Nudity and Clothing Should go Together

Question 1:

Whether it is the birth of Krishna or Christ, or anybody else, it does not make a great difference.

But we have always made a distinction between one birth and another, because of our failure to understand the meaning of some symbols of birth as given in mythology. So it is necessary to understand them.

It is said that Krishna was born on a dark night, on the night of the new moon. In fact, everything is born in the darkness of night, in the dark of the moon. The phenomenon of birth takes place in darkness: everything is born in darkness; nothing is born in daylight. Even as a seed opens and sprouts, it does so in the dark recesses of the earth. Although a flower blooms in light its birth takes place in the dark.

The process of birth is so mysterious it can only happen in darkness, it can only happen darkly. An idea, a poem, is first born in the dark recesses of the poet's mind, in the darkness of his unconscious.

A painting takes root in the dark depths of the painter's mind. Similarly, meditation and ecstasy are born in the dark where the light of intellect cannot reach, where every process of mentation comes to a stop, where even knowledge ceases to be.

Legend has it that the night of Krishna's birth was one of total invisibility. But is there anything that is not born in the dark? It is the very ordinary process of birth. There is nothing extraordinary about it.

Another thing associated with Krishna's birth is that he was born in prison, in bondage. But who is not born in prison? Everyone is born in bondage. Maybe one is released from bondage before he dies, but it is not always necessary. By and large we are born in fetters and we die in fetters. The truth is that every birth binds us, limits us; entering a body is tantamount to entering a prison. It is a confinement. So whenever and wherever a soul comes to be born it is always born in jail.

It is unfortunate that this symbol has not been rightly understood. A highly poetic expression has been misinterpreted as an historical event. In fact, every birth takes place in prison; so also, every death - with a few exceptions - takes place in prison. Very few deaths happen in freedom; they are really rare. Mostly we are born in shackles and we also die in shackles. Birth is inescapably linked with bondage, but if one can become free before he dies he will be fulfilled, he will be blessed.

There is a third thing associated with the birth of Krishna, and it is fear of his death. There is a danger, a threat of his being killed. But does not everyone of us face the fear of death? With birth, death comes as the inevitable possibility. One can die just a moment after one is born. And one's every moment after birth is beset with the danger of death. One can die any moment, and this moment comes darkly, uninvited. Death has only one necessary condition attached to it, and that is the condition of birth. How can one die without being born? And a moment-old child is as eligible for death as a seventy year-old man. To die you don't need any other qualification than to be born.

Soon after his birth Krishna is confronted with the danger of death, with the fear of death. But this is precisely the case with each one of us. What do we do after being born? We begin to die and we continue to die. We die each day, each hour of our lives. What we know as life is nothing but a long and dreary journey towards death. It begins with birth and ends in death. That is all.

There is yet another thing associated with Krishna's birth which is very significant. It is that Krishna is confronted with any number of deadly dangers to his life, and he escapes them all. Whoever comes to kill him gets killed himself. We can say that death dies when it confronts Krishna. It uses every means to finish him and it fails utterly. This is very meaningful. It is not the same with all of us. Death can finish us in its very first attempt; we cannot escape its single onslaught. The truth is that we are as good as dead; a small stroke and we will be no more. We really don't know what life is; we don't know the life that defeats death.

Krishna's story is a story of life's victory over death. Death comes to him in countless forms and always goes back disappointed. We all know the many stories where death, in various guises, encircles Krishna and courts defeat after defeat at his hands. But we never care to go deeply into these stories and discover their truth. And there is a single truth underlying them all: it is that every day Krishna is triumphantly marching towards life and every day death is laying down its arms before him. Every conceivable means is used to destroy him and he frustrates them all and continues to live to the maximum. And then a day comes when death accepts defeat and surrenders to him.

Krishna really represents life's triumph over death.

But this truth has not been said so plainly as I am now saying it to you. And there is a reason for it.

People in past ages had no way to say it so plainly. And it would be good to understand this clearly.

The more we go back into olden times, the more we find that the way of thinking is pictorial, and not verbal. Even now when you dream, you may have noticed you use pictures and images instead of words. We still dream in pictures, because dreaming is our most primitive language. Our dreams have yet to be updated, modernized. With respect to dreams there is no difference whatsoever between modern man and the man who lived ten thousand years before him. Our dreams continue to be primitive; no one dreams in a modern way. Our dreams are as old as they were ten thousand years ago, even ten hundred thousand years ago. The way a man living in an air conditioned house dreams today is the same as the caveman in times immemorial. In the manner of dreaming no difference whatsoever has occurred between a caveman living in the vastness of the forests and a man living in a skyscraper in New York.

One distinctive feature of dreams is that they express themselves wholly in pictures. How does an ambitious person dream to express his ambition? He creates a picture that suitably expresses his ambition. Maybe he grows wings and flies high in the sky. All ambitious people invariably fly in their dreams. They fly higher and higher, leaving below the trees, the mountains, even the stars. It means their ambition knows no limits, that even the sky is not its limit. But their dreams will never use the word "ambition"; the picture of flying will say it much better.

One of the reasons we find it hard to understand our dreams is their pictorial language, which is utterly different from the verbal language we use in our everyday life. We speak through words in the daytime, and we speak through pictures when we dream in the night. While our daytime language is modern and up-to date, the language of our nocturnal dreams is the most primitive ever.

There is a distance of millions of years between them. That is what makes it so hard to understand what a dream has to say.

Krishna is very old in the sense that his stories were written at a time when man thought about his life and his universe not so much in words as in symbols, in images and pictures. Therefore we now have to decode them to know what they want to convey. We have to translate them into our language of words.

It is significant that the life of Christ begins more or less in the same way as Krishna's; there is not much difference. For this reason a good many people had this illusion - a few still cling to it - that Christ never happened, that it is really the story of Krishna carried to Jerusalem.

There is great similarity between the stories of their births. Jesus too is born on a dark night; he too is born amid fear of death. Here King Kansa, his own uncle, is trying to kill Krishna; in Jerusalem King Herod is looking to kill Jesus. Kansa has a number of children killed in the fear that one of them will grow up and kill him. In Jerusalem Herod does the same: he has any number of newborn babes killed lest one of them later turns out to be his murderer.

But Christ is not Krishna. Jesus is a different person, and the rest of his story is quite different, his own. But the symbols and metaphors of their stories are very similar, because all primitive minds are very similar.

You will be amused to know that the language of dreams is the same all the world over. An Englishman, a Japanese and an Eskimo all dream alike. But the languages that we use in our daily life, for communication with one another, are quite different and diverse. And like the language of dreams, the language of the myths. mythologies and puranas is also the same all over the world. Therefore the symbols, pictures and parables describing the births of Krishna and Christ are approximately the same.

There is yet another reason for taking Krishna and Christ to be the same person. He was originally called Jesus and much later he became known as Christ, and there is much similarity between the two words, Krishna and Christ. So Christ came to be taken as a derivative of Krishna. I know a man whose name is Kristo Babu. When I asked him what his name meant, he said that originally his name was Krishna, which through long usage subsequently turned into Kristo. This is how words undergo metamorphosis. Then I told Kristo Babu why some people think that Christ is a derivative of Krishna.

Jesus is definitely a different person, but it is likely that the word Christ is a derivative of Krishna.

After attaining enlightenment Jesus became known as Christ, as Gautam Siddhartha became known as Buddha and Vardhaman as Mahavira. It is just possible that Christ is a derivative of Krishna, and people of Jerusalem called Jesus after Krishna's name when he became a Master and a teacher in his own right.

Krishna and Christ are two different persons. There is similarity in the circumstances of their births, but this similarity is not because they are the same person, but because of the common symbols and metaphors used to describe their births.

Carl Gustav Jung has discovered a unique thing about man's mind which he calls the archetype.

He says that in the depths of the mind of man there are some basic, primordial images that keep recurring, and they are the same all over the world. The same archetypical images have recurred in the stories of the births of Krishna and Christ. And as I said, if you rightly understand the phenomenon of birth you will know that the birth of every one of us is alike.

It is necessary to go into the meaning of the word Krishna. Krishna means the center, the center of gravitation, that which pulls, attracts everything towards itself. Krishna means the one who works as the center of a magnet, attracting everything to it.

In a sense every birth is the birth of Krishna, because the soul inside us is the center of gravitation that tends to draw bodies together. Our physical body is drawn and formed around this center.

Family and society, even the world, are drawn and formed around it. Everything happens around that center of gravitation which we call Krishna. So whenever a person is born it is really Krishna born. First the-soul, the center of attraction is born, and then everything else begins to be structured around it. Crystallization takes place around Krishna, which leads to the formation of the individual.

Therefore the birth of Krishna is not only the birth of a single individual, it is also the birth of everybody else.

The darkness, prison and fear of death associated with Krishna's birth have their own significance.

But the question is why we associate them with Krishna in particular. I don't mean to say that the story of his birth taking place inside a prison is not true. I don't mean to say that he was not born in bondage. I want to say only this: it is not that relevant whether or not he was born in a prison, in bondage, what is relevant is that when a person of the stature of Krishna is made available to us we do include in his story the whole archetype of man's birth.

Remember, the story of a great person runs counter to our own. The story of an ordinary person begins with his birth and ends with his death; it has a sequence of events running from birth to death.

But the story of a great one is written retrospectively for the simple reason that his greatness comes to be recognized much later and then his story is written. It takes years, nearly forty to fifty years, to recognize the greatness of a person like Krishna. Then a legend, a story begins to be formed around this glorious and unique person. And then we choose relevant pieces from his story, his life, and reinterpret them. Therefore I tell you that the story of a great person can never be historical, it is always poetic, mythical, mythological. It is so because it is written retrospectively.

When we look back on an event, when something is seen in retrospect, it becomes symbolic and takes on another meaning it never had at the time of its birth. And then the story of a person like Krishna is not written once and for all; every age writes and rewrites it. Moreover, thousands of writers write about him, and hence a thousand and one interpretations of a single life follow. And by and by Krishna's story ceases to be the story of an individual, Krishna turns into an institution.

Krishna becomes the quintessence of all births, and all lives. In fact, his biography becomes the biography of all mankind.

Therefore I don't attach any importance to it in the sense of its being the story of a person, of an individual. A man like Krishna ceases to be an individual, he becomes the symbol, the archetype of our collective mind.

Let us understand it by way of an anecdote.

A great painter has made a portrait of a woman, a very beautiful woman. When his friends want to know who this woman is, he tells them, "This is not a picture of any one woman; she is the quintessence of thousands of beautiful women I have seen in the course of my life. Her eyes belong to one and her nose belongs to another and her lips to a third. I have taken different things from different women. Go all over the world, nowhere you will find a woman like her." So I tell you, don't believe a painter's picture of a woman and go out in search of her. Go where you will, you will not find her, you will only find ordinary women.

For this reason we often get into trouble; we are in search of women that don't exist except in paintings and poetry. The woman in a painting represents the cumulative beauty, the essence of thousands of women that a painter comes across. She is really thousands of women rolled into one; you can't find her in flesh and blood. She is the keynote of the song of countless women the painter came across in the course of his search for beauty.

So when a person like Krishna happens to be among us, the substance, the essence of millions of men and women is incorporated in him. So don't take him to be a single individual, separate from the rest of mankind. If someone looks for him in history he will not find him there. He is the symbol of mankind - a particular segment of mankind born in this country. And all that this mankind has ever experienced has become part of Krishna.

In the same way the quintessence of another segment of humanity that lived in Jerusalem became part of Jesus. An ordinary individual comes and goes alone, but an archetype like Krishna continues to be supplemented ad infinitum. And this addictive process continues unimpeded. Every age will contribute its bit to his richness, to his affluence, in the form of its new experiences. The collective archetype will thus go on growing infinitely.

This is the significance of Krishna's birth as I see it. The events associated with his birth may or may not be historical; for me they have no importance whatsoever. For me, understanding Krishna in the light of these events is of the highest importance. And if you can see them in the right perspective you will also see that they are part and parcel of the stories of your own births too. And if you find an accord, a harmony between your birth and that of Krishna, you can, by the time you come to leave your body, also achieve an accord with Krishna's death, which is of the highest.

Question 2:

I did say yesterday that Krishna made a joke when he said, "I will come for the protection of the righteous and the destruction of the unrighteous," and I explained why I think so. But I never said Krishna was joking even when he said, "Abandoning all other religions, come to me alone for shelter."

Let us be clear about it before we go into the rest of the question.

What does Krishna mean to say, "Abandoning all religions, come to me alone for shelter"? It is necessary here to take note of the phrase "abandoning all religions". In fact, there can be only one religion in the world, because truth is one. He who thinks that there are many religions is just in illusion. So Krishna means to say that every religion with an adjective like Hindu, Christian or Mohammedan, should be abandoned, because none of them is really religion. He says that giving up the many religions one should come to the true religion, which is one and only one.

The words Krishna uses in this connection are extraordinary, unique; he says MAMEKAM SHARANAM VRAJA, which means "Take shelter in me, which is the only shelter." Krishna does not speak here as an individual, as a person; he really speaks on behalf of religion itself. He is religion incarnate. And he says, "Giving up religions, come to religion, the religion giving up the many come to the one." This is one thing.

Secondly, when he says, "Come to me, the only shelter," it has subtler meanings if you go into it.

When I say "I" or "me", it is "I" or "me" for me, but for you it becomes "you"; it will cease to be "I"

or "me". For you, your own "I" will be yours, not mine. If Krishna means to say that you should surrender to him, to Krishna, it will mean you have to surrender to some "you", to the other, and not to your own "I", to yourself. When Krishna says that Arjuna should take refuge, he knows that he, Krishna, is not the "I" of Arjuna; Arjuna's own "I" is his "I". So Arjuna will seek shelter in his own "I", which means he will take refuge in his own swadhanna, in his self-nature, in his own innate nature.

Krishna certainly did not say it as a joke. It is a rare statement, a statement of tremendous depth and significance. Perhaps no other statement in all the history of mankind has this depth: "Abandoning the many take refuge in the one; abandoning the 'thou' take shelter in the 'I'; abandoning religions with adjectives, traditional religions, take refuge in religion, which is one and only one."

But this statement has still deeper meanings. If Arjuna says that he will take shelter in himself, then also he fails to understand Krishna, because in order to find the shelter of religion one has to give up his ego, his "I" first. To surrender it is essential to renounce the ego. Surrender really means surrender of the "I", annihilation of the "I". If Arjuna says he will surrender to himself he has missed the whole point. Surrender is possible only after the complete cessation of the "I".

Now we are treading on a difficult and complex ground when we say, "Abandoning yourself, take shelter in yourself; renouncing religions take shelter in religion; giving up many take shelter in the one." But if you are left with one you are left with many, because we cannot think of one without many. There fore to seek shelter in the one you have to give up the one too; you have to give up numbers altogether.

That is why, eventually, a new term had to be invented when it was realized that the word "one"

was likely to create confusion. The new term is adwaya, meaning non-dual, not two. We did not go for monism, because the one presupposes the existence of two, something other than one. So we opted for non-duality, which is a negative term. It means not two, one without the second; it means beware of two. It is so because one is relative to two, one can be known only in the context of two. If I know that "I am" then I know it only in the context of "you", in relation to you. Without "you" where is "I" going to begin and end? What is its limit? Whoever knows that he is, knows it in contrast with the other. One cannot be without the other. If someone says truth is one, his very emphasis on its being one says that he is aware of the other which he is denying.

Therefore this statement of Krishna's is tremendously profound.

In this context, remember firstly that Arjuna is not being asked to surrender to Krishna, but to himself; he is being asked to be self-surrendered. The second thing to bear in mind is that when Arjuna is being asked to be self-surrendered, he is being asked to surrender not to his ego but to the egolessness innate nature that he is. And thirdly, remember that he is being asked to renounce all religions without the exception of any particular religion. All religions, without exceptions like the Hindu religion, have to be given up, because so long as one clings to any particular religion he cannot attain to religion, to true religion.

How can one attain to true religion, which is not bound by any adjectives whatsoever, as long as he owes allegiance to any particular religion, Hindu, Christian or Mohammedan? Religion is that which comes into being after a seeker like Arjuna gives up the particular religion he traditionally belongs to, after he gives up all religions that bear adjectival and divisive names like Hindu, Christian and Buddhist, after he gives up all adjectives and all numbers including one, after he even gives up Krishna and his "I", his ego.

This statement is not made in jest.

The questioner also wants to know if the Krishna of the GEETA and the Krishna of the BHAGWAD are not two different persons. Since the friend who put this question joined the gathering later, he missed what I said earlier in this connection. So I am going to go over it again, Our minds would very much like to make a distinction between the Krishna of the GEETA and the Krishna of the BHAGWAD. It is very difficult for our intellects to harmonize the two Krishnas. The two seem to be so different, not only different but contradictory to each other. While the GEETA'S Krishna Is very serious and ponderous and grave, the Krishna of the BHAGWAD is utterly non- serious. There seems to be no meeting ground between the two. And so we would like to separate them and treat them as two different persons.

Either we have to separate them or we have to take Krishna to be a split personality, a person suffering from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disease which splits a single person into two disconnected and different personalities, behaving almost independently of each other.

A schizophrenic person is a kind of madman who now says one thing and then another in utter contradiction of his own statement. He has cyclic periods of elation and depression, peace and disorder, sanity and insanity. He is one thing in the morning and quite another in the afternoon. So we may take Krishna for a schizophrenic case, a multipsychic person, insane. A Freud, a Freudian psychoanalyst, will surely declare Krishna to be a schizophrenic case, a split personality.

If you ask an historian to explain the paradox that Krishna is, the Krishna of the GEETA and that of the BHAGWAD, he will say that he cannot be the same person; there are really two different Krishnas happening in two different times. This will be the interpretation of an historian, because he cannot comprehend that one person could behave like so many people so different from each other.

So he will say that the Krishna of the BHAGWAD is not the same as the Krishna of the GEETA, that they are really two persons happening in two different times. He can even go to the length of creating, out of the vast literature available, more than a dozen Krishnas, each different from the other.

But I tell you I am not going to accept the opinion of Freud and the Freudians; I cannot accept that Krishna is a schizophrenic person. I say so for the simple reason that a schizophrenic person, a person with a split, fragmented mind cannot attain to the bliss that Krishna has. A mentally sick person who is multipsychic cannot have that peace, that silence, that serenity that Krishna possesses in abundance. Nor am I going to agree with the historian, because his conclusion is based on the same reasons as the Freudian conclusion. He is not prepared to believe that a single person could play so many different roles diametrically opposed to each other. And so he concludes that quite a number of persons with the same name happened at different times, or maybe, even at the same time. What the psychoanalyst does by dividing a single mind into many minds, a multipsyche, the historian does by creating many people in the place of one.

My own view is that with all these contradictions there is only one Krishna, and that is his great ness and glory. Shorn of it he becomes meaningless, insignificant. His significance, his greatness lies in the fact that he is all things together, all things rolled into one, all contradictions living hand in hand, and there is a great harmony in all his contradictions. He can play the flute and he can dance, and with the same ease he can fight his enemy in the battlefield with his chakra, his wheel-like weapon.

And there is no contradiction between the two roles. He can play pranks with the girls of his village, running away with their clothes when they are bathing in the river, and he can also make the most profound statements like in the GEETA. He can be a thief and a perfect yogi together. Krishna is one person in so many diverse roles - and that is his grandeur, his glory. And this is the uniqueness of Krishna, his individuality. You will not find it in Rama, Buddha, Mahavira of Jesus Christ.

Krishna is a blending of contradiction, a beautiful synthesis of all contradictions. I say so for the reason that I don't find these contradictions to be really contradictory. In fact all of life's truth is a blending, a synthesis of contradictions. The whole of life is based on contradictions, and there is no discordance in those contradictions; rather, there is full accord, absolute harmony among them.

A person who is a child today will grow into an old man - the same person, and there is no contradiction between the two stages. Can you say when you were a child and when you turned into a young man? You cannot. It would be difficult to draw a dividing line between youth and old age. In words, in language they seem to be opposites. But are they really contradictory? Can you name the date when youth comes to an end and old age begins? It would be so difficult for you to answer this question. There is no such date; every day youth is turning into old age. We can say that a young person is a would-be oldie, and that an oldie is one who has completed his youth. There is no other difference.

We think peace and disorder are two different things. But are they really different? Where does peace end and disturbance begin? In the dictionary, peace and disturbance, happiness and suffering, life and death, have opposite meanings, but in real life it is peace that turns into disturbance, happiness that turns into suffering, life that turns into death. Again, in real life, disorder turns into order, suffering into happiness and death into life. In real life light turns into darkness, morning turns into evening and day into night and vice versa. In real life plus and minus are not opposites. In real life all seeming opposites are complementaries, an interplay of one and the same energy.

If we can see through this eternal harmony of life, its supreme, sublime music, its significance, then alone can we understand Krishna. That is why we call him the complete incarnation of God. He is a complete symbolization of life; he represents life totally.

Buddha does not represent the whole of life. He represents only its sunny parts; he represents all that is good in life. He represents only the morning and the day of life. But what about the evening and the night of life? Buddha will take care of light, but what will happen to darkness? He will symbolize the nectar, but who will look after the poison? For this reason Bud& has a clear-cut image; there are no contradictions in him. No one can say that the Buddha of the Dhammapada is different from the Buddha of the tripitakas. In every book of Buddhism, Buddha remains the same.

And so no one can call Buddha a schizophrenic personality, no one can say that he is fragmented and contradictory. He is integrated and one. But we invariably raise the question of contradictions in the case of Krishna.

It would be better if, instead of looking at Krishna through the screen of our concepts and categories in order to reconcile him with our conditioned minds, we look at him directly and as a whole. To do so, it will be necessary to put aside all our concepts and categories and all our prejudices. I don't say that more than one Krishna is not possible; I am not concerned about it. Maybe, historians will prove there is a distance of two thousand years between the Krishnas of the GEETA and the Bhagwad.

That is not going to deter me; I will say that for me there is no distance whatsoever between the two.

For me Krishna has significance only if he is one; he is utterly meaningless if he is not one.

I am not concerned with Krishna's historicity; it does not matter whether he really happened or did not. In my view, whenever someone is fulfilled, after he attains to the full flowering of life and being, he will necessarily become multidimensional, he will be many persons rolled into one. Whenever someone attains to the totality of life, there will be a consistency in his inconsistencies, there will be a harmony in his contradictions. Whenever someone achieves the peak of life, the extremes of life will meet in him with perfect cohesion and unity. We may not see that unity because of our poor vision, but it is there.

It is as if I am climbing a staircase and while I see its lower and upper flights, I do not see the middle one. In that case, can I think the bottom flight and the top flight are joined together? Only when I see the middle flight too, will I agree they are together. The bottom and top flights are parts of the same staircase; you begin the journey at the bottom and end it at the top. They are extensions of the same thing.

The middle flight of Krishna's life is not visible to you, because your own middle flight is not visible to you. The link between the extremes is invisible to you. You have seen your peacefulness and you have seen your disquiet, but have you seen the moment of gap between peace and disquiet, which is very thin and subtle? You have not seen it. You know love and you know hate, but have you also known how love turns into hate and how hate turns into love? You have made enemies of friends and friends of enemies, but have you ever observed the subtle process, the alchemy which turns friendship into enmity and vice versa?

There have been alchemists who are said to have been trying to turn baser metals into gold - but they have been misunderstood. People thought they were really interested in turning iron into gold.

All they wanted to ascertain was that there should be some link between the baser metals and the highest metal - the gold, which is not visible to us. It is impossible that there is no connection between iron and gold, that iron and gold are not joined together. It is impossible that the whole cosmos iB not one, unified and together.

If there is a flower blooming in the garden over there, and I am sitting here, there must be some link between me and the flower. If I am happy here, the flower over there must have contributed to my happiness. Maybe we don't see the link, but it is there. Similarly, if the flower withers away and I am saddened, there is a connection between the two events which we don't see. Life is together; everything in life is together. Togetherness is life. Alchemists say that there must be some connection between the baser metals and gold, and they were striving to discover that link.

Alchemy is not just confined to metals, it says that in all of life the baser instinct must be connected with the higher, with the highest; it cannot be otherwise. Sex should be connected with God. The earth should be connected with the heavens. Similarly, life is connected with death and matter is connected with consciousness. Even a rock is associated with God in some intimate way. It cannot be otherwise.

Krishna is like a symbol of this sublime unity and harmony. And I say such a Krishna happened, really happened. Whatever arguments the historian may produce, I will throw them into the trash.

Psychologists may come up with their jargon, but I will tell them, "You have gone mad; you cannot understand Krishna. You only know how to analyze and understand human mind in its fragments; you don't know how to integrate, to synthesize and Know the togetherness, the integrity of mind."

It is true that Freud has investigated the mind of man, and very few people know as much about anger as Freud does. But if somebody treads on his toes, he will immediately lose his temper. He does not know when non-anger turns into anger, in spite of all his work on anger. Hardly anyone else knows as much about mental disorders, but there are streaks of insanity in his own personality.

Its potential is there; he can go insane any moment. There have been moments in his life when he himself behaves like a mental case. So I don't attach any importance to what the psychologists say about Krishna, because Krishna has transcended the mind, gone beyond mind.

Krishna has transcended the mind; he has gone beyond mind. And he has attained to that integrity which is the integrity of the soul, which is altogether capable of being in every mind, in every kind of mind. Therefore I will talk about Krishna as one person, as a single individual.

Question 3:

You ask if I take the GEETA to be the authentic voice of Krishna. If a person like Krishna has happened then the GEETA has to be authentic. It is not relevant if Krishna said it or not, what is relevant is that if a person like Krishna says something, he will only say something like the GEETA.

Even if the GEETA is taken to be written by Vyasa, and not delivered by Krishna, it does not make a difference. A Vyasa cannot write the GEETA without a Krishna being there. Even if it is taken to have been said by Vyasa and not by Krishna, it is the GEETA that he spoke, and it remains the same.

It is immaterial whether Krishna, Vyasa or some xyz is the author of the GEETA. Authorship is not important, what is important is the GEETA itself. It has not appeared from the blue; someone must have authored it. But to find his name is not important, because the GEETA is enough unto itself.

Who wrote it makes no difference whatsoever.

I see it from the very opposite side. I wouldn't pose the question whether or not the GEETA is the authentic voice of Krishna, rather I would ask if the GEETA is authentic or not. And I say to you that the GEETA is, that it is authentic, and that it is enough evidence of Krishna's being there. I see the whole thing like this: the GEETA is, the GEETA is spoken, the GEETA is written, the GEETA is in existence, and that it cannot be in existence without a Krishna. Someone is needed to say it or write it; who he is is not that important. There must be a consciousness, an intelligence to have given birth to the GEETA, to have brought it into being.

The existence of the river Ganges is proof enough that its source, the Gangotri, has to be somewhere. The Gangotri is not the proof for the existence of the Ganges; rather, the Ganges is the proof for the existence of the Gangotri. If the Ganges is, we can say there must be a Gangotri, a mother to it. So if the GEETA is there, then there must be a Krishna to author it. So I would like to begin with the GEETA and move to Krishna from there that is how it should be. I say so because the GEETA is still with us, it is in existence. If we begin with Krishna and go from him to the GEETA, we will be in unnecessary difficulty. Because then the question will arise if Krishna is real or not, and in case his existence becomes doubtful the GEETA becomes doubtful. But we always behave in a crazy manner.

Question 4:

Here is a dialogue between a dancing girl and a monk. A dancing girl said to a monk, "You have become a monk by heavily repressing your desire for dancing."

The monk said to the dancing girl, "You have become a dancing girl by heavily suppressing your desire to be a monk."

First things first. Freud's concept of the libido is very significant. The correct meaning of the word libido is sex energy. Sex energy permeates, and permeates profoundly, not only the life of man, but the life of the whole creation. The whole universe is saturated with sex energy. The Hindu mythology known as purana, says that Brahma, the creator, being driven by sex, made the world.

Without sex, creation, creativity is impossible. The entire creation stems from sex. Whatever there is in the universe, it is the ramification of sex. The whole of life's play, of life's manifestation, whether it is a flower blooming or a bird singing, is the play of sex energy. We can say there is an ocean of sex energy from which arise infinite waves of creativity in infinite forms.

In a deeper meaning God himself is the center of this sex energy.

There is a simple, natural and innocent acceptance of sex in the life of Krishna. The spontaneous, immaculate and easy nature of man has found its full expression in his life. Nothing is denied, nothing is suppressed, nothing whatsoever is repressed. Life as it is, is accepted and lived in its utter simplicity, naturalness. And it is lived with a sense of deep gratefulness to it, to existence.

So those who try to suppress, change and distort the events of Krishna's life only betray their own guilty minds, their repressed sex and mental sickness. Efforts are made to suggest that it is the child Krishna who steals the clothes of the gopis and plays pranks with their nude bodies. We feel relieved to think of them as the pranks of a child, because kids of both sexes are interested in seeing one another's nudity.

This curiosity of boys and girls is simply natural. As soon as a child, whether he is a boy or a girl, becomes aware of his body, he or she also becomes aware that there is someone around whose body is somewhat different from his or hers. A boy comes to notice that the body of his sister is different from his and similarly a girl comes to know that the body of her brother is different from hers. This awareness would not be a problem if the boys and girls were allowed to live naked for a length of time. But the elders of the family are so obsessed with sex that they force the kids to wear clothes at a very early age, which prevents the boys and girls from becoming naturally familiar with each other's bodies. So it fs suggested that there is nothing unusual about Krishna in his childhood running away with the clothes of the gopis and prying into their nudity. Every boy is anxious to see a girl in the nude.

Now that civilization has deprived us of the company of trees and lakes and rivers, kids have to find new ways to pry into one another's bodies. Freud has mentioned a children's game in which a boy plays the doctor, puts the girl on the bed as a patient and examines her in her nudity. This is a very natural curiosity and there is nothing wrong in it. Boys and girls would like to be familiar with each other's bodies; this familiarity will prepare them for deeper familiarity with each other in adulthood.

It is possible that Krishna did all this when he was a child. But it is not impossible for a grown-up Krishna too. It may be impossible for us, but not for Krishna, because Krishna accepts life as it is and lives it naturally, without any affectations, without any pretentions. And the culture in which he was born must have been as natural and spontaneous and as life affirmative as Krishna is. Had he been born in our society we would never have mentioned these events at all, we would simply have suppressed them, deleted them from our records of him, from our literature. But the BHAGWAD and other kindred books mention them with an innocence and naturalness that shows that they did not see them as anything wrong and improper. These books have been in existence for thousands of years, and for these thousands of years nobody raised the question, "What kind of a man is this Krishna?" It is only now that this question has been raised; it is we who are raising it.

The culture in which these episodes of Krishna's life took place accepted them as nothing unnatural.

This shows they were not exclusively Krishna's pastimes, but were common games of his times in which many other Krishnas, many other gopis participated. The times of Krishna must have been utterly different from ours. It was a highly life-affirmative, alive, natural and understanding culture. It was great.

And I cannot accept that the gopis mentioned in the BHAGWAD were just kids. They must have been of the age when girls begin to be aware that they are girls, a different sex altogether, when they become shy and bashful, when they know that they have something to hide from others. This is exactly the time when boys become interested in them, in knowing and seeing their bodies. The two things happen together. Those gopis, his girlfriends, must have been about the same age as Krishna. That is why Krishna is interested in seeing them in the nude and they are trying to hide their nudity.

In this context it is necessary to understand that among the many differences there are between the male mind and the female mind, one prominent difference is this: while a man is interested in seeing a woman in the nude - he is a voyeur - the woman is not that interested in seeing a naked man. It is amusing that a man is deeply interested in the nude body of a woman. It is for this reason that there are so many statues of nude women all over the world.

Statues of male nudes are rare, and they are available only in cultures that accept homosexuality.

For instance, such nude male statues were made in Greece in the times of Socrates and Plato when homosexual relationships were in vogue. So those statues of male nudes were also made by men and for men. Women are not in the least interested in nude males. So magazines for men come out with any number of pictures of naked women, but no magazine meant for women prints pictures of naked males. Women simply laugh at this craze of man's.

You may not have noticed but in deep moments of love it is the man who wants to disrobe his beloved; it is not so with the woman. While making love a man keeps his eyes open, but the woman invariably keeps hers closed. Even when she is being kissed by her lover, a woman usually shuts her eyes. She is not interested in seeing; she is interested in absorbing her lover, in being one with him. But a man is deeply interested in seeing his woman, and it is this male interest which gives rise to a desire in the woman to hide herself.

So women all the world over hide their bodies in many ways. But this desire to hide their bodies, creates a problem for them, because they cease to he attractive if they hide too much. So they do two things together they hide their bodies and at the same time they hide them in a manner that they are exposed. They hide and expose their bodies together. The same clothes are used to hide them and to expose them in a clever way. They hide because they are afraid of voyeurs in general, but they need to expose their bodies in order to attract men as well. So they are always in a conflict between hiding and exposing themselves at the same time; they have to find a balance between the two needs.

So it is natural that the gopis emerged from the river hiding their sexual organs with their hands.

This episode is quite natural. And Krishna's asking them to salute the water God with folded hands is equally natural. There is nothing odd about it. This is how the male mind behaves. And Krishna has a very simple and natural male mind; one should say he has a perfect male mind. There are no distortions, no suppressions, no affectations so far as his mind is concerned. And the people who wrote those stories were also very simple and innocent people, without any pretensions. They wrote them exactly as they happened; they did not have any inhibitive principles, or sense of guilt about the matter.

It is significant that these stories, which you call erotic, are written into the Bhagawad, which hails Krishna as the perfect incarnation of God. The authors of the book did not think for a moment, as you do now, that these stories may make his being a god suspect. But I tell you God alone, and no man, can be as innocent, as simple, as natural, as unpretentious, and as spontaneous. No man can be as simple and spontaneous. He is very complex he does everything according to concepts, ideas and ideals; he pre-plans everything he says and does. and I also say that Krishna did not pre-plan it; he did not have any idea how the gopis were going to behave and what he was going to do in response. Everything happened utterly spontaneously and naturally. And those people who portrayed it exactly as it happened were great indeed. Certainly they were simple and sincere people, unsophisticated, innocent people. They did not try to suppress and edit them as you would like them to have done.

It was much later that these episodes in the life of Krishna began to embarrass us and put us into difficulty. There are many such things from the past which eventually begin to disturb us, because of our changing ideas and ideals and new rules of morality. And we try to apply them retrospectively and judge this according to them. And that is what lands us in difficulty.

In my view, the sex energy has found its most natural and beautiful expression in the life of Krishna.

He accepted sex without any reservations, without any pretentions. And he lived a most natural life. And what is significant is that the society he lived in accepted Krishna as naturally and as unreservedly.

The questioner also wants to know if I am a pioneer of nudism. In a sense, I am. Not that I am against clothes. Going against clothes would certainly amount to turning back the hands of the clock. Clothes have their utility; they are necessary, but they certainly don't have any moral values.

They are utilitarian, but they have nothing to do with morality. In winter we need clothes to protect us from the cold; in summer different kinds of clothes are required. And you need clothes when you are in public, because you have no right to offend the sensibilities of those who don't want to see you in the nude. That would be a kind of trespass.

But this does not mean that because of them we are not even free to bare our bodies in our homes.

No, clothes should be used as we use shoes; we are not in our shoes when we are in our homes.

Reaching home we leave our shoes on the porch and walk barefoot from one room to another. And nobody asks us why our feet are naked, although our feet are really naked.

We should accept clothes naturally; there should be no harshness about it. And it is possible only if we accept nudity as naturally. Without accepting nudity as natural, you cannot accept clothes naturally. If you deny and condemn nudity, then clothes take on a moral value they don't have. In fact, man has now been wearing too many clothes, so much so that he has to find ways and means to expose himself through the same clothes. And this gives rise to immorality.

I think we should accept nudity as a natural g. We are born naked and we remain naked even behind our clothes. God makes us all naked; he does not send us here in clothes. Nudity is simple and natural; there is an aura of innocence about it, but it does not mean that we should go naked.

We do make changes in the way God makes us. To protect ourselves from the hot sun, which is of God's making, we use umbrellas, and it does not mean any defiance of God. An umbrella shields us against the hot sun, and this is as much a part of the divine love as the hot sun is. There is no contradiction between light and shade, we are free to choose either for our convenience and enjoyment.

But if some day sitting in the shade is made into a virtue, and walking in sunshine a sin, then sitting in the shade will turn into a kind of punishment. And then people will begin to enjoy sunshine secretly and stealthily; such a simple and natural thing like enjoying sunshine will turn into a crime. This is how we give rise tO lots of immorality and guilt and crime, utterly uncalled for and stupid. Much of the load of guilt that we have to carry and suffer is the outcome of our own stupid thinking.

I believe that nudity is a fact of life, and we should accept it simply as a natural phenomenon. There is no need whatsoever to run away from it. But we have made it a taboo, and because of it we are having to take recourse in any number of devious devices to circumvent this taboo. Nudist posters, porno and night clubs are the byproducts of this prohibition. They will disappear the day we accept nudity as a natural part of our life. I don't advocate a blanket ban on clothes - that would certainly be turning back the hands of the clock - but it would be good if sometimes members of a family would sit together without clothes. It would be wholesome if, on a winter's mom, ing, we sat nude in the sun, and sometimes in summer bathed naked in the river. It would be good for our health, both our physical and mental health. If we accept clothes and nudity together as ways of life, we will have the benefits of clothes, which the naked primitive people were deprived of, and at the same time we will escape the inconvenience, and incongruities that come with being too obsessed with clothes. And it is, therefore, a progressive proposition that I am making; it is a step forward for both the nudists and the people obsessed with clothes.

The nudist clubs are a kind of revolt, a reaction against those who have imposed too many clothes on society. I am not in support of the nudist clubs, nor am I in support of those who are obsessed with clothes. I offer you an alternative: do away with your obsession with clothes and the nudist clubs will disappear. The nudist clubs are supposed to be a step in the direction of remedying the ills of our obsession with clothes, but I say, do away with the illness and the remedies will disappear.

Let the whole society be disease-free and healthy.

I tell you, if a father and his young son, a mother and her young son bathe together naked in their house, this son will never indulge in teasing girls and brushing against them in the marketplace; it will cease to have any meaning for him. If the distance existing between man and woman is considerably reduced, much of what are called youthful misdemeanors will be gone. When a young man brushes against a young woman he is really trying to reduce that distance. Because he has no way to touch her gently he does it the harsh way, the angry way. If I can take the hand of a woman I like in my hand and say "How lovely," and the society I live in is natural enough to accept it gracefully, then misbehavior with women will become rare. But such a society is yet a far cry off.

When we come across a beautiful blossom, we stop near it for a brief moment, take a look at it and then go our way. One never feels like brushing against the flower and hurting it. But if one day the flowers make a law and engage policemen to prevent people from looking at them, people will soon begin to commit excesses with flowers too. Then immorality will come into being. In fact, too much morality creates immorality. If you become too moralistic you are bound to become immoral before long. So if a society is obsessed with clothes, it will soon give rise to nudist clubs.

I am not in support of nudist clubs, because I am not in support of obsessions with clothes. I am in support of a life that is easy, natural and spontaneous. I am for accepting life as it is, without any distortions. And Krishna is a unique symbol of this acceptance, a natural acceptance of all that is natural.

Question 5:

Then there is another question similar to it:

Question 6:

As far as naturalness is concerned there is no difference between one limb of the body and another - and if there is a difference it is manmade. The difference we see is our own creation; it is not real. All the limbs of the body are the same; there is no difference between a hand and a leg. But we have divided even the parts of our body and categorized them. There are parts that are like living rooms in a house to be shown to everybody, and some other parts of the same house, like lockers, to be kept hidden and secret. Even our physical body is fragmented, and a fragmented body is an unhealthy body. But in itself the body is an organic whole; it is indivisible. There is no division whatsoever between one limb and another. And the day man achieves his natural health these manmade divisions will disappear.

But you are right when you ask how far one can take liberties with the body of another in relating with him or her. It is okay to take someone's hand lovingly in yours, but in doing so you have also to take the other person's feelings into full consideration. In a natural society, with the possibilities of the natural life I am talking about, one will always take the other person into full consideration.

Taking another's hand, you have to see that he or she is not unnecessarily hurt or inconvenienced.

This consideration will be basic to that naturalness. Maybe holding hands is pleasurable to me, but it may be hurtful to the person whose hands I hold. He is as free to seek his happiness as I am to seek mine. He has as much right to his happiness as I have to mine. So in taking someone's hand I have not only to see that it is pleasurable to me, I also have to know how the other person is going to take it.

I am free. My freedom is complete, but it is confined to me. My freedom cannot impinge on the freedom of another person, because his freedom is as complete as mine. Where the other person begins, my freedom will be responsible for his freedom too. Otherwise freedom becomes a license, becomes meaningless, because freedom is indivisible. Freedom and responsibility go naturally together.

If you come and hug me, surely you will feel happy about it. But it is not necessary that I should also feel the same way. Maybe I am hurt and disturbed by your hug. So if you are entitled to seek your happiness, I am equally entitled to escape being hurt. This understanding is essential for a natural, sane and healthy society to come into being. And a natural society will not have laws to be enforced with the help of magistrates, police and prisons, it will only depend on the understanding and awareness of its caring membership.

You also want to know what morality is, according to me. To me, respect for another person is morality. I should respect the other person as much as I respect myself. This is the heart of morality, and under its wings it covers all other kinds of morality. Respect for the other, the same respect that I want for myself, is the cornerstone of morality. There is no morality higher than this. The day I put myself above another I become immoral. The day I consider myself to be the end and treat others as means, I turn utterly immoral. I am not moral until I truly know that each person is an end unto himself or herself.

And you say that a husband can be hurt if his wife allows another person to hold her hand or to hug her. It is just possible. In fact, the institution of the husband is itself a kind of immorality. Marriage is a declaration of the fact that he has turned the woman he has married into a means for the rest of her life. It says that a man has bought a woman to establish his ownership over her. But people cannot be owned, only things can be owned. And when you own a person you reduce him or her into a thing. And this ownership over people is the worst kind of immorality.

I say that marriage is immoral. While love is moral, marriage is utterly immoral. And there will be no marriages in a better world. In a better world a man and a woman will live as friends and partners for the whole of their lives, but there will be no element of a contract, a bargain, a binding, a compulsion involved in this relationship. This relationship will be wholly based on their love for each other it will be a reflection of their love and nothing else.

The day love seeks the shelter of law, it courts death. Love dies the day it is turned into a contracted, legalized marriage. When I tell a woman I am entitled to receive her love because she is my wife, I am not really asking for her love, I am asserting my legal right of ownership over her. Maybe in that moment the wife is not in a loving mood, because there are moments of love and they are very few.

Ordinary people cannot be in a loving state twenty-four hours a day; that is possible for rare persons who become love it self. Ordinary people cannot always be loving they have to wait for their loving moments, which are few and far between. But the law will not wait for those moments: I can tell my wife that she should love me right now, because she is my wife - and she will have to yield. And love dies the moment you are forced to love someone. And if my wife tells me that she is not in a loving mood, that she does not love me right now, legal troubles will soon arise.

Most of our ethical concepts and moral laws are unnatural, arbitrary and impractical. In the name of morality we have imposed sheer impossibilities on ourselves. And it is because of them that immorality is rampant. It seems strange to say that our concept of morality itself is immoral - it is morality that breeds immorality - but it is a fact. If I love someone today, can I give him or her a promise that I will not love any other tomorrow? It is impossible to guarantee it. How can I speak for tomorrow, which has yet to come? And how can I speak for a person I have yet to know? And if I give such a promise, troubles are bound to arise tomorrow. Tomorrow, on the scene, that person can appear who is not aware of my pledge, of my promise. Tomorrow an altogether different state of my heart-mind can arise, which will be unaware of the promise I make today. And if I fall in love with another person tomorrow, this promise, this pledge will come in the way of that love.

If I fall in love with another person tomorrow - and it is not impossible - I will be faced with two alternatives. Then, on one hand, I will have to enter into a clandestine love affair, and on the other I will have to pretend to love the person I had promised to love forever. And that is what is happening all around. But isn't it an immoral and ugly society whose true love is forced to go underground and whose false love rules the roost?

So I consider marriage to be immoral. And I say it is the handiwork of an immoral society. And then marriage, in turn, gives rise to a thousand and one immoralities. Prostitution is one of them; it is a byproduct of marriage. Where people seek to make the institution of marriage strong and sacrosanct, the prostitute appears on the scene immediately.

The prostitute protects the chastity of wives, like Savitri of Indian myth. If you have to save the chastity of wives the prostitute is the answer. Even a wife would prefer her husband go to a prostitute rather than fall in love with his neighbor's wife - because love is an involvement, and so it is dangerous. A wife will be in danger if her husband falls in love with another woman, but there is no danger if he visits a brothel once in a while; her position remains safe. Prostitution does not demand involvement; you can buy it with money. Love demands deep involvement, and therefore wives consented to the institution of prostitution - but they cannot consent to love, to their husbands falling in love with another woman.

When I say it, when I say that sex or love is natural and should be accepted naturally, you object to it with the plea it will put a person conditioned by moralistic upbringing and ridden with taboos into difficulty. I tell you, that person is already in deep trouble and what I am saying here can help him free himself from his difficulty. He is already beset with enough troubles and problems. Where is that man who is not in deep waters? He is really drowning. But we don't see those troubles because they are so old and we are so used to them. If a disease is chronic we tend to forget it. What I say can create a new difficulty, not in the sense that it will really bring difficulty to you, but that it will call on you to give up your old habits, your old conditionings, which is re ally arduous.

But if someday mankind consents to accept life as it is, simple, natural and spontaneous; if people give up imposing unnatural and impossible moralities on themselves, which are anything but moral, then hundreds of thousands of Krishnas will walk this earth. Then the whole earth will be covered with Krishnas.

Lastly, you want to know why Krishna has been described in many colors. Really, he was a man of many colors. He was a colorful man. He cannot be presented in a single color; he was really multicolored. The color of his skin cannot be more than one, but his life, of course, has all the colors of the rainbow. And a lot depends on the quality of the eyes with which you see him. In fact, you see him in the color of your own perception.

A single person takes on different colors and also sees different colors in different states of mind because a single person is not really the same in different states of his heart-mind. I take on a particular color when I am loving and a quite different color when I am angry. And you see me in one way when you are in love with me and quite differently when you hate me. And colors are changing every day, almost every hour of the day, every moment of the day. Here everything is in flux; nothing is permanent. The concept of permanence in this world is a lie. Everything is changing except the law of change.

It is true that Krishna's color has mostly been described as dark, and there are reasons for it. The dark color, it seems, is the symbol of his steadiness. It means that he is constantly changing, that changeability is the constant factor represented by varying shades of darkness. This country has some special liking for this color. In fact, white is never as beautiful as dark.

Generally, white skin is considered to be beautiful, because its gloss and glamor can hide many ugly features of the body, but dark skin never hides anything; it clearly shows every feature of the body as it is. That is why beauty is rare among dark-skinned people, while you can find any number of handsome faces among the white-skinned peoples. But whenever there is a really beautiful person with dark skin ke puts even the most beautiful white person into the shade. Beauty in black is superb; it is a rarity. For this reason we have depicted Rama, Krishna and other beautiful people in dark colors. They are rare. It is an ordinary thing to look handsome with white skin; it is very rare with dark.

There are other reasons for our preference for this color. White lacks depth. It is of course expansive.

A white face is usually flat; it is rarely deep. But the dark color has a depth and an intensity. Of course, it is not extensive. Have you noticed that wherever a river is deep its water looks dark and beautiful? The beauty of a dark face does not end with the skin; it is not skin deep. It has many layers, layers of transparency. on the other hand a white face is flat; it ends with the skin. That is why when you meet a white person, you begin to feel bored with him after a little while. The dark color is enduring; it does not bore you. It has shade upon shade.

You will be surprised to know that currently all the glamorous women of the West are mad about suntans, tanning their skin by exposure to the sun. In scores you can see them lying on every beach under the scorching sun so their color gets dark. Why this craze for suntans? The fact is, whenever a culture reaches its peak, expansiveness ceases to have much significance for it, it begins to seek depth and intensity. We tend to think western people are more beautiful, but westerners are finished with appearances, they are now out to seek beauty in depth. Now the beautiful women in the West are trying to get darker and darker. White has the characteristic that many more people appear beautiful than in a dark color, but its beauty lacks depth and transparency; it is flat and dull.

That is why we opted for the dark color. I don't accept that Krishna was really black; it is not necessary. But we saw him in a dark color; we ascribed this color to him. He was such a lovely person that we could not think of his being white. Maybe he was really dark - which is not so important for me. For me the facticity of a thing is not that important; what is important is its poetic aspect, its poetry. Krishna was a multicolored person, and he had such depths of being that we could not conceive of his being a flat color like white. It was a real joy to go on looking into his face and penetrating its beauty and beatitude.

Therefore, although one saw Krishna in many colors, we assigned a single color, a dark color to him. And we called him Shyam, which means dark or deep blue. Krishna means dark too. Not only did we conceive him so, we even named him so. Whether you say Krishna or Shyam or Sawalia, it means the same.

You also want to know why on one hand Krishna disrobes the gopis and on the other rushes to provide clothes to Draupadi when she is being publicly disrobed by the Kauravas. The question is significant. In fact, a person who has never once really disrobed a woman will continue, in dreams and fantasies, to disrobe women all his life. But he who has known nudity can now well afford to cover it, to clothe it.

Then there is a significant difference between robing and disrobing a woman. In love, disrobing is allowed. If you are in love with a woman, she can happily consent to being disrobed by you. But Draupadi was being disrobed not out of love, she was being disrobed in utter hate and spite. The people who disrobed her had no love whatsoever for her. They were out to humiliate her, so it was an outrageous and barbaric act.

As I have said over and over again, I don't attach much importance to facts. I don't look at the story of Krishna providing clothes to Draupadi from a great distance by a miracle as an historical fact.

This is just an allegory to say that Krishna, in a very effective manner, came in the way of her being made naked. I believe that he really prevented the Kauravas from dishonoring her. But when a poet describes this event, he turns it into a poem. And when we eventually look at the same poem of an event, it seems to be a miracle. Poetry itself is a miracle; there is no greater miracle than poetry. It only means to say that Krishna intervened and prevented it in his own way.

It is significant to know that one of the names of Draupadi is Krishna, the feminine form of Krishna.

The truth is, in all human history, there has never been a man as many-splendored as Krishna and a woman as magnificent and glorious as Draupadi. Draupadi is simply incomparable. We have talked a lot about Sita and other women, but Draupadi was as great as any of them. But we have difficulty with Draupadi because she happened to be the wife of five men; in making a right appraisal of her life this fact often comes in our way. But remember how difficult it is to be a single husband's wife; only a woman of exceptional ability and accomplishments could be the wife of five men at the same time.

Krishna is in deep love with Krishna; she is one of his most intimate beloveds. And that love comes to her rescue in a moment she is being subjected to the worst humiliation. But that is a different topic which we will discuss when I speak on Draupadi.

Question 7:

In this connection, two things have to be understood. When I talk of spiritual intercourse between two lovers it does not mean that I am condemning sexual intercourse. By spiritual intercourse I mean that when two persons, a man and a woman, make love, they meet not only on the physical plane but at the spiritual level too. A child born out of mere physical coitus cannot reach to that height of excellence one born out of spiritual intercourse can. I take Krishna to be a child of spiritual intercourse. That is why people who knew Jesus could say that his mother Mary remained virgin even after giving birth to Jesus. Though Mary and Joseph must have made love physically, it is true that the intercourse was much more spiritual than physical. Their desire for sex was not that strong.

The physical part of it was like the shadow of the spiritual meeting. Evidently the responsibility for giving birth to Jesus does not lie with the shadow, with physical intercourse.

But the question is significant. Why were the sons of Krishna and Rama not as talented and brilliant?

There are good reasons for it. Firstly, it is impossible to give birth to a son who can excel Krishna; Krishna is the apex any son can ever reach. Of course, Vasudeo, who is an ordinary person, can produce a son greater than himself, but Krishna cannot. A son of Krishna is bound to be forgotten by history, because Krishna will always tower above him. Even the high est peaks of the Vindhyachal mountain range will look like dwarfs before Everest. Everything is relative; everyone pales into insignificance before Krishna.

The offspring of people like Krishna, Buddha, Rama and Mahavira have to live under certain inherent disadvantages. Lava and Kusha, the sons of Rama, are great in their own right, yet they pale before their father's towering greatness. If they had been born of ordinary parents they would have made history; they were really extraordinary people. How could the sons of Rama be ordinary people?

But in comparison with Rama they had to take a back seat in history. Dashratha was a very ordinary person; he is known only because he was Rama's father. In his own he was insignificant, but he became great just because he was father of a great person. But even a great son of a great father cannot be that great; he will be smaller than his father by comparison.

The intercourse between Krishna and his wives was spiritual; his offspring were born of spiritual union. But when we come to evaluate them, it has necessarily to be relative, comparative; there is no other way to do it.

You are aware of an anecdote connected with the great Indian King Akbar. Once he was sitting with his court discussing some important matter of state. He rose from his seat and drew a line on a blackboard with white chalk and asked his courtiers to make the line smaller without touching it in any way. Nobody could think how to reduce it without touching it. Then the King's intimate friend Birbal, who was known for his great wit, rose from his seat and drew another line longer than the existing one, and the existing line became smaller without being reduced in size.

Lava and Kusha are indeed great, but they could not surpass their father, who was already at the height of greatness. So they were lost in the shadow of his greatness, which was immense. They would have shone if they had not been Rama's sons. Then history would certainly have remembered them.

Question 8:

The people who delve into the scriptures are really amazed by the fact that the scriptures don't even mention Radha. It is because of it some people think no one like Radha ever existed. They say that she is an imaginary creation of the poets of later times. It is natural that people who rely on history and its facts should find themselves in great difficulty on this score. It is true that Radha does not find mention in the earliest scriptures on Krishna, it is only the later literature that talks about her.

My own standpoint on this issue is just the contrary. I believe that the reason for her not being mentioned is quite different. Radha dissolved herself so completely in the being of Krishna, she became so united and one with him, that a separate account of her in literature became unnecessary.

Those of her associates who maintained their separate identities have been mentioned very much, but the scriptures did not think it necessary to mention those who lost their separate identities, merged in Krishna and lived like Krishna's shadows. To mention someone it is necessary that he or she have an independent identity. Rukmini is separate; she has her identity intact, and she has been well recorded by the scriptures. She might have loved Krishna but she did not become one with him. She was related to Krishna, but she did not dissolve herself in him. To be related with someone means you are separate from him or her.

Radha is not in a kind of relationship with Krishna; she is Krishna himself. So in my view it is quite just that she has not been mentioned separately; it is as it should be.

So remember this first reason for Radha not being mentioned in the old scriptures: she is invisible, like a shadow of Krishna she is not even separate enough that we could know her and recognize her. She is so inseparably one with him that one could not identify her and assign a name and place to her.

It is true that Krishna would be incomplete without Radha. I have said more than once that Krishna is a complete man, a perfect male. This thing has to be understood in depth. There are very few men on this earth who are complete men. Every man has his feminine part and, similarly, every woman has her masculine part. Psychologists say that every human being is bisexual, that there is a woman in every man and a man in every woman. The difference between a man and a woman is one of degrees: a man is sixty percent man and forty percent woman, and similarly, a woman is sixty percent woman and forty percent man. But there are men who seem to be feminine because their female component is predominant. Similarly, there are manly women because of the preponderance of the male element in them. Krishna is an exception to this rule. I consider him to be a whole man; there is no feminine element whatsoever in him. In the same way I will call Meera a complete woman; she has no masculinity whatsoever in her.

There is another side to this matter of full manhood. If a person is a whole man, he will be incomplete in another sense, and he will need a whole woman to complete him. He cannot do without her. Of course, an incomplete man, who is partly man and partly woman, can do without a woman, because there is already an inbuilt woman in him. But for a whole man like Krishna, a Radha is a must, a whole woman like Radha is a must. He cannot do without a Radha.

Basically, aggressiveness is the way of a man, and surrender the way of a woman. But being incomplete men and women, as most of us are, no man is capable of being fully aggressive and no woman is capable of being fully surrendered. And that is why, when two incomplete men and women relate with each other, their relationship is plagued by constant conflict and strife. It has to be so.

Since there is an element of aggressiveness in every woman, she some times becomes aggressive - while the essential woman in her is ready to submit and surrender. So there are moments when she puts her head at the feet of her man and there are also moments when she would like to strangle him to death. These are the two sides of her personality. In the same way the man is so aggressive at times he would like to dominate his beloved wholly, to keep her under his thumb, and sometimes he is so submissive that he becomes the picture of a henpecked husband. He has his two sides too.

Rukmini cannot be in deep harmony with Krishna, because of the male component in her. Radha is a complete woman and therefore can dissolve herself in Krishna absolutely. Her surrender to him is total. Krishna cannot be in deep intimacy with a woman who has any measure of masculinity in her.

To have intimacy with such a woman he needs to be partially feminine. But he is a whole man; there is not a trace of femininity in him. So he will demand complete surrender on the part of a woman if she wants to be intimate with him. Nothing short of total surrender will do; he will ask for the whole of her. This, however, does not mean that he will only take and not give of himself; he will give of himself totally in return.

For this reason Rukmini, who finds so much mention in the old scriptures, and who is the rightful claimant, goes out of the picture eventually, and Radha, an unknown entity, who cannot have any rightful claim on Krishna, comes to center stage. While Rukmini is his lawful wife, duly married to him, Ra&a is an outsider who is nobody to Krishna. While his relationship with Rukmini was institutional, socially recognized, his relationship with Radha was one of friendship, of love. Radha can have no legal claim on Krishna; no law court will ever decree that she has any lawful claim on Krishna. But the irony is that in the course of time Rukmini is forgotten, disappears from history, and this woman Radha becomes everything to Krishna - so much so that her name is attached to his for ever and ever.

And what is more significant in this connection is that Radha, who sacrifices everything for Krishna's love, who loses her own individual identity, who lives as Krishna's mere shadow, becomes the first part of their joint name. We call them Radhakrishna and not Krishnaradha. It means that one who surrenders totally gains totally, gains everything, that one who stands last In the line eventually comes out at the head of it.

No, we cannot think of Krishna without Radha. Radha constitutes the whole of Krishna's tenderness and refinement; whatever is delicate and fine in him comes from Radha. She is his song, his dance and all that is feminine in him. Alone Krishna is out and out male, and therefore there is no meaning in mentioning his name alone. That is why they become united and one, they become Radhakrishna. Both the extremes of life meet and mingle in Radhakrishna. And this adds to Krishna's completeness.

You cannot think of Mahavira standing side by side with a woman; a woman has no relevance to him. He is very much himself without a woman. Mahavira was married to a woman and they gave birth to a child, but one of the sects of the Jainas, the Digambaras, do not accept this to be a fact.

They say Mahavira had no wife and no child. But I think that while it is historically true that Mahavira was married, psychologically what the Digambaras say is right. Psychologically, there can be no connection between a man like Mahavira and a woman. It is utterly meaningless. Even if it were a fact we cannot accept it. How can Mahavira love a woman? Impossible. There is not even a trace of that love in the whole of Mahavira's life.

Buddha had a wife, but he left her when he renounced the world. Similarly, you cannot associate Christ with a woman; he is beautiful as a bachelor. And his bachelorhood is meaningful. And in this sense too, all of them, Mahavira, Buddha and Christ, are incomplete, fragmentary.

As in the great organization of the universe, the positive is incomplete without the negative, the positive electricity is incomplete without the negative, so in the makeup of human life, man is quite incomplete without the woman. Man and woman together, rather masculinity and femininity together, aggressiveness and surrender together, war and peace together, make for a perfect union, a complete life.

If we want an appropriate symbol to describe the union of Radhakrishna there is one, and only one, available in the Chinese language: it is called yin and yang. Chinese is a pictorial language with a picture for every thing and every word. It has a picture representing yin and yang, the Chinese symbol for the universe. This symbol is in the form of a circle whose circumference is made up of two fish, one white and the other dark. The tail of each fish is in the mouth of the other, and thus they make a complete circle, representing the universe. One half of the circle, made up of the white fish, is exhibited in dark ness, and the other half made up of the dark fish, is exhibited in light. The white fish represents yang, the masculine active principle in nature, and the dark fish represents yin, the feminine passive principle in nature - and yang and yin combine with each other to produce all that comes to be.

Radha and Krishna make for a complete circle of life, whole and abundant. In this sense too, Krishna Is complete, total. We cannot think of him in fragments and separate from Radha. If you tear him away from Ra&, he will become lackluster, he will lose all his color. Radha serves as the most appropriate canvas for the portrait of Krishna to emerge and shine forth. We cannot think of bright stars without a dark night; the darker the night the brighter the stars. Stars are very much there even during the daytime don't think they disappear from the firmament. Even now, as we are sitting here on a clear morning, the sky is studded with stars, but we cannot see them in the sunshine. If you enter a deep well - say three hundred feet deep - you can see the stars from there right now, because there is a deep layer of darkness covering the well. They shine forth in the night because of the background of darkness.

With the background of Radha, who surrounds him from all sides, the life of Krishna shines bright.

In her company Krishna achieves his absolute flowering. If Krishna is the flower, Radha serves as its root. They are completely together; we cannot separate them. They really represent the togetherness of life.

Radhakrishna makes for a complete couple, a complete name. Krishna alone is an incomplete name.