me and mine."

What does it all mean? Do you understand what Krishna means to say? It is of tremendous significance to understand it.

It means that if someone drops the viewpoint of the ego, he will cease to be a doer, and then he can only be a player, an actor. If I am Rama and my Seeta is kidnapped, I will cry for her. But the way I cry for her will be quite different if I am acting his part in a drama on his life. Then I will also cry, and maybe my crying is going to be more real than that of the actual Rama. Indeed, it is going to be a better performance, because the real Rama does not have the opportunity to rehearse his role.

Seeta is lost to him only once and he comes to know of it only after she has been kidnapped. He is not prepared for it. And as a doer, he is lost in the act of crying. He cries, screams, and suffers for Seeta.

That is why India does not accept Rama as a perfect incarnation of God. He cannot be a perfect actor; he is more a doer than an actor. He tries and fails again and again. He remains a doer. So we describe his life as that of an ideal character. He is not an actor, a player.

An actor does not have a character, he has just a role to play. So we describe Krishna's life as a real play, a performance. Krishna's life is a leela; he just plays his part and plays it perfectly. Rama's life has a character, it is idealistic; Krishna's life is a free play, a leela.

Character is a serious thing. A man of character has to approximate his conduct to a set of ideas, rules and regulations. He has to pick and choose; he has to choose between good and evil, between shoulds and should-nots. Arjuna is trying to be a man of character; Krishna is trying to make an actor of him. Arjuna wants to know what he should do and what he should not do. Krishna asks him to accept that which is, that which comes his way, and not to choose, not to bring his mind, his ego into it. This is absolute acceptance - where you have nothing to deny.

But it is arduous, really arduous to accept the whole of existence without choosing. Total acceptance means there is no good and bad, no virtue and vice, no pain and pleasure. Total acceptance means one drops for good the old ways of dialectical thinking, of thinking by splitting everything into two, into its opposites. Krishna tells Arjuna there is really no birth and death, that no one is ever born and no one ever dies, that no one kills and no one gets killed, so Arjuna can plunge into war without fear and with abandon, so he can play freely with war.

Everything on this earth is divine; everything in existence is godly, so the question of right and wrong does not arise. Of course, it is really arduous to understand it and live it.

The vision of Krishna is extremely difficult for a moralistic mind to decipher. A moralist finds it easier to understand an immoral person than Krishna. He can brush an immoral man aside by calling him a sinner. But in regard to Krishna he finds himself in a quandary. How to place him? He cannot say that Krishna is a bad man, because he does not seem to be so. And he also cannot gather the courage to say that Krishna is good, because he is goading Arjuna into things that are obviously bad, very bad.

Gandhi found himself in such a dilemma when he wanted to discuss Krishna. In fact, he was more in agreement with Arjuna than with Krishna, How can Gandhi accept it when Krishna goads Arjuna into war? He could be rid of Krishna if he were clearly bad, but his badness is not that clear, because Krishna accepts both good and bad. He is good, utterly good, and he is also utterly bad - and paradoxically, he is both together, and simultaneously. His goodness is crystal-clear, but his badness is also there. And it is difficult for Gandhi to accept him as bad.

Under the circumstances there was no other course for Gandhi but to say that the war of Mahabharat was a parable, a myth, that it did not happen in reality. He cannot acknowledge the reality of the Mahabharat, because war is violence, war is evil to him. So he calls it an allegorical war between good and evil. Here Gandhi takes shelter behind the same dialectics Krishna emphatically rejects.

Krishna says a dialectical division of life is utterly wrong, that life is one and indivisible. And Gandhi depicts the Mahabharat as a mythical war between good and evil where the Pandavas represent good and the Kaurawas represent evil, and Krishna urges Arjuna to fight on behalf of good. Gandhi has to find this way out. He says the whole thing is just allegorical, poetic.

There is a gap of five thousand years between Krishna and Gandhi, and so it was easy for Gandhi to describe a five-thousand-year-old event as a myth. But the Jainas did not have this advantage, so they could not escape like Gandhi by calling the whole Mahabharat a metaphor. For them it had really happened. Jaina thinking is as old as the VEDAS.

Hindus and Jainas share the same antiquity. So the Jainas could not say like Gandhi - who was a Jaina in mind and a Hindu in body - that the war did not really take place or that Krishna did not lead it. They were contemporaries of Krishna, so they could not find any excuse. They sent Krishna straight to hell; they could not do otherwise. They wrote in their scriptures that Krishna has been put in hell for his responsibility for the terrible violence of the Mahabharat. If one responsible for such large scale killing is not committed to hell, what will happen to those who scrupulously avoid even killing a fly as the Jainas do? So the Jainas had to put Krishna in hell.

But this is how his contemporaries thought. Krishna's goodness was so outstanding and vast that even his contemporary Jainas were faced with this difficulty, so they had to invent another story about him. Krishna was a rare and unique man in his own right. It is true he was responsible for a war like the Mahabharat. It is also true he had danced with women, had disrobed them and climbed up a tree with their clothes. Such a good man behaving in such a bad way! So after dumping him into hell they felt disturbed: if such good people as Krishna are hurled into hell then goodness itself will become suspect. So the Jainas said that Krishna would be the first Jaina tirthankara in the next kalpa, in the next cycle of creation. They put him in hell, and at the same time gave him the position of their tirthankara in the coming kalpa.

It was a way of balancing their treatment of Krishna, he was so paradoxical. From a moralistic viewpoint he was obviously a wrong kind of man, but otherwise he was an extraordinary man, worthy of being a tirthankara. Therefore they found a middle way: they put him in hell for the time being and they assigned him the hallowed position of their own future tirthankara. They said that when the current kalpa, one cycle of creation, would end and the next begin, Krishna would be their first tirthankara. This is a compensation Krishna really had nothing to do with. Since they sent him to hell, the Jainas had to compensate. They compensated themselves psychologically.

Gandhi has an advantage: he is far removed from Krishna in time, so he settles the question with great ease. He does not have to send Krishna to hell, nor to make him a tirthankara. He solves his problem by calling the Mahabharat a parable. He says the war did not really take place, that it is just an allegory to convey a truth about life, that it is an allegorical war between good and evil. Gandhi's problem is the same one that faced the Jainas of his time. Non-violence is the problem. He cannot accept that violence can have a place in life. It is the same with good. Good cannot admit that bad has a place in life.

But Krishna says that the world is a unity of opposites. Violence and non-violence always go together, hand-in-hand. There was never a time when violence did not happen, nor was there a time when non-violence did not exist. So those who choose only one of the opposites choose a fragment, and they can never be fulfilled. There was never a time when there was only light or when there was only darkness, nor will it ever be so. Those who choose a part and deny another are bound to be in tension, because in spite of denying it, the other part will always continue to be. And the irony is, the part we choose is dependent for its existence on the part we deny.

Non-violence is dependent on violence; they are really dependent on each other. Light owes its existence to darkness. Good grows in the soil of what we call bad, and draws its sustenance from it. At the other pole of his existence the saint is ultimately connected with the sinner. All polarities are irrevocably bound up with each other: up with down, heaven with hell, good with bad. They are polarities of one and the same truth.

Krishna says, "Accept both the polarities, because both are there together. Go with them, because they are. Don't choose!" It can be said that Krishna is the first person to talk of choicelessness. He says, "Don't choose at all. Choose and you err, choose and you are off track, choose and you are fragmented. Choice also means denial of the other half of truth, which also is. And it is not in our hands to wipe it away. There is nothing in our hands. What is, is. It was, when we did not exist. It will be when we will be no more."

But the moralistic mind, the mind that has so far been taken for the religious mind, has its difficulty.

It lives in conflict; it divides everything into good and bad. A moralist takes great pleasure in condemning evil; then he feels great and good. His interest in goodness is negative; it comes from his condemnation of evil. The saint derives all his pleasure from his condemnation of sinners; otherwise he has no way to please himself.

The whole joy of going to heaven depends on the suffering and misery of those who are sent to hell.

If those in heaven come to know there is nothing like hell, all their joy will suddenly disappear; they will be as miserable as anything. All their labor will go down the drain if they know no hell exists. If there is no hell, every criminal, every sinner will be in heaven. Where then will the saint go? The happiness of the virtuous is really dependent on the misery of the sinners. The happiness of the rich really stems from the misery of the poor; it does not lie in richness itself. The happiness of a good man is really derived from those condemned as sinners, it is not derived from goodness itself.

The saint will lose all his glamor and cheer the moment everyone becomes good; he will instantly become insignificant. Maybe, he will try to persuade a few ex-sinners to return to their old jobs.

The whole significance of the cosmos comes from its opposites, which are really complementaries.

And one who observes it wholly will find that what we call bad is the extreme point of good and, similarly, good is the omega point of bad.

Krishna is choiceless, he is total, he is integrated, and therefore he is whole and complete. We have not accepted any other incarnation except Krishna's as whole and complete, and it is not without reason. How can Rama be complete? He is bound to be incomplete, because he chooses only half the truth. He alone can be whole who does not choose - but simply because of not choosing he will come up against difficulties. His life will be an interplay of light and shade. Now it will be illumined; now, shaded. It can never be a monotone; it cannot be flat and simple.

The life of one who chooses will be all gray, flat and simple, because he has cleaned and polished a corner of his life. But what will he do with the rest of it, which he has rejected and left uncared for? His living room is bright and elegant, well-furnished and decorated, spick-and-span - but what about the rest of the house with all the rubbish and refuse pushed under the carpet? The rubbish will gather and stink under the carpet.

But what about one who accepts the whole house with its neatness and its rubbish, with its lighted parts and its dark corners? Such a person cannot be categorized. We will see him in our own light, in the light of our choices and preference, of our likes and dislikes. If one wants to see good in him one will find it there. And if a man wants to see only evil in him, he too, will not be disappointed, because in his life, both good and evil are present together. In fact only linguistically, are they two.

Existentially they are different aspects of the same thing. They are really one.

Therefore I maintain that Buddha and Mahavira have their choices, are not choiceless. They are good, absolutely good, and for this very reason they are not whole. To be whole, good and bad have to go together. If all the three - Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna - stand in a row, Buddha and Mahavira will obviously shine brighter and attract us more than Krishna. Buddha and Mahavira look spotlessly clean; there is no stain whatsoever on their mantles.

If we have to choose between Mahavira and Krishna we will choose Mahavira. Krishna will leave us in some doubt. Krishna has always done so, because he carries with him all the seeming opposites.

He is as good as Mahavira is, but in another respect Mahavira cannot be his equal, because Krishna has the courage to be as bad as Genghis and Hitler are. If we can persuade Mahavira to stand on a battlefield with a sword in his hand - which we cannot - then he will look like a picture of Krishna. Or if we make Genghis shed his violence and give up everything and stand naked like Mahavira, pure and peaceful like Mahavira - which is not possible - then he too will resemble Krishna.

It is next to impossible to judge and evaluate Krishna; he defeats all evaluation, all judgment. With respect to Krishna we have to be non-judgmental. Only those who don't judge can go with him. A judging mind will soon be in difficulty with him and will run away from him. He will touch his feet when he sees his good side, but what will he do when he comes across the other side of the shield?

Because of this paradox, each of Krishna's lovers divided him into parts and chose for himself only that part which accorded with him. No one had the courage to accept the whole of Krishna. If Surdas sings hymns of praise to Krishna, he keeps himself confined to the time of his childhood. He leaves the rest of his life; he does not have the courage to take him wholly. Surdas seems to be a cowardly person: he put his own eyes out with needles - he blinded himself - for fear of a beautiful woman.

Think of the man who chooses to go without eyes lest those eyes arouse his lust for a woman, lest he falls in love with her. Can such a man accept Krishna totally? It is true Surdas loves Krishna as few people do. He cannot do without him, so he clings to his childhood and ignores his youth. The youthful Krishna is beyond him.

Surdas could have accepted him if, in his youth, Krishna had gone blind like him. Krishna's eyes must have had rare beauty and power they attracted and enchanted so many women, as few pairs of eyes have done. In history it is rare that a single person's eyes were the center of attraction for thousands of women. They must have been extraordinarily captivating, enchanting. They were really magnetic eyes. Surely Surdas did not have eyes like his his eyes were very ordinary. It is true that women attracted him, but I don't know if he also attracted women. So Surdas had to remain content with the childish pranks of Krishna. He ignored the rest of him.

That is how all the scriptures about Krishna are - fragmentary. As Surdas chooses his childhood, another poet, Keshavadas, opts for a different Krishna, the youthful Krishna. Keshava is not in the least interested in the child Krishna, he is in love with the youthful energy of Krishna, singing and dancing with his village girls. Keshava's mind is youthful and vigorous and hedonistic he delights in the indulgence and exuberance of youth. He would never go blind; if he could, he would even keep his eyes open in the dark.

So Keshava does not talk of Krishna's childhood; he has nothing to do with it. He chooses for himself the dancing Krishna. It is not that he understands Krishna's dance, he chooses it because he has a sensuous mind, a dancing mind. He eulogizes the Krishna who disrobes young women and climbs up a tree with their clothes. Not that Keshava understands the deeper meaning of Krishna's pranks, he does so because he derives vicarious pleasure from Krishna disrobing the women of his village.

So he too, like Surdas, has chosen a fragment of Krishna, a truncated Krishna.

That is why the GEETA talks of a Krishna who is utterly different from the Krishna of the BHAGWAD.

It is so because of the differing choices and preferences of his devotees and lovers. Krishna himself is choice less and whole, but we are not. And only a man who is himself choiceless and whole can accept and assimilate the whole of Krishna. Those of us who are fragmented and incomplete will first divide him into parts and then choose what we like. And when you choose a part, at the same time you deny the rest of him. But you will say that the remaining Krishna is a myth, an allegory. You will say that the rest of Krishna will suffer in hell till the end of creation. You will say you don't need the whole of Krishna, that a fragment is enough for you. So there are many Krishnas, as many as his lovers and devotees.

Krishna is like a vast ocean on whose endless shore we have made small pools of water we call our own. But these pools don't even cover a small fraction of the immensity that is Krishna. You cannot know the ocean from these petty pools. The pools represent Krishna's lovers and their very limited understanding of him. Don't take the pools for the ocean.

So I am going to discuss the whole of Krishna, the complete Krishna. Because of this, many times in the course of these talks, you will find it difficult to understand me. Many things will defy your mind and intellect, and a few things will even go beyond you. I would like you to rise to the height of the occasion and in spite of your mind's conditioning, prepare yourself to go along with me. If you remain bogged down and cling to the Krishna of your concepts, you will, as you have done so far, again miss the complete Krishna. And I say that only an integrated Krishna, a whole Krishna can be of use to you, not the truncated one you have known so long.

Not only Krishna, even an ordinary person is useful only if he is integrated and whole. Dissect him and you have only his dead limbs in your hands; the live man is no more. So those who divided Krishna into fragments did a great disservice to him and to themselves. They have only his dead limbs with them, while his whole live being is missing. The real Krishna is missing.

There is only one way to have the whole of Krishna, and that is to understand him choicelessly. And understanding him so will be a blissful journey, because in the process you will be integrated and made whole. In the very process of understanding him, you will begin to be whole and holy. If you consent to drop your choices and preferences, and understand Krishna in his totality, you will find, by and by, that your inner contradictions and conflicts have diminished and disappeared, and that all your fragments have come together into an integrated whole. Then you will attain to what is called yoga or unity. For Krishna, yoga has only one meaning; to be united, to be integrated, to be whole.

The vision of yoga is total. Yoga means the total. That is why Krishna is called a mahayogi, one who has attained to the highest yoga. There are any number of people who claim to be yogis, but they are not really yogis because they all have their choices, they all lack unity and integration.

Choicelessness is yoga.

These talks on an undivided and whole Krishna are going to be difficult for you, because intellect has its own categories, its own ways of thinking in fragments. Intellect has its own ways of measuring men, events and things. These measures are all petty and fragmentary. It does not make much difference whether one's measure is new or old, modern or medieval, metric or otherwise. It does not make any difference whether the intellect is old or new, ancient or modern, classical or scientific.

There is one characteristic common to all intellect: it divides things into good and bad, right and wrong. Intellect always divides and chooses.

If you want to understand Krishna then for these ten days drop your judgment altogether, give up dividing and choosing. Only listen and understand without judging, without evaluating anything. And whenever you come to a point where your understanding, your intellect begins to falter and fail, don't stop there, don't retreat from there, but boldly enter the world which is beyond rational understanding, or what you call the irrational world. Often we will come across the irrational, because Krishna cannot be confined to the rational; he is much more than that. In him, Krishna includes both the rational and the irrational, and goes beyond both. In him, Krishna also includes that which transcends understanding, which is beyond understanding.

It is impossible to ht Krishna into logical molds and patterns, because he does not accept your logic, he does not recognize any divisions of life as you are used to doing. He steers clear of every kind of fragmentation without accepting or denying it. Although he touches all the pools of your beliefs and dogmas and superstitions, he himself remains untouched by them he always remains the vast ocean that he is. Evidently he is going to create difficulties for you. And the greatest difficulty you will face is when your own tiny pools dry up and die, and Krishna's ocean lives and goes on and on and on. He is beyond and ever beyond.

Krishna's ocean is really all over; he is all-pervasive. He is in good and he is in bad too. His peace is limitless, yet he takes his stand on a battlefield with his favorite weapon, the sudarshan chakra in his hand. His love is infinite, yet he will not hesitate to kill if it becomes necessary. He is an out- and-out sannyasin, yet he does not run away from home and hearth. He loves God tremendously, yet he loves the world in the same measure. Neither can he abandon the world for God nor can he abandon God for the world. He is committed to the whole. He is whole.

Krishna has yet to find a devotee who will be totally committed to him. Even Arjuna was not such a complete devotee; otherwise Krishna would not have had to work so hard with him. It is evident from the GEETA, from the lengthy statement made on the battleground, how doubting and skeptical and argumentative Arjuna is. Two warring armies are facing each other on the grounds of the Kurukshetra. the bells of war are tolling, and Arjuna is stubbornly refusing to take up arms and fight.

Against Krishna's exhortations he is raising question after question - which run through eighteen chapters of the GEETA. Again and again he gently protests Krishna's seemingly bipolar vision. He says that Krishna is paradoxical, that he says things that contradict each other.

The questions he has raised in the GEETA are consistent and logical. He feels baffled and confused and asks Krishna to explain the same thing over and over again. But Krishna fails to explain and convince Arjuna; even a total person like Krishna fails. And then he takes recourse in another method: he unfolds himself, his reality before Arjuna.

Krishna knows Arjuna is right logically: he is confused and demands consistency. Krishna really confuses him. On the one hand he talks of the significance of love and compassion and, on the other, urges him to boldly take up arms and fight his enemies. So Krishna is tired of talking, because it is a moment of war. Trumpets have sounded, and this man Arjuna, who is the kingpin of the whole drama, is still hesitating, wavering. If he runs away, the whole game will fall to pieces. So when arguments fail, Krishna unfolds his whole being, his immensity before him, and Arjuna is greatly disturbed to see it. Anyone would be disturbed to see it, because Krishna's real being, his universal being, comprises all the contradictions of existence. One sees that life and death are there together.

But one cannot accept them together.

In our ordinary life, birth and death are distanced by a span of time - say seventy years. We are born seventy years before our death; we die seventy years after our birth. This distance between birth and death makes us think that life and death are separate things. But when Krishna confronts him with his immense body, his universal being, Arjuna sees life and death together in him. He sees both the creation and destruction of worlds taking place simultaneously. He sees the sprouting seed and the dying tree together. And he panics, seeing the immensity and paradox of Krishna's totality. In the midst of it he entreats Krishna to stop; he cannot bear it any longer. But after seeing this he stops raising questions, because now he knows that what we see as inconsistencies and contradictions in life are nothing but integral parts of the same truth - which is one. And he quietly joins the war.

But it does not mean that Arjuna is fully convinced. Although he has had a glimpse of reality, his mind, his intellect, yet continues to doubt. Doubt is the way of the mind.

Whatever questions you may have, you can direct them to me, but please don't raise questions about Krishna while understanding Krishna. Use all your intellect with me, but understand Krishna without questions. You are going to have very trying times with him, because many times he will leave the world of the rational and enter the irrational, which is really the space beyond the rational You may call it the super-rational. There you will need patience and great courage - maybe the greatest courage possible. Be prepared to walk with me into that unfamiliar unknown territory where your little lighted world will come to an end, where you will enter a sort of altogether dark space. In that unlit space you will find no pathways, neither doors nor openings. You will find nothing there that will resemble the forms and faces you have been familiar with in the past. All old forms will dissolve and disappear, and all consistencies and contradictions will simply cease to be. And it is only then that you can come close to that which is immense, to that which is infinite, to that which is immeasurable - the eternal.

You can have that rare opportunity if you are prepared, with courage and patience, to go the whole length with me. It is not that Arjuna has some special ability to see the immense, everyone has that ability. Everyone can raise the questions he raises. So if you are prepared to journey into the mysterious, into that which transcends the rational, the known, you will be equally entitled to confront the immense, the eternal. That immensity is awaiting you.

All my efforts here, during these discussions, will be directed towards bringing that immensity to you.

A personalized name for that immensity is Krishna. We don't have really much to do with Krishna, he is just the symbolic name for the immense, the total. So don't be disturbed if at times we digress from him. My efforts will always be directed towards the one goal, towards the immense, the infinite, the eternal. And it can happen to you too, if only you are prepared for it. It is not that it can happen at Kurukshetra only, it can happen right here at Manali.

Question 3:

Misery is a fact of life, but it is not the only fact - happiness is equally a fact of life. And happiness is as big a fact of life as misery is. And when we take misery to be the only fact of life, we turn it into a non-fact, into a fiction. Then what will you do with happiness, which is very much there? If life were only suffering, Buddha had no reason to take pains to explain the significance of suffering; there was no point to it. And Buddha explains at great length the meaning of suffering, yet nobody runs away from life because it is a suffering. We are all miserable, but we don't stop living for that reason.

There must be something other than suffering, different from suffering, which makes us hold on to life, cling to it in spite of its many hurts and pains. For instance, someone is miserable because he is in love. Love has its own problems and complexities. But if there were no happiness in love, who would consent to go through so much suffering for its sake? And if, for the sake of an ounce of happiness, one goes through tons of suffering, it means that the intensity, the flavor of an ounce of happiness outweighs all the sufferings of life. Happiness is equally true.

Because all the advocates of renunciation lay all their emphasis on suffering, they turn suffering into a fiction. In the same way the hedonists turn happiness into a fiction by laying all their stress on it. The materialists give too much importance to happiness, and they deny suffering altogether. But that is not true. Remember, a half truth is a lie: truth can only be whole; it cannot be fragmentary. If someone says that life is, he tells a lie, because death is inseparably linked with life. Similarly it is a lie to say that only death is, because life is irrevocably joined to death.

It is not a fact that life is unmitigated suffering. What is a fact then? That life is both happiness and sorrow is a fact. If you observe it carefully and closely and deeply, you will find that every happiness is blended with pain and every pain is mixed with happiness. And if you go still deeper into it, it will be difficult to know when pain turns into pleasure and when pleasure turns into pain. They are really convertible: one changes into the other. And it happens in our everyday life. Really, the difference between them is one of emphasis. What felt like happiness yesterday feels like suffering today, and what seems to be suffering today will turn into happiness tomorrow.

If I take you in my embrace you will feel happy about it, but if I continue to hug you for a few minutes you will begin to find the same hug becoming painful. And if I continue to hold you in my grip for half an hour, you will feel restless and think of shouting for help; you may even call the police. So one who knows, releases you from his embrace before you would like to be released. And one who is unaware of this law soon turns his happiness into suffering. So when you take someone's hand in your hand, take care that you release it sooner than later, otherwise the pleasure will very soon change into pain. We are all wont to reduce our happiness into pain and suffering. Since we don't want to part with happiness, we cling to it, and it is clinging that turns it into suffering.

We very much desire to be rid of pain and suffering, and for this very reason our suffering deepens.

But if we accept suffering and stay with it for a while, it will be transformed into happiness. The feeling of suffering stems from its being unfamiliar, but it will not take you long to become familiar with it. The same is the case with happiness. Familiarity changes everything.

I have heard that a person came to visit a new village where he asked someone for a loan. The other person said, "It is strange that you ask me for a loan when I don't know you at all. You are a complete stranger to me." The visitor answered, "It is strange that you should talk like this. I left my own village and came to yours because my co-villagers refused to give me a loan on the grounds they knew me well. And now you say that because you don't know me you will not give me a loan.

Where can I go now?"

All our troubles begin when we break life up into segments and see things fragmentarily. No, all places are alike. There is no such place in life where only happiness abides. And similarly there is no such place where you meet with suffering and only suffering. Therefore, our heaven and hell are just our imagination. Because we have gotten into the habit of looking at things fragmentarily, we have imagined one place with abounding happiness and another with unmitigated sorrow and suffering - and we call them heaven and hell. No, wherever life is there is happiness and suffering together. They go together. You have happy moments or relaxation in hell and painful spells of boredom in heaven.

Bertrand Russell has said he would not like to go to heaven, where only happiness abounds. How can you know happiness without knowing suffering? How can you know health without knowing sickness? Where you have everything just by wishing for it, there cannot be any joy in having it.

The joy of having something comes from the length of time you have been wanting it, expecting it.

Happiness really lies in the expectation. So once you achieve it, it loses its charm for you. Every happiness is imaginary: so long as you don't possess it, it seems to be abounding happiness. But as soon as it is actualized, it ceases to be happiness; our hands are as empty as before. And then we seek some other object for our desire, and we begin to expect it again. We feel so unhappy without it and imagine that happiness will come with it.

Rothschild was one of America's multi-millionaires. There is a story about him, and I don't know if it is true or not. He was on his deathbed, and he said to his son, "You have seen from my life that I made millions and they didn't make me really happy, they didn't bring happiness with them. Do you see that wealth is not happiness?"

His son said, "It is true, as I learned from your life, that wealth is not happiness, but I also learned from your life that if one has wealth, one can have the suffering of his choice; one can choose between one suffering and another. And this freedom of choice is beautiful. I know that you were never happy, but you always chose your own kind of suffering. A poor man does not have this freedom, this choice; his suffering is determined by circumstances. Except this, there is no difference between a rich man and a poor man in the matter of suffering. A poor man has to suffer with a woman who comes his way as his wife, but the rich man can afford women with whom he wants to suffer. And this choice is not an insignificant happiness."

If you examine it deeply, you will find that happiness and suffering are two aspects of the same thing, two sides of the same coin, or, perhaps, they are different densities of the same phenomenon.

Besides, what is happiness for me may be a matter of suffering for you. If I own ten million and I lose five, I will be miserable in spite of the fact that I still own five million. But if you have nothing and you come across five million, you will be mad with joy and happiness. Although both of us will be in the same situation financially - we have five million each - I will be beating my head against the wall and you will be dancing and celebrating. But also remember, your celebration will not last long, because someone who comes to own five million will also be faced with the fear of losing it. In the same way, my sufferings will soon wither away, because one who loses five million soon becomes engaged in recovering that loss - which is quite possible for him.

Strange are the ways of life. My happiness cannot be your happiness, nor can my suffering become your suffering. Even my happiness of today can not be my happiness for tomorrow. I cannot say if my happiness in this moment will continue to be my happiness in the next. Happiness and suffering are like clouds passing through the sky. They come and go.

Both happiness and suffering are there, and they are facts of life. In fact, it is wrong to call them two, but we have to, because all our languages divide things into two. Really it is one truth, sometimes seen as happiness and other times as suffering. In reality, pleasure and pain are just our interpretations, psychological interpretations. They are not real situations, they are largely interpretations of them. And it depends on us how we interpret something. And there may be a thousand interpretations of the same thing. It all depends on us.

If you know that both happiness and sorrow are true and are together, then you will also know that Buddha's statement that life is all suffering is fragmentary, and that it suffers from over-emphasis.

This statement, however, is going to work; it will appeal to people. Buddha can have tens of thousands of followers, but not Krishna. Charwaka will attract millions to his fold, but Krishna cannot have that appeal.

Buddha and Charwaka have made choices, and they have both chosen one of the two polarities of truth. One says life is all suffering and the other says life is indulgence. And they make their statements clearly and emphatically. And whenever you find your own situation conforming with their statements you say Buddha is right or Charwaka is right. You will not agree with Buddha in every state of your life, you will only agree with him when you are in suffering. When you are not in any pain you will not say Buddha is right. A happy person, one who thinks himself to be happy, will ignore Buddha, but the moment he is in pain again, Buddha will become significant for him. It is, however, a case of your own situation occasionally approximating the statement of Buddha; it does not testify to its significance, to its meaningfulness.

But Krishna will always remain incomprehensible. Whether you are in pain or you are happy, it does not make any difference. You can only understand Krishna when you accept both happiness and misery together and at the same level. Not before. And do you know the state you will be in when you say an unconditional yes to both, when you know pain as the precursor of pleasure and pleasure as the precursor of pain, when you receive them without being agitated in any way, with equal equanimity, when you refuse to interpret them, even to name them? It will be a state of bliss. Then you will be neither happy nor unhappy, because you will have stopped interpreting and labeling things. The person who accepts things without judging them, without naming them, immediately enters the state of bliss. And one who is in bliss can understand Krishna. Only he can understand him.

One's being in a state of bliss does not mean that one will not be visited by suffering now. Suffering will of course visit you, but now you will not interpret it in a way that makes it really suffering. Bliss does not mean only happiness will visit you now. No, bliss only means that now you will not interpret happiness in a way that makes you cling to it and desire it more and more. Now things are as they are; what is, is. If it is sunny, it is sunny; if it is dark, it is dark. And as life is, it is going to be, by turn both sunny and dark. But you are not going to be affected by either, because now you know that things come and go but you remain the same. Pain and pleasure, happiness and sorrow, are like clouds moving in the sky but the sky remains untouched, the same. And that which remains the same, untrammeled and unchanging, is your consciousness. This is Krishna-consciousness. This Krishna-consciousness is just a witnessing: whatever happens to you, pain or pleasure, you simply watch it without any comment, without any judgement. And to be in Krishna consciousness is to be in bliss.

For Krishna, there is only one meaningful word in life, and that is bliss. Happiness and unhappiness are not meaningful; they have been created by dividing bliss into two. The part that is in accord with you, that you accept, is called happiness, and the part that is discordant to you, that you deny, is called unhappiness. They are our interpretations of bliss, divided - and as long as it agrees with you it is happiness and when it begins to disagree with you it is called unhappiness. Bliss is truth, the whole truth.

It is significant that the word bliss, is anand in Sanskrit, is without an opposite. Happiness has its opposite in unhappiness, love has its opposite in hate, heaven in hell, but bliss has no such opposite.

It is so because there is no state opposed to bliss. If there is any such state, it is that of happiness and of misery both. Similarly, the Sanskrit word moksha, which means freedom or liberation, has no opposite. Moksha is the state of bliss. Moksha means that happiness and misery are equally acceptable.

Question 4:

There is no other reason but one, and that is total emptiness. Whosoever is empty is whole.

Emptiness is the foundation of wholeness. Rightly said, emptiness alone is whole. Can you draw a half emptiness? Even geometry cannot draw a half zero; there is no such thing as a half zero.

Zero or emptiness is always complete, whole. Part-emptiness has no meaning whatsoever. How can you divide emptiness? And how can it be called emptiness if it is divided into parts? Emptiness is irreducible, indivisible. And where division begins, numbers begin; therefore, number one follows zero. One, two and three belong to the world of numbers. And all numbers arise from zero and end in zero. Zero or emptiness alone is whole.

He is whole who is empty. And it is significant that Krishna is called whole, because this man is absolutely empty. And only he who is choiceless can be empty. One who chooses becomes something. he accepts being somebody, he accepts "somebodiness". If he says he is a thief, he will become somebody; his emptiness will be no more. If he says he is a saint, then also is his emptiness destroyed. This person has accepted to be something, to be somebody. Now "somebodiness" has entered and "nothingness" is lost.

If someone asks Krishna who he is, he cannot answer the question meaningfully. Whatever answer he gives will bring choice in, and it will make something or somebody of him. If one really wants to be all, he must be prepared to be nothing.

Zen monks have a code, a maxim among themselves. They say, "One who longs to be everywhere must not be anywhere." One who wants to be all cannot afford to be anything. How can he be something? There is no congruity between all and something; they don't go together.

Choicelessness brings you to emptiness1 to nothingness. Then you are what you are, but you cannot say who you are, what vou are.

It is for this reason that, when Arjuna asks Krishna who he is, instead of answering his question, he reveals himself, his real being to him. In that revelation he is all and everything. The deepest significance of his being whole lies in his utter emptiness.

One who is something or somebody will be in difficulty. His very being something will become his bondage. Life is mysterious; it has its own laws. If I choose to be something, this "something" will become my prison.

There is a beautiful anecdote from the life of Kabir. Every day a number of people gather at Kabir's place to listen to his words of wisdom. At the end of the satsang, Kabir always requested them to dine with him before going home.

One day the matter came to a head. Kabir's son Kamal came to him and said, "It is now becoming too much. We can no longer bear the burden of feeding so many people every day. We have to buy everything on credit, and we are now heavily in debt." Kabir said, "Why don't you borrow more?"

"But who is going to repay it?" Kamal asked.

Then his father said, "One who gives will repay it. Why should we worry about it?"

Kamal could not understand what his father meant. He was a worldly man. He said, "This answer won't do; it's not a spiritual matter. Those who lend us money ask for repayment, and if we fail to repay them we will prove to be dishonest."

To this Kabir simply said, "Then prove to be so. What is wrong with it? What if people call us dishonest?"

Kamal could not take it. And he said, "It is too much. I can't put up with it. You just stop inviting people to dinner, that's all."

Kabir then said, "If it comes to this, so be it."

The next day people came to satsang again, and as usual Kabir invited them to eat with him. His son reminded him of his unfulfilled promise to stop feeding the visitors. Kabir said, "I can't give you my word, because I don't want to bind myself to anything. I live in the moment. I let what happens in the moment, happen. If some day I don't ask them to stay to dinner, it will be so. But as long as I happen to invite them, I will invite them."

Kamal then said in desperation, "It means that I will now have to resort to stealing, because nobody is prepared to give us credit any more. What else can I do?"

Kabir said grinning, "You fool, why didn't you think of this before? It would have saved us the trouble of borrowing."

Kamal was simply amazed to hear his father say this. He was known as a wise man, a sage, who always gave people profound advice. "What is the matter with him?" he wondered. Then he thought that maybe his father was just playing a joke, so he decided to put it to a test.

Late in the night when the whole village was asleep, Kamal awakened his father and said, "I am going to steal. Will you accompany me?"

Kabir said, "Now that you have awakened me, I should go with you." Kamal was startled once again; he could not believe his father would agree to steal. But he was Kabir's son, and he did not like beating a hasty retreat, so he decided to see the whole of this joke, or whatever it was, through to the end.

Kamal walked to the back of a farmer's house, his father following him, and he began to break through the wall of the house. Kabir was standing silently near him. Kamal still expected his father to call off the whole thing as a joke. And at the same time he was afraid. Kabir said, "Why are you afraid, Kamal?"

"What else can I be when I am going to commit theft?" he retorted. "Isn't it ironical to suggest I should not be afraid while stealing?"

Kabir said, "It is fear that makes you feel guilty, that makes you think you are stealing; otherwise there is no reason to think that you are a thief. Don't fear, do your job rightly; otherwise you will needlessly disturb the sleep of the entire family."

Somehow Kamal drilled a hole in the wall, still hoping his father would call it quits. Then he said, "Now let's enter the house." And Kabir readily joined him and went inside the house. They had not gone there to steal money, they only wanted grain, and so they picked up a bag of wheat and left the house.

When they were out again, Kabir said to his son, "Now that dawn is at hand, it would be good if you went and informed the family that we are taking a bag of wheat away with us."

This startled Kamal once again and he exclaimed, "What are you saying? We are here as thieves, not as merchants."

But Kabir said, "Why make them worry unnecessarily about this missing bag of wheat? Let them know where it is going."

Followers of Kabir have completely ignored this odd episode. They never mention it because it is so inscrutable. In the light of this event it would be difficult to decide whether Kabir was a sage or a thief. Undoubtedly a theft has been committed, hence he is indictable as a thief. But his being wise is equally indisputable, because first he asks Kamal not to fear and then to inform the family about it so they are not put to unnecessary trouble.

Kamal had then warned Kabir, "But if I inform the family, we will be known as thieves."

And Kabir had very innocently said, "Since theft has happened, we are thieves. They will not be wrong to think of us as thieves."

Kamal had again warned, "Not only the family concerned, but the whole village will come to know that you are a thief! Your reputation will be in the mud. No one will come to visit you again."

And Kabir had said, "Then your troubles will be over. If they don't come, I will not have to ask them to eat with us."

Kamal could not understand it the whole episode was so paradoxical.

Krishna is complete in another sense: his life encompasses all there is to life. It seems impossible how a single life could contain so much - all of life. Krishna has assimilated all that is contradictory, utterly contradictory in life. He has absorbed all the contradictions of life. You cannot find a life more inconsistent than Krishna's. There is a consistency running through the life of Jesus. So is Mahavira's life consistent. There is a logic, a rhythm, a harmonic system in the life of Buddha. If you can know a part of Buddha you will know all of him.

Ramakrishna has said, "Know one sage and all sages are known." But this rule does not apply to Krishna. Ramakrishna has said, "Know a drop of sea water and all the sea is known.'i But you can't say it about Krishna. The taste of sea water is the same all over - it is salty. But the waters of Krishna's life are not all salty; at places they can be sugary. And, maybe, a single drop contains more than one flavor. Really, Krishna comprises all the flavors of life.

In the same way, Krishna's life represents all the arts of existence. Krishna is not an artist, because an artist is one who knows only one art, or a few. Krishna is art itself. That completes him from every side and in every way.

That is why those who knew him had to take recourse in all kinds of exaggeration to describe him. With others we can escape exaggeration, or we have to exaggerate a particular facet of their lives, but we find ourselves in real difficulty when we come to say something about Krishna. Even exaggeration doesn't say much about him. We can portray him only in superlatives we cannot do without superlatives. And our difficulty is greater when we find the superlative antonyms too, because he is cold and hot together.

In fact, water is hot and cold together. The difficulty arises when we impose our interpretation on it:

then we separate hot from cold. If we ask water itself whether it is hot or cold, it will simply say, "To know me you only have to put your hand in me, because it is not a question of whether I am hot or cold, it is really a question of whether you are hot or cold." If you are warm, the water will seem to be cold, and if you are cold the water will seem to be hot. Its hotness or coldness is relative to you.

You can conduct an experiment. Warm one of your hands by exposing it to a fire, and cool your other hand on a piece of ice, and then put both hands together into a bucket of water. What will you find? Where your one hand will say the water is cold, the other will say the contrary. And it will be so difficult for you to decide if the water, the same water, is hot or cold.

You come upon the same kind of difficulty when you try to understand Krishna. It depends on you, and not on Krishna, how you see him. If you ask a Radha, who is in deep love with him, she will say something which will be entirely her own vision of Krishna. Maybe she does not call him a complete god, or maybe she does, but whatever she says depends on her, not on Krishna. So it will be a relative judgment. If sometimes Radha comes across Krishna dancing with another woman she will find it hard to accept him as a god. Then Krishna's water will feel cold to her. Maybe she does not feel any water at all. But when Krishna is dancing with Radha, he dances so totally with her that she feels he is wholly hers. Then she can say that he is God himself. Every Radha, when her lover is wholly with her, feels so in her bones. But the same person can look like a devil if she finds him flirting with another woman. These statements are relative; they cannot be absolute. For Arjuna and the Pandavas, Krishna is all-god, but the Kauravas will vehemently contest this claim. For them Krishna is worse than a devil. He is the person who is responsible for their defeat and destruction.

There can be a thousand statements about who Krishna is. But there cannot be a thousand statements about who Buddha is. Buddha has extricated himself from all relative relationships, from all involvements, and so he is unchanging, a monotone. Taste him from anywhere, his flavor is the same. Therefore, Buddha is not that controversial; he is like flat land. We can clearly know him as such-and-such, and our statements about him will always have a consistent meaning. But Krishna belies all our statements. And I call him complete and whole because he has disaffirmed all our pronouncements on him. No statement, howsoever astute, can wholly encompass Krishna; he always remains unsaid. So one has to cover the remaining side of his life with contrary statements.

All these statements together can wholly cover him, but then they themselves seem paradoxical.

Krishna's wholeness lies in the fact that he has no personality of his own, that he is not a person, an individual - he is existence itself. He is just existence; he is just emptiness. You can say he is like a mirror; he just mirrors everything that comes before him. He just mirrors. And when you see yourself mirrored in him, you think Krishna is like you. But the moment you move away from him, he is empty again. And whosoever comes to him, whosoever is reflected in his mirror thinks the same way and says Krishna is like him.

For this very reason there are a thousand commentaries on the GEETA. Every one of the commentators saw himself reflected in the GEETA. There are not many commentaries on the sayings of Buddha, and there is a reason for this. There are still fewer on the teachings of Jesus, and they are not much different from each other. In fact, a thousand meanings can only be implanted on Krishna, not on Buddha. What Buddha says is definite and unequivocal; his statements are complete, clear cut and logical. There may be some differences in their meaning according to the minds of different commentators, but this difference cannot be great.

The dispute over Mahavira was so small It only led to two factions among his followers. The dispute between the Shwetambaras and the Digambaras is confined to petty things like Mahavira lived naked or did not live naked. They don't quarrel over the teachings of Mahavira, which are very clear.

It would be difficult to create differing sects around the Jaina tirthankara.

It is strange that it is as difficult to create sects around Krishna as it is around Mahavira. And it is so for very contrary reasons. If people try to create sects around Krishna. the number will run into the tens of thousands, and even then Krishna will remain inexhaustible. Therefore in the place of sects, around Krishna thousands of interpretations arose. In this respect too, Krishna is rare in that sects could not be built around him. Around Christ two to three major factions arose, but none around Krishna. But there are a thousand commentaries on the GEETA alone. And it is significant that no two commentaries tally: one commentary can be diametrically opposed to another, so much so they look like enemies. Ramanuja and Shankara have no meeting point, One can say to the other, "You are just an ignoramus!" And what is amazing is that in their own way both can be tight; there is no difficulty in it. Why is it so?

It is so because Krishna is not definite, conclusive. He does not have a system, a structure, a form, an outline. Krishna is formless, incorporeal. He is limitless. You cannot define him; he is simply indefinable. In this sense too, Krishna is complete and whole, because only the whole can be formless, indefinable.

No interpretations of the GEETA interpret Krishna, they only interpret the interpreters. Shankara finds corroboration of his own views from the GEETA: he finds that the world is an illusion. From the same book Ramanuja discovers that devotion is the path to God. Tilak finds something else: for him the GEETA stands for the discipline of action. And curiously enough, from this sermon on the battlefield, Gandhi unearths that non violence is the way. No body has any difficulty finding in the GEETA what he wants to find. Krishna does not come in their way; everyone is welcome there. He is an empty mirror. You see your image, move away, and the mirror is as empty as ever. It has no fixed image of its own; it is mere emptiness.

Krishna is not like a film. The film also works as a mirror, but only once: your reflection stays with it. So one can say that a particular photo is of so and so. You cannot say the same about a mirror; it mirrors you only as long as you are with it. What does it do after you move away from it? Then it just mirrors emptiness, It mirrors whatsoever faces it, exactly as it is. Krishna is that mirror. And therefore I say he is complete, whole.

Krishna is whole in many other ways too, and we will come to understand this as we go on with this discussion. Someone can be whole only if he is whole in every way. A person is not whole if his wholeness is confined to a particular dimension of life. In their own dimensions Mahavira and Jesus are whole. In itself the life of Jesus is whole, and it lacks nothing as such. He is whole, as a rose is whole as a rose and a marigold is whole as a marigold. But a rose cannot be whole as a marigold, only a marigold is whole as a marigold. Similarly, a marigold cannot be whole as a rose. So Buddha, Mahavira and Jesus are whole in their own dimensions; in themselves they lack nothing.

But the wholeness of Krishna is utterly different. He is not one-dimensional, he is really multi- dimensional. He enters and pervades every walk of life, every dimension of life. If he is a thief he is a whole thief, and if he is a sage he is a whole sage. When he remembers something he remembers it totally, and when he forgets it he forgets it totally. That is why, when he left Mathura, he left it completely. Now the inhabitants of that place cry and wail for him and say that Krishna is very hard-hearted, which is not true. Or if he is hard-hearted, he is totally so.

In fact, one who remembers totally also forgets totally. When a mirror mirrors you it does so fully, and when it is empty it is fully empty. When Krishna's mirror moves to Dwarka it now reflects Dwarka as fully as it reflected Mathura when it was there. He is now totally at Dwarka, where he lives totally, loves totally and even fights totally.

Krishna's wholeness is multidimensional, which is rare indeed. It is arduous to be whole even in one dimension it is not that easy. So it would be wrong to say that to be multidimensionally whole is arduous, it is simply impossible. But sometimes even the impossible happens, and when it happens it is a miracle. Krishna's life is that miracle, an absolute miracle.

We can find a comparison for every kind of person, but not for Krishna. The lives of Buddha and Mahavira are very similar they look like close neighbors. There is little difference between them.

Even if there is any difference, it is on the outside; their inside, their innermost beings are identical.

But it is utterly improbable to find a comparison for Krishna on this planet. As a man he symbolizes the impossible.

It is natural that a person who is whole in every dimension will have disadvantages and advantages both. He will not compare well with one who has achieved wholeness in a particular dimension, in so far as that particular dimension is concerned. Mahavira has exerted all his energy in one dimension, so in his own field he will excel Krishna, who has diversified his energy in all dimensions. Christ will also excel him in his own field. But on the whole, Krishna is superb. Mahavira, Buddha and Christ can not compare with him; he is utterly incomparable.

The significance of Krishna lies in his being multi-dimensional. Let us for a moment imagine a flower which from time to time becomes a marigold, a jasmine, a rose, a lotus and a celestial flower too - and every time we go to it we find it an altogether different flower. This flower cannot compare well with a rose which, through and through, has been only a rose. Where the rose has, with single- mindedness, spent all its energy being a rose, this imaginary flower has diversified its energy in many directions. The life of this imaginary flower is so pervasive, so extensive that it cannot possibly have the density there is in the life of a rose. Krishna is that imaginary flower: his being has vastness, but it lacks density. His vastness is simply endless, immense.

So Krishna's wholeness represents infinity. He is infinite. Mahavira's wholeness means he has achieved everything there is to achieve in his one dimension, that he has left nothing to be achieved as far as this dimension is concerned. Now, no seeker will ever achieve anything more than Mahavira achieved in his own field; he can never excel Mahavira. Therefore, Krishna is whole in the sense that he is multidimensional, expansive, vast and infinite.

A person who is whole in one dimension is going to be a total stranger in so far as other dimensions are concerned. Where Krishna can even steal skillfully, Mahavira will be a complete failure as a thief.

If Mahavira tries his hand at it there is every chance of his landing in a prison. Krishna will succeed even as a thief. Where Krishna will shine on the battlefield as an accomplished warrior, Buddha will cut a sorry figure if he takes his stand there. We can not imagine Christ playing a flute, but we can easily think of Krishna going to the gallows. Krishna will feel no difficulty on the cross. Intrinsically, he is as capable of facing crucifixion as of playing a flute. But it will be a hard task for Christ if he is handed a flute to play. We cannot think of Christ in the image of Krishna.

Christians say Jesus never laughed. Playing a flute will be a far cry for one who never laughed. If Jesus is asked to stand like Krishna, with one leg on the other, a crown of peacock feathers on his head and a flute on his lips, Jesus will immediately say, "I prefer the cross to this flute." He is at ease with the cross; he never felt so happy as on the cross. From the cross alone could he say, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they are doing." He meets his death most peacefully on the cross, because it is his dimension. He finds no difficulty whatsoever in fulfilling his destiny. What was destined to happen is now happening. His journey's direction is now reaching its culminating point.

Jesus is rebellious, a rebel, a revolutionary, so the cross is his most natural destination. A Jesus can predict he is going to be crucified, If he is not crucified it will look like failure. In his case crucifixion is inevitable.

Krishna's case is very different and difficult. In his case no prediction is possible; he is simply un predictable. Whether he will die on the gallows or amid adulation and worship, nobody can say.

Nobody could predict the way he really died. He was lying restfully under a tree; it was really not an occasion for death. Someone, a hunter, saw him from a distance, thought a deer was lying there and hit him with his arrow. His death was so accidental, so out of place; it is rare in its own way.

Everybody's death has an element of predetermination about it; Krishna's death seems to be totally undetermined. He dies in a manner as if his death has no utility whatsoever. His life was wholly non-utilitarian; so is his death.

The death of Jesus proved to be very purposeful. The truth is, Christianity wouldn't have come into existence had Jesus not been crucified. Christianity owes its existence to the cross, not to Jesus.

Jesus was an unknown entity before his crucifixion. Therefore, crucifixion became significant and the cross be came the symbol of Christianity. The crucifixion turned into Christianity's birth. Even Jesus is known to the world because of it.

But Krishna's death seems to be strange and insignificant. Is this a way to die? Does any one die like this? Is this the way to choose one's death, where someone hits you with an arrow, without your knowing, without any reason? Krishna's death does not make for an historical event; it is as ordinary as a flower blooming, withering and dying. Nobody knows when an evening gust of wind comes and hurls the flower to the ground. Krishna's death is such a non-event. It is so because he is multi-dimensional. Nothing can be said about his goings-on; none can know how his life is going to shape itself.

Lastly, let us look at it in another way. If Mahavira has to live another fifty yeats it can certainly be said how his life will shape up. Similarly, if Jesus is given an extra span of fifty years, we can easily outline on paper how he is going to spend it. It is predictable; it is within the grasp of astrologers.

If Mahavira is given only ten years, the story of how he will live them can be written down here and now. It can be said precisely when he will leave his bed in the morning and when he will go to bed at night. Even the daily menus for his breakfast, lunch and dinner can be laid out. One can reduce to writing what he is going to say in his discourses. What he will do in ten years will be just a repetition of what he did in the preceding decade.

But in the case of Krishna, not only ten years, but even ten days will be as unpredictable. No one can say what will happen in the world in that ten days' time; no repetition whatsoever is possible in his case. This man does not live according to a plan, a schedule, a program; he lives without any planning, without any programming. He lives in the moment. What will happen will happen. In this sense too, Krishna is an infinity. He does not seem to end anywhere.

Now I will give you the ultimate meaning of Krishna as a complete incarnation It is that he alone is complete who does not seem to be completing, to be concluding. What completes itself comes to its end, is finished. This will seem to be paradoxical to you. Ordinarily we believe that to be perfect means to reach the point of culmination beyond which nothing remains to be done, where one is finished with oneself If you think so, this is really the idea of one-dimensional perfection.

Krishna's wholeness is not like that which concludes itself, comes to an end and finishes itself, his completeness means that no matter how long he lives and journeys through life he is never going to come to a finish, he is going to go on and on and on.

The Upanishads' definition of wholeness is, therefore, tight. It says, "From wholeness emerges wholeness, and if you take away wholeness from wholeness, wholeness still remains." If we take away thousands of Krishnas from Krishna, this man will still remain; more and more Krishnas can still be taken from him. There is no difficulty. Krishna will have no trouble whatsoever, because he can be anything.

Mahavira cannot be born today. It will be utterly impossible for him to be born at the present time, because Mahavira reached wholeness in a particular situation, in a particular time. That dimension could be perfected only in that particular situation. In the same way Jesus cannot be born today.

If today he comes at all, in the first place nobody will crucify him. No matter how much noise he makes, people will say, "Just ignore him." Jews have learned their lesson from their first mistake, which gave rise to Christianity. There are a billion Christians all over the earth today. Jews will not commit the same mistake again. They will say, "Don't get involved with this man again, leave him alone. Let him say and do what he likes."

In his lifetime Jesus could not get many people to become interested in him; after his death millions became interested. But of the hundred thousand people who had gathered to watch him being crucified, hardly eight were those who loved him. Eight in a hundred thousand! Even that handful of his lovers were not courageous enough to say "Yes" if they were confronted with the question as to whether they were Jesus' friends. They would have said, "We don't know him." The woman who brought the dead body of Jesus down from the cross had not come from a respectable Jerusalem family, because it was difficult for Jesus to reach the aristocracy and influence them. She who could gather courage to bring Jesus down from the cross was a prostitute. As a prostitute she was already at the lowest rung of the social ladder, what worse could society do to her? So it was a prostitute, not a woman of the aristocracy, who brought his dead body down. In my view, even today, no woman from a respectable family will agree to do so if Jesus comes and happens to be crucified a second time.

Jesus can be neglected, because his statements are so innocent.

There is another danger, in case people of today don't neglect him: they will take him for a madman.

What was the bone of contention which led to his crucifixion? Jesus had said, "I am God; I and my father in heaven are one." Today we would say, "Let him say it. What does it matter?"

For Jesus to be born again it is necessary for the same situation to exist that was present in his time. That is why Jesus is an historical person. Please remember it is only the followers of Jesus who began writing the history of religion. No other people had done it. History begins with Jesus.

It is not accidental that an era begins with Jesus. Jesus is an historical event, and he can happen only in a particular historical moment.

We did not write Krishna's history. The dates of his birth and death are not definitely known. And it is useless to know them: any dates would do. Particular dates and times are irrelevant in relation to Krishna: he can happen at any date and time; he will be relevant to any time and situation. He will have no difficulty whatsoever in being what he is; he will be the same in all times. He does not insist on being like this or that. If you have any conditions, you will need a corresponding situation for it, but if you say that anything will do, you can be at ease in every situation. Mahavira will insist on being naked, but Krishna will even put on peg-legged pants, he will have no difficulty. He will even say that had you made him this outfit earlier, he would gladly have worn it.

To live so choicelessly is to live in infinity. No time, no place, no situation can be a problem for him.

He will be one with any age, with any period of human history. His flower will bloom wherever and whenever he is.

Therefore I say that where Mahavira, Buddha and Jesus are historical persons, Krishna is not. This does not mean that Krishna did not happen. He very much happened, but he does not belong to any particular time and space, and it is in this sense that he is not historical. He is a mythical and legendary figure. He is an actor, a performer really. He can happen any time. And he is not attached to a character, to an idealized lifestyle. He will not ask for a particular Radha, any Radha will be okay for him. He will not insist on a particular age, a special period of time; any age will suit him. It is not necessary that he only play a flute, any musical instrument of any age will do for him.

Krishna is whole in the sense that no matter how much you take away from him, he still remains complete and whole. He can happen over and over again.

We will have another question-and-answer discussion this afternoon. You can send in writing whatever questions arise in your mind.