Krishna Smriti #11

Just as Krishna is a puzzle to understand among men’s personalities, so too is Draupadi among women’s. And when people see something despicable in her, in that very seeing they reveal more about themselves than about Draupadi. What we see is really a report about ourselves. We can only see what we are; beyond ourselves, we see nothing. Draupadi’s personality will feel difficult to us. To love five persons at once, to be the wife of five at once, is a great challenge. That needs to be understood. But it only gives us information about ourselves—about our own desires and expectations. Love does not have much to do with persons. And if love can be given to only one, it becomes a very poor, impoverished love.

This needs a little understanding. Our insistence is always that love be toward one. We all would like that if a flower blooms by the roadside, it bloom for one person; if a song is sung, it be sung for one person; if rain falls, it fall on one field; if the sun rises, it shine in one courtyard. Our minds want that whatever is, we should have full ownership and possession of it. If someone loves me, then they should love only me; their love should not flow by any other door or channel, it should not be divided. Because we do not understand love, we also think that if it gets divided, there will be less for me.

But the more love spreads, the more it grows. The more love is shared, the more it increases. And when we try very hard to make love flow in only one stream—which is unnatural, unspontaneous, a kind of force—then the final result is merely this: not only does it not flow elsewhere, it does not flow where we want it to either.

A little story comes to mind. There was a Buddhist nun. She had a small sandalwood statue of Buddha that she always kept with her. She would stay in temples and monasteries, but she worshipped only her own Buddha. Once she stayed in that temple which is called the temple of a thousand Buddhas, where there are Buddha images in every corner. In the morning she set down her Buddha and began worship, and lit incense. But incense does not obey human rules! The opposite happened. The gusts of wind were such that the fragrance did not reach the nose of her little Buddha at all, while the big Buddhas sitting nearby received the fragrance. She became very anxious: This will not do! So she made a small tin hood to cover the incense, opened a little chimney-mouth right by her Buddha’s nose, so that the fragrance would reach only her own Buddha. The fragrance did reach, but the Buddha’s face blackened with soot. She was in great difficulty; it was sandalwood, and it was all spoiled. She went to the temple priest and said, “I’m in great trouble—my Buddha’s image has become disfigured. What should I do?” The priest said, “Whenever anyone tries to confine truths that are meant to spread everywhere to a single direction, such mishaps and such ugliness are bound to occur.”

So far, humanity has thought of love as a relationship—between two individuals. We have not yet understood love as a state of being—that one’s inner climate is love. That is the difficulty in understanding Draupadi.

If I am loving, I cannot be loving only to one. Loving will become my nature. I will be able to be loving to many—the question of one or many drops; I will simply be loving. If I am loving only to one and not loving to the rest, then I will not remain loving even to that one. For twenty-three hours I will have to live in un-love—with others; and for one hour I will be with the one I claim to love. Twenty-three hours of practicing un-love cannot be broken in one hour. Then even that hour which we call love does not become love; it too turns into un-love.

But the so-called lovers of the world—one must call them uncomprehending—having no clue about love, want to bind it. And the moment we bind love—love is like air—if you clench your fist, the air does not remain in it; only an open hand can hold it. Clench harder and the air escapes; keep your palm open and the air stays. This is life’s great paradox: air remains in an open hand, not in a closed one. In the very effort to bind love, love dies and rots. And we have all killed our love and let it rot—in the attempt to confine it.

We find it hard to understand Draupadi because we ask, “How could she love five?” Not only do we have this difficulty; those five brothers had it too. Even that is understandable. Those five brothers also kept thinking in their hearts, “Surely she loves one more than the others. How can it be equal for all?” They all felt envious of Arjuna. Each feared that her attachment to Arjuna was greater. Those five brothers did not understand Draupadi either. They made rules—divided the days. When Draupadi is with one, she should not meet another. They even decided that when one brother is with Draupadi, the others should not so much as glance inside by mistake. They too did not understand her. Their difficulty is the same as ours. We cannot even imagine that love can be a stream that does not flow toward persons but flows from the person. We have never conceived of love apart from an individual, and so Draupadi becomes a puzzle. And in our minds, however much we try to explain it away, it seems as if somewhere in Draupadi a prostitute is hidden. For, given our definition of “chaste woman,” that very definition turns Draupadi into a harlot.

But have you ever noticed that the tradition of this land counts Draupadi among the five maidens—the panch-kanyas—among the most sacred of women? What strange people they must have been to count Draupadi among the five supreme paragons of chastity! Certainly, those who made this list knew the facts clearly—nothing about it is concealed. Knowing this fact, they still made that list. It is deeply meaningful. It indicates that the question is not whether love is for one or many; the question is whether there is love or not. And if there is love, it can flow in infinite streams. Five are only symbolic. It can flow toward five, toward fifty, toward hundreds of thousands. And the day we can bring loving individuals into the world, this notion of personal ownership of love will become utterly meaningless. It is not that we should force someone not to love one person. It is not that we should make the opposite rule—that whoever loves one commits a sin. That would be the same foolishness from the other end. No. Let us recognize that each does according to their capacity, and let us not impose our personality and our capacity upon others.

In Draupadi there is a current of love. And she did not deny that flow for even a moment. This was a very extraordinary event. It happened in the midst of a great play. She was brought home, and the five brothers said, “We have brought something wonderful.” Their mother said, “If it is wonderful, then divide it among the five.” They had never imagined this. They had only been joking, teasing their mother. They did not know she would say, “Divide it among yourselves.” And once the mother had said it, there was no way out. All five became Draupadi’s husbands. But Draupadi did not refuse it, not even for a moment. Only because of the vastness of her love was this possible. She could give love to all five, and love did not run out. She could love all five, and it was not diminished. She could love all five, and yet no dilemma, no duality arose in her mind.

She must have been a truly extraordinary woman. Otherwise, ordinarily, women live in jealousy. If we want a single distinguishing mark between male and female personalities, men live in ego, women in jealousy. In fact, jealousy is the passive form of ego, and ego the active form of jealousy. Women live in ceaseless jealousy. But this woman could live in love without jealousy, and in many ways she rose above those five brothers. Those five brothers suffered greatly. Around Draupadi there was a constant inner conflict and struggle in them. But Draupadi, unconflicted and serene, passed through this very strange happening.

The difficulty we feel in understanding is our own. We take love to be a relationship between one and one. Love is not like that. And so we get into endless entanglements for love and create great difficulties. Love is a flower that can blossom at any time, for anyone. It has no bonds and no limits. And the greater the bonds and limits we impose, the more we effectively decide not to let the flower bloom at all. Then it does not bloom even for one. We are such strange people: we would rather live without love than give up ownership of love. We will allow our life to pass empty of love, but we will not tolerate that the one we have loved might have someone else as a beloved too. This we will not tolerate. That we remain without love—so be it; that there is no rain of love on our house—so be it; but that it should fall on the neighbor’s house next to ours—this we will not allow. Ego and jealousy bring astonishing suffering.

Along with this, remember that Draupadi’s event is not a solitary event. It seems to be the last of its kind. Before Draupadi, the world’s society was matriarchal for thousands of years. In a matriarchal society, no woman “belonged” to any man. The mother was known, the father was not. It appears that Draupadi’s episode was the last link in that long chain. That is why no objections were raised at the time. Polyandry was nearing its end. Even today, in some surviving primitive societies, that system still exists. Draupadi’s event seems to be the last link in that dying chain. Hence that society did not find much difficulty. No one objected. Otherwise, why would the mother not have changed her statement? Even if the sons were eager to obey, the mother could have changed her command once she knew the situation: “They have not brought a ‘thing’; they have brought a wife; how can she be divided among five?” But the mother did not change her word. And had her command been immoral, the sons could have at least requested, “Please change your instruction; we made a mistake.” There was no obstacle to that. Yet the mother did not change her word, the sons made no request to change it, and no one in that society objected that something wrong had occurred. The sole reason is that, within the system that society lived in, this event did not appear immoral.

It always happens that the assumptions of one society make another society look very immoral. The Prophet Muhammad entered into nine marriages. And the Quran permits each man to have four wives. Today, when we sit and think, it can feel very immoral—what madness is this, one man having four wives, and Muhammad himself having nine! And Muhammad was a very unusual man. When he married first, he was only twenty-four, and his wife was forty. But in the society Muhammad lived in, an extraordinary situation had arisen that made this entirely natural and not seen as immoral. The tribe he was in was a warrior tribe. Men died in battle. Women, in very large numbers, were left without partners. In that hour, it was truly ethical that each man marry up to four women. Otherwise, what would become of the three who would remain? And if three women in life could not find love, remained unfulfilled, the society would become very immoral and licentious. Therefore Muhammad said that each man may have four wives—this was a deeply religious arrangement for that time. And he himself had the courage to enter into nine marriages—simply to demonstrate: if I say four, I myself will shoulder even more. No one in Arabia found difficulty with this, because the matter was straightforward and clear. It did not appear immoral.

As for Draupadi, my understanding is that there was no difficulty because that age’s arrangement—the system of a woman having multiple husbands—was slowly dying out, but not yet dead. And it will die out as the number of men and women becomes equal; where they are balanced, neither polyandry nor polygyny can last. When imbalances occur for particular reasons, such systems can exist.

So in that time it was not immoral. Even today, I would say that a woman who gave equal love to five, who lived in the love of five, was no ordinary woman. She was extraordinary. And she had an inexhaustible source of love; only thus was it possible.

But the difficulty we have in thinking about it—that arises from us.

It isn’t a special friendship; it is simply friendship. Here again the trouble is ours. It seems to us that giving the sovereignty of the three worlds for three fistfuls of rice is a bit much. But for Sudama, giving three fistfuls of rice was as difficult as it was not difficult for Krishna to give away the sovereignty of the three worlds. That we do not consider. For Sudama, even three fistfuls of rice were a very big thing, very difficult. If in this incident there is any giving, it is Sudama who has given. The giving is not Krishna’s. But ordinarily we see it the other way around: that Krishna is the donor. What had Sudama brought? Only three fistfuls of rice! Tied up in a torn cloth!

We do not know how much poverty Sudama was living in. For him even gathering a single grain was difficult. And for Krishna, even giving the three worlds was not difficult. So let no one remain under the illusion that Krishna bestowed a favor on Sudama. Krishna only responded; and the response is not very great—it is simply as great as could be. Therefore the poet speaks of the sovereignty of the three worlds: the largest thing imagination can conceive. But when will we understand the heart of a poor man who has nothing at all, not even three grains of rice, and yet brings three fistfuls? No, even after giving, Krishna was not satisfied. Because what Sudama gave is very extraordinary; and what Krishna gave, for one of his stature, is very ordinary. Hence I do not think any special friendship was shown to Sudama. It is Sudama who showed a special friendship; Krishna only responded.

And as I said, he is neither friend nor foe to anyone. But when a friend like Sudama comes, bringing so much feeling of friendship from his side, Krishna responds the way valleys do: when we call out in the ravines, they echo our voice back sevenfold. The valleys are not waiting for our call, nor are they pledged to reply, they have no commitment; yet when we call out, the valleys return it seven times. That is the nature of the valleys—their echoing. What Krishna gave back is Krishna’s nature. And when a person like Sudama stands before you and calls out with such love, even if Krishna were to return it a thousandfold, it would still be nothing. That is Krishna’s nature. Anyone who had gone to Krishna’s door carrying Sudama’s heart...

The delightful thing is that the poor always go to ask, but Sudama went to give. And when the poor go to give, their wealth has no comparison. The opposite happens with the rich: the rich are always the ones who go to give. But when a rich man goes to beg, as Buddha did, standing on the road with a begging bowl, then the whole matter changes. Think of Buddha and Sudama together and it will become clear. Here is Sudama, poor, and he goes to give; and there is Buddha, who has everything, and he goes to beg. When the rich go to beg, an otherworldly event happens; and when the poor go to give, an otherworldly event happens. The ordinary thing is that the rich keep giving alms and the poor keep begging—nothing special in that. Sudama stands in the same exceptional condition as Buddha standing on the road with the begging bowl. What was lacking in Buddha that he should go begging? And what did Sudama have that he became eager to give? He is mad. Buddha is mad, and so is he. And to whom does he go to give? To Krishna—one who has everything.

But love does not look at how much you have. However much you have, love still gives. Love cannot accept that you have enough. This must be understood a little.

Love can never accept that you have enough. Love just goes on giving. There is never a moment when it says, “Enough, I have given you plenty; you have so much now, there is no need to give more.” It is never enough. Love keeps on giving, keeps pouring itself out, and it always feels too little. If we ask a mother, “You did so much for your son!”—if she is a nurse, she will list it: yes, I did this and this. But if she is a mother, she will say, “What did I do! There was so much to do, and I could not do it.” A mother always keeps the account of what she could not do. And if any mother keeps accounts of how much she did, she is under the illusion of being a mother; she has only done a nurse’s job, nothing more. Love always keeps accounts of what it could not do. What is lacking for Krishna? Yet Sudama is eager to give. When he set out from home, his wife had told him to ask for something; but he went to give.

There is another thing: he is full of great modesty; he hides his little bundle. Love gives and yet feels shy, because love always feels: is this fit to be given? Love both gives and hides. It wants to give in the dark, to give anonymously, to give without a name, so no one will know. So he hid his bundle—how to give? Is it even worthy of giving? Not because it was rice; even if Sudama had taken diamonds, he would have hidden them the same way. The question is not of rice; to him the rice is more precious than diamonds. The great question is that love never gives with a proclamation, because once the announcement is made, where is love? Ego starts there. Love gives quietly and slips away, so that no one knows who gave. And he is very afraid and keeps it hidden. That moment must have been wondrous. But the delightful thing is that Krishna, as soon as he comes, starts asking, “What have you brought? What have you brought to give?” Because Krishna cannot even conceive that love would come without the idea of giving. Whenever love comes, it comes to give. Sudama keeps hiding; Krishna keeps searching: “What have you brought?” What can be lacking for such a Krishna that anything Sudama brings would add to him? But he knows: whenever love comes, it comes to give, not to take. Sudama must have brought something; surely he has hidden it, because he knows love always hides. And then he searched out his bundle and snatched it away. And there, in that full court—where plain rice would never otherwise appear—he began to eat those grains.

There is nothing special in this. For love, this is the most ordinary event. But because love itself has stopped being ordinary for us, it appears special.

This question has arisen many times. And this charge can be brought against Buddha, Krishna, Mahavira, Jesus, Mohammed—against all of them: why did they not think in relation to the economy? There are many reasons. They could not have thought about it. There was no way to think, no conditions for such thinking. We can think because the conditions have arisen. Marx could think because before Marx there had been an industrial revolution. Before the industrial revolution, no one in the world could even conceive of transforming the economy. There was no means. The reasons for this need to be understood.

Before the industrial revolution, the world had only one productive source: human labor. And with what human labor can produce, however it is distributed, poverty could not be eradicated. There was simply no way. Poverty was inevitable.

Inequality—one might think it could be removed. Even inequality could not be removed; there are reasons for that too. I will speak about them.

First, poverty could not be removed. Society simply did not have the wealth needed to eliminate poverty. Yes, one thing could be done: the few who appeared prosperous could be eliminated; they too could be made poor. That much could be done. If, among a thousand people, one person had a little wealth, he could be stripped of it, and instead of nine hundred ninety-nine poor, you would have a thousand poor. From what wealth human labor produces, one can never rise above the level of poverty. The thought of abolishing poverty can arise only from the day when, in place of human labor, the labor of machines begins to produce wealth. Then, instead of the effort of one person, you can use machines that work a hundred-thousandfold. Production begins on a vast scale, and for the first time the idea arises that there is no longer any need to keep the poor poor; the historical necessity of poverty ends. That is why only after the industrial revolution could Marx think as he did. If Krishna had been born after the industrial revolution, he would have thought much more clearly than Marx—more clearly than Marx himself managed. But Krishna comes before the industrial revolution. One might as well ask Marx why he did not take birth before the industrial revolution.

It is not that human beings lacked reflection, nor that the idea of ending poverty did not arise. It did. It arose for Buddha and for Mahavira. But do you know what their method was for ending poverty? They themselves became poor. There was no other way. If poverty gives pain, the only thing you could do was to stand with the poor by becoming poor yourself—what else could you do! So Buddha and Mahavira renounced their wealth. Mahavira even distributed his. Whatever share was his, he gave it away and departed. But that did not end poverty. It has nothing to do with abolishing poverty. It was a moral measure. Mahavira relieved the pain in his own heart, but poverty remained.

Therefore all the thinkers of the old world emphasized aparigraha—non-possession. They could not insist that no one be poor; they could only insist that no one be wealthy. There was no other recourse. Given the situation of their time, the only possible measure was that no one be rich. Hence all the old religions stand for aparigraha, non-possession, renunciation of things, opposition to hoarding wealth. They say, give away whatever you have. But they also knew that by distributing, the rich man may become non-possessive, yet those who have nothing still receive nothing. It is like taking a spoonful of dye and setting out to color the ocean. One Buddha distributes himself—finished! One Mahavira distributes himself—finished! The vast ocean of poverty dissolves that spoonful and drinks it up. Nothing shows; nothing changes.

It could not be thought, therefore it was not thought.

But a second question arises: inequality could at least have been removed. If poverty could not be removed, could inequality have been? Why did the idea of removing inequality not arise? There is a reason for that too. Understand it this way: the idea of eliminating inequality arises only when, to a great extent, similarity begins to appear among us. Before that it does not arise. In fact, we come to recognize inequality only when society ceases to be divided into distant classes and instead becomes divided into steps of a ladder.

For example: there is a sweeper woman in a village. If the queen of the realm goes out wearing diamond necklaces, the sweeper woman feels no hurt. No jealousy arises, because the distance is so great that there isn’t even a way for envy to arise. Where is the sweeper, and where the queen! The gap is so vast that the sweeper cannot even think of envying the queen. But if the sweeper next door goes out wearing even a necklace of pebbles and stones, jealousy begins. Why? Because where her neighbor is, she too could be. There is no impossibility in it. Therefore envy catches.

So long as the situation in society was such that a vast expanse of the poor spread below and, way up in the sky, one or two men were rich, the distances were so great that the notion of equality could not arise. We could not claim equality. The only thought that occurred was: things are as they are. But after the industrial revolution, the distances began to collapse and a staircase appeared in between. Today, at the peak there is a Rockefeller, below there is a laborer; but this is not a division of two classes—between them are steps, tiers. Over everyone there is someone, over him someone else; the whole society has become a long staircase. Because of these intermediate steps, everyone begins to think: why can I not be equal to the one ahead of me? Everyone begins to think: why can I not be like the one just before me?

The idea of equality does not arise in a society divided into distant classes; it arises in a society divided into steps. But this does not mean that Buddha, Mahavira, or Krishna did not speak of equality. They spoke of the equality that was possible then: the equality of the spirit. A spiritual equality—that the life within, the soul within, is the same in all. But the thought that externals—comforts and discomforts, money, clothes, houses—should be the same for all could not arise; there was no path to it. Today we can think it.

Let me give you an example. There are many things today that we cannot think, for which future generations will blame us. We cannot think them yet. For example, one or two things that coming generations will charge you with: today you pay every man only when he works. Future generations will ask: was there not a single thinker then who declared that making food and drink conditional upon compulsory work is unethical? A time will soon come. When automatic machines produce everything, very soon the question will arise that work is no longer necessary. Every person should receive without working. And those who demand work as well should receive a little less than those who do not, because they are asking for two things—work and wages.

Today the American economist is constantly worried: what shall we do for the future? Our old habit is that whoever works should get. The coming possibility—only twenty-five or thirty years hence—is that we cannot give work to everyone, so those who do not work should be given more. We will have to give them anyway, because if a factory produces cars and people have no money to buy them, what will you do with the cars you make? The factory will be fully automatic; where a hundred thousand people used to work, one person will press a button and the work will be done. If those hundred thousand who went out are given nothing, who will buy the cars? To purchase all these things, they will have to be given. They are ready to live without work—which will prove very hard! We do not yet know that to be content without work will be harder than the toughest labor used to be.

So in the future someone will surely say: what kind of people were they? Neither Krishna, nor Mahavira, nor Marx—no one could think that extracting work from a man as a condition for food is a great immorality, an inhumanity? Because he is hungry, you take work and then give him bread? If he is hungry, he should get food—what question of work is there? But we cannot think like this yet. Even now, if one gets work, bread still does not arrive; so bread without work is very difficult to imagine. In each age, within its own arrangements and possibilities, the flowers of thought bloom.

In Krishna’s time there was no sting in inequality. There was no pain from un-equality. Hence there was no slogan of equality. And the poor man was not tormented by being poor. See the irony: Plato, a great champion of equality, never even gets the idea that slaves should be abolished. Rather, he says there will be slaves. In Greece, having slaves was natural. In fact, Plato says that if there are no slaves, how will equality remain?

Will the elite class not dominate? A select class will always dominate. They have dominated. And the elite will always dominate; the masks may change, but nothing else. Sometimes they dominate as owners, sometimes as leaders, sometimes as kings, sometimes as gurus, sometimes as saints—but the elite always dominate. And I cannot see any age in which the chosen few will not dominate. So long as there are chosen ones, they will dominate; there is no way around it. It is another matter that their faces change. Sometimes we call them kings, sometimes presidents; sometimes emperors, sometimes ministers; sometimes saints, sometimes gods. We can call them anything, but until the development of human beings reaches the same plane for everyone—until every person reaches the same level in all dimensions of development, which I do not believe will ever happen—and the society in which everyone is on the same level would be drab and quite absurd; it would be very boring when all are equal.

But the chosen will remain. Someone will play the sitar well, and he will inevitably overshadow the one who plays less well—what can you do? Someone will dance well and will overshadow the one who dances less well—what can you do? If an Einstein is born and he overshadows those who cannot even add two and two, whose fault is it? What can you do? In such a situation someone or other will go on dominating. It is certain that when we get weary of the old types of dominators—and we do, and they also become irrelevant for the needs of order and for the future—we have to change them.

Today in Russia we changed everything, but other people became dominant; they are no less dominant than the earlier ones—rather, more so. Today in China we replaced one set, and another became dominant. So long as there are distances between man and man—of intelligence, thought, ability, talent, power—it is impossible that no one will dominate; someone will. And it is impossible that no one would want someone to dominate him; some will want it too, because they cannot live without being dominant or being dominated. So this shifting goes on. The ways of one age start seeming absurd to us, because we accept another kind of domination.

In Krishna’s time this was naturally accepted. The poor were willing to be poor; the rich felt no prick of conscience at being rich. For as long as the poor accept their poverty, there can be no pang in the rich. The rich are at ease; it does not trouble them. Therefore no occasion for social reflection arises. For example, today we have begun to say that the poor and the rich should be equal. The sole reason is not that our intellectual genius has advanced beyond Krishna; the reason is that the social arrangement has changed since Krishna. Yet even today no one can say, “I have little intelligence; therefore there should be equality between me and the one with greater intelligence.” But fifty years from now the man of lesser intelligence will begin to make that appeal, because in fifty years we will have found arrangements by which even intelligence can be increased or decreased. We do not have those arrangements yet; they are developing. Fifty years hence every child will say: I am not willing to be dull-witted, and no one has the right to be gifted; if giftedness exists, then we must all be equally gifted.

That voice can arise then; it cannot arise now, because we do not yet have the means. But with the explorations now underway, with science entering the human “gene,” the basic “cell,” the possibility increases. With science’s entry into the human gene, it will be possible to decide what degree of talent the child born from a given seed will have. Just as today you go to the market and buy a packet of flower seeds with a picture of the blossom on it—stating that if given such fertilizer and such care this seed will produce such a large flower—so a father and mother will be able, within just fifty years, to buy a packet on which the child’s picture will be printed: the eyes will be of such-and-such color, the hair such, the height such, the health such, the lifespan such—guaranteed not to die before seventy; he will not have these diseases; and his talent will have this IQ, this measure of intelligence. You will be able to choose. This will become possible. It wasn’t possible even for seeds once; today it is. A human being too is born from a seed; for the human seed this will become possible as well.

On the day this becomes possible, we will ask: did it never occur to Krishna that there should be equality between talent and non-talent? How could it occur? There was no way for it to occur.

In this world nothing is simply given. In this world nothing is obtained without seeking; it has to be searched for. God is present right here, and it is not that he is unaware of your pain—but you are standing with your back turned. And you have that much freedom: if you wish, you can take God; if you wish, you can refuse. The day you find him, you may complain to God, “Until I sought you, why did you not seek me?” But God will say, “To force myself upon you would also be a kind of bondage.”

Freedom means precisely this: that what we seek can come to us, and what we do not seek does not. Remember, nothing in this world is had without seeking; it must be sought. What Sudama is like is not the main issue; Sudama could even have refused. I believe that had Krishna gone to Sudama’s house to give, he might have declined—acceptance was not inevitable. Sudama needed to be ready. All these episodes carry a deeply psychological meaning; they have their own psychological significance.

Whatever we set out to seek—on the very day our readiness is complete, that day it can come to us. Before that, it will not. Even if it lies right beside us, we will not receive it. Our seeking itself becomes the doorway for its coming. So Sudama is poor—he is not alone; many are poor. And for Krishna it makes no difference whether Sudama is poor or someone else. What makes the real difference is this: that Sudama, despite such poverty, went to give. A man who can give is worthy of becoming rich.

This state of Sudama is where transformation begins. And it is we ourselves—each person in his own capacity—who initiates his transformation; then all the forces begin to gather around him. The one who has decided to be poor on this earth will find all the conditions of poverty supplied to him. The one who has decided to remain ignorant will have every circumstance that sustains ignorance. The one who has resolved for knowing will find all the doors of wisdom opening. In this world, what we ask for returns to us; it comes back. In the depths, our own aspirations, our prayers, our yearnings return to us.

And when someone wonders, “Why am I poor?” if you explore his whole personality you will be astonished—he has arranged everything to remain poor. He is thoroughly prepared to be poor; and if he were not poor, he himself would be startled, “What has happened?” The ignorant person has put in place the entire apparatus of ignorance and keeps taking measures to protect it. If someone comes to shatter his ignorance, he grows angry, and stands guarding his fenced garden with a stick in his hand: “Do not enter within!”

No—what we set out to seek, that is what comes to pass. Sudama goes to Krishna, and then Krishna can be found by Sudama. It would not even be appropriate for Krishna to come; Krishna should wait for Sudama to arrive. That waiting is necessary. It is not that the Divine is annoyed with you and so does not come to you; but you will have to go to him. And the day you go, you will discover that he was always ready to meet you—only you were not willing.

Draupadi is indeed such that Krishna’s affection would flow toward her. In truth, Krishna’s love is for all—but Draupadi’s vessel is very large. When we go to the ocean’s shore, we return with water according to the size of our vessel. The ocean is vast, and it never says how big a vessel you must bring. We take as large a vessel as we have. Draupadi carries the largest vessel, and a great measure of Krishna’s love becomes available to her. That love, that devotion, is very deep, very ethereal—what one would call Platonic—so deep that between Krishna and Draupadi there is no insistence on bodily intimacy. Yet Krishna comes to Draupadi’s aid more than to anyone else’s. Whenever the moment arises, he is immediately present. As we mentioned earlier: when she is being stripped, being disrobed, he appears.

There is a love that is outspoken, that speaks; and there is a love that is silent, that does not speak. Remember, the love that is voiced seldom becomes very deep; it turns shallow. Speech has little depth. The love that remains silent becomes very deep. Silence has great depth. Draupadi’s love is largely silent. At many moments it can be seen, but it is neither overt nor aggressive. And silent love influences the lover farther and deeper than any other kind of love. Krishna is called to Draupadi’s side at many junctures, yet this love of Krishna, and Draupadi’s attachment to him, does not translate into crude, concrete incidents. In fact, the urge to turn love into the gross arises only when we fail to meet in the subtle. Otherwise love can remain distant—miles apart. Otherwise love can be separated by time as well. It can even happen that love never declares itself as love; it can remain that quiet.

But someone like Krishna can understand even such quiet. Not everyone will. Therefore, even if love is not present within us, things can be managed by expressing it in words—because words are understood; love is not. These days books are written on love—psychologists write them—and they insist that whether love is there or not, whether the moment of love is present or not, you must keep expressing it. When the husband returns home in the evening, they say, whether he is exhausted or troubled, he should light up on seeing his wife—even if he must act. He should say a few loving things. When he leaves in the morning, he should display great pain at being parted from his wife for a few hours—even if he actually feels relief. The psychologists are right in their own way, because we live on words. Who here cares for real love? Who has any use for it? We live on words. Someone does you a small favor and you bow your head and say thank you. Whether you felt gratitude or not is not the real question. You bow and say thank you. The other person receives the thanks; whether you truly offered it or not is not the issue, because we live in words. But if you do not say thank you—even if inwardly you felt it—the person goes away hurt, thinking, “What a crazy fellow! I did so much and he didn’t even say thank you!”

We do not understand silence; therefore everything proceeds for us through speech. But remember—whether this has occurred to you or not—when we are filled with great love for someone, speech is immediately annulled. When we are filled with love, we suddenly find there is nothing left to say. Lovers carefully plan what they will say when they meet their beloveds; and when they meet, suddenly nothing comes to mind. What was there to say? Everything falls quiet; everything becomes silent. Silence stands between.

The love between Draupadi and Krishna is largely silent. It is not like more demonstrative loves. Yet upon Krishna there falls her deep—her very deep—sensitivity. Therefore Krishna was called to Draupadi’s aid in ways he was called to no one else’s. Throughout the entire Mahabharata, Krishna keeps guarding Draupadi like a shadow. It is a distant bond. In it, very clear-cut events do not appear. But there is a profound shadow-relationship—quietly, intimately, it goes on.

All these words carry symbolic meanings. In Krishna’s story many strands are woven together. Much is purely symbolic, metaphor. Much relates to certain events. Much relates to a philosophy, a metaphysics. It is all interconnected.

That Krishna chases someone may be how it appears. To the one who is running, it may also appear that he is being driven away. But as I understand it, a being like Krishna does not drive anyone away; the event of driving away can happen. Circumstances can be such that for someone running becomes inevitable and for Krishna giving chase becomes inevitable.

Now here it is very hard to decide.

I have heard: one morning a man was leading a cow by a rope tied around her neck. A faqir on the road, a Sufi, asked him, “Are you tied to the cow, or is the cow tied to you?” The man said, “Have you gone mad? I am the one tying the cow. How would I be tied to the cow?” The faqir then said, “Then do one thing: if the cow were set loose and ran, would you run after the cow, or would the cow run after you?” The man said, “I would have to run after the cow.” The faqir said, “Then who is tied to whom?”

In truth, bondage is always two-sided. Whether the one who is running is making Krishna run after him, or Krishna by running is making him run ahead—if you break this apart it becomes difficult to decide. All we can really say is that running is happening; in it there is one in front and one behind. Yes, to decide who is where, who is chasing and who is being chased, is very difficult. But looking at Krishna’s personality we can think: because he lives so effortlessly, even if there is a conflict with something, that conflict comes to fruition through a kind of cooperation. It ripens through a direct, natural flow.

And when the story says that Kalyavan is burned, my own understanding is that it is a symbol of kala being burned—time burned. Time is perhaps the greatest dilemma, strain, and affliction in our lives. Time is perhaps our torment and anguish. Time is perhaps our entire tautness. If time burns… we can put it this way: time is perhaps the only demon; it is time with which our struggle goes on every moment, and it is time that will swallow us and bring us to an end. But sometimes someone swallows time and ends it. Sometimes someone effaces time and goes beyond it. Sometimes time burns up.

By whom does it burn? Who can burn time?

You say Krishna is running ahead. Whoever runs behind time will never be able to burn time. Whoever runs ahead of time can burn it. Yes, the one who runs behind time can never burn it; he will live as a follower of time. But the one who begins to run ahead of time can burn time, because time then remains only as a shadow and he stands ahead of it. He can burn time. And it burns when the sleeping eyes of Muchukunda open.

I said this is, for me, a symbolic tale. In truth, time exists only for the sleeping eye; for the open eye there is no time. The more unaware we are, the more asleep, the more unconscious, the more time there is. The day we are totally conscious, totally awake, the eye open, that very day time burns up. If anyone’s eye opens—and we are all asleep in caves—the presence of Krishna can become the cause for the eye of a man sleeping in some cave to open; and the time coming along behind Krishna can burn in that open eye. It can burn for him too. For Krishna, I take it, there is no time. For Muchukunda there would have been; it can burn.

If we ever apply these symbols to the inquiry into life’s truths, astonishing experiences become available, astonishing insights become available. But we have sat with all this as mere stories. And having taken them as stories, we go on repeating them as if they were historical events. Yet far more than being historical events, these are parts of the vast play occurring in the human psyche, of the possibilities that have transpired in the human psyche, the potentials hidden in the human psyche. But in this way we have never tried to look at them very carefully. This has created much difficulty. And that is why personalities like Krishna gradually begin to seem untrue to us—because so much is gathered in them that it becomes hard to decide how it could be possible! There is a great need for a psychological commentary on figures like Krishna, so that their whole personality can be opened according to the science of mind.

And one last thing I would like to say to you: the people of old had no other means. Even the truths of the mind they had come to know, they could only place in the symbols of stories, cover them there, hide them there. They had no other way. But today we have the means to open them.

Jesus has said somewhere, “I speak to you in such a language that those who can understand will understand, and those who cannot will not be harmed. I speak to you in such a language that those who can understand will understand, and those who do not will not be harmed—they will enjoy listening to a story.”

We have all enjoyed listening to stories for thousands of years. And gradually the keys with which those stories could be opened and decoded were lost. The things I am saying here may perhaps bring some keys to your mind, and you may be able to decode something; some story-symbols may open and become truths of life. Whether that is really their literal meaning is not my concern. If such a meaning opens for your consciousness, it can be beneficial for you, salutary, auspicious.