Krishna Smriti #4

There is no record of when Krishna was born or when he died—and there is a reason for not keeping one. Those whom we understand to be never born and never dying, we did not consider it appropriate to put into ledgers. It is proper to keep accounts of those who are born and die. What meaning is there in bookkeeping for one who is never born and never dies! It is not that we could not have kept such an account; there was no difficulty in doing so. But such dating would go utterly against Krishna’s very being. We never kept a date-wise register.

The countries of the East did not try to record the births and deaths of their great ones; only the countries of the West made that attempt. There is a reason for this too. And since the West began to influence the East, we also started worrying about it—again, for a reason. The religions that arose in the Jewish lineage—Christianity and Islam—hold to the notion of a single birth. Between one birth and one death, everything is finished: nothing before, nothing after, no further birth.

Naturally, when one believes that life begins at a birth date and ends at a death date, with no journey before or after, it is no accident that one clings to those dates. But those who have known that birth happens many times, returns again and again—that coming and going are without number—if they kept accounts, how much would they keep? How would they keep? To keep such an account would be to contradict their own vision. So they did not keep it—knowingly, thoughtfully, understandingly. It was not for want of capacity. It was not that we lacked calendars and eras—we created the world’s oldest calendar. But knowing this, we dropped the whole matter.

You ask next whether a person in samadhi can tell the exact date of Krishna’s birth. A non-samadhi person may give you an answer; one in samadhi absolutely cannot. Because samadhi has nothing to do with time. Where samadhi begins, time ends. Samadhi is non-temporal—timeless. The very meaning of samadhi is to be outside time, where hours and moments disappear, where change goes to sleep, where only that remains which has always been. Where there is no past and no future, only the present. Where the hands of the clock come to a standstill and do not move. Samadhi does not occur within a moment; it occurs outside the moment.

So one established in samadhi cannot possibly tell you when Krishna was born or died. He cannot even tell you when he himself was born or when he will end. He can only say: What birth? What death? I was never born; I will never die. If you ask the one in samadhi about this stream of time—moments coming and going, something arriving and passing, something now, something past, something future—he will say: nothing comes and nothing goes. What is, is just as it is. All is still. The notion of coming and going—the concept of time—is the notion of a non-samadhi mind. Time as such is the mind’s own product. The moment we step outside mind, there is no time.

Let us try to understand this in a few points.

Time is a creation of the mind—for many reasons. First: when you are happy, time shrinks; when you are unhappy, time stretches. With a loved one, hours seem to fly; with an enemy, minutes can barely crawl. The clock turns its hands at its own pace—but the mind! If at night someone at home is dying, the night seems endless. You feel as if it will never end. The clock turns as always, yet you wonder whether its hands have slowed. But when a beloved arrives, the night passes as if in an instant—and you start fearing, “It’s slipping away so fast! Why is the clock rushing?” The clock is not rushing: the measure of time depends on the states of your mind.

People used to ask Einstein to explain his theory of relativity. He would say it is very difficult, and perhaps there are only ten or twelve people on earth with whom he could really talk about it. Still, to give a taste, he offered a small example: sit a man next to a hot stove, and time passes one way; sit him next to his beloved, and time passes another way. Our pleasure and pain decide the length of our time.

Samadhi is beyond pleasure and pain. Samadhi is a state of bliss. There, there is no length at all; time does not remain. From the vantage of samadhi, no one can say when Krishna was born or when he departed. In samadhi one will only say: Krishna is. His being is eternal. And not only Krishna’s being—our being too is eternal. All being is eternal.

At night you dream. Perhaps you have never noticed: in dreams the condition of time is utterly different from waking. A person dozes for a moment and dreams a vast story that would take a year to live through: he marries, has children, marries off the children—years pass. A blink of sleep—and the eyes open. He says, “I saw such a long dream!” We say, “Are you mad? How could you see such a long dream in a moment? You were just awake; you nodded for an instant and woke up—how could you see all that?” He replies, “Not ‘how could I’—I did.”

In dreams the mind changes, so the sense of time changes. In deep sleep—sushupti—time disappears. That is why when you say you slept very deeply, the time you report is not felt from within deep sleep; you infer it from the two ends—when you fell asleep and when you woke up. But if you were not told when you fell asleep or when you awoke, could you say how long you slept? You could not. I once visited a woman who had been unconscious for nine months. The doctors said she might remain unconscious for three years, and likely die in that state; the chance of her regaining consciousness was small. If she were to awaken after three years, could she tell you she’d been unconscious for three years? Meanwhile the clock will have turned thousands of times; the calendar will have been torn page after page—but she will not be able to say she was gone for three years.

In deep sleep the mind dozes; so time is not sensed. In samadhi the mind is lost—dissolved, gone. Samadhi is the state of no-mind.

From samadhi there will be no knowing of when Krishna was or was not.

There was a Zen mystic, Rinzai. One morning in his talk he said, “Fools, who says Buddha ever happened?” His listeners protested, “Are you in your right mind? How can you say Buddha did not happen?” That mystic lived in Buddha’s temple, offered flowers at Buddha’s statue, danced before it—he was a lover of Buddha. And yet one morning he says, “Who says Buddha happened?” They cried, “Have you gone mad?” Rinzai replied, “Mad I was. For only that can ‘happen’ which one day can also ‘not happen.’ But that which is forever—what meaning has it to say it ‘happened’! Today I tell you: Buddha never happened—these are all false tales.” They said, “The scriptures say he was born, walked this earth, sat, spoke—there are witnesses, eyewitnesses!” Rinzai said, “The shadow must have walked, the shadow sat, the shadow stood up. Buddha sometimes sitting, sometimes standing, sometimes walking—only the shadow.”

What is born and what dies is no more than our shadow; that is not who we are. Therefore no account was kept—knowingly, deliberately. Religion is not history. History pertains to that which comes and goes—iti-vritta—beginning and ending, alpha and omega. Religion is eternal—sanatan—everlasting. In the eternal there is no keeping of dates. Hence no one in samadhi will say when such a one “was” or “was not.” There is no need to say it; it has no meaning. Such talk comes only out of misunderstanding. When were we ever born, and when will we cease to be! There is eternity—shashvat.

Yet we are preoccupied with time—morning and evening; clocks ticking; we measure everything by time. We carry a yardstick of time and try to measure with it. Our measuring is natural—but not true. As our understanding is, so is our measure. Our measure is like the frog in the well, who asked the frog from the ocean, “How big is your ocean?” He leapt halfway across the well: “This big?” The ocean frog said, “Forgive me—your well won’t do as a measure!” The well-frog tried again—leaped from one side to the other: “This big?” Seeing doubt still in the ocean frog’s eyes, the well-frog said, “Your mind seems deranged—is there any place bigger than a well? I’ll give you my final measure,” and he hopped the full circle of the well: “This big?” The ocean frog replied, “Brother, if we measure the ocean by your well, we will be in great trouble. That unit will never fit.” The well-frog said, “Out you go—have you ever seen anything larger than a well? Even the sky, when I look up, is only as big as the well!” For him, even the largest thing—the sky—was no bigger than the well. “Will your ocean be bigger than the sky?”

We live in the well of time. Everything comes and goes; everything is fragmented—something has become past, something is future, and a tiny sliver is the present, which no sooner arrives than it is gone. So we ask, “In which moment did so-and-so happen?” Since we experience ourselves in a moment, imprisoned in a well, we ask, “In which well were they? Within what bounds of a moment?”

No—neither Jesus, nor Buddha, nor Mahavira, nor Krishna can be confined within the limits of time. It is our insistence born of our limitations that tries to bind them. The day the Western understanding deepens a little, it will forget and drop Christ’s birth day and death day. The Eastern understanding has been very deep at this point. Because of this, many odd-seeming things have happened, and the world finds it hard to grasp our way of thinking and speaking.

If you inquire about the ages of the Tirthankaras, you will hear that some lived hundreds of thousands of years, some millions. Who will believe this? It seems impossible. Some are said to be thousands of feet tall, their heads touching the sky—how can that be! It is not a matter for believing—it is a matter for understanding. If the frog of the well strains to the utmost, what will he say? “It must be as big as a thousand wells.” Or, “a hundred thousand wells,” “a million wells”—some number must be given; the ocean must be measured by the well! So of those who are beginningless and eternal we say, “Their life-span is millions of years.” But the “year” remains—we go on measuring with it. Of those without end or edge, we say, “Their feet are on the earth and their heads touch the sky”—yet still we measure by yards and feet. Those who knew broke all such measures. They said, “We will leave this bookkeeping. We will not keep such accounts.” Without accounts, Krishna is. One established in samadhi will only say this: he is forever.

They could have been. It depends on the people around them. It depended on those who were around Jesus; Jesus himself did not keep accounts. Look at his words and you will understand. There is a saying of Jesus—Abraham was a prophet, hundreds of years before Jesus. Someone asked Jesus, “Abraham lived before you.” Jesus said, “No. Before Abraham was, I was.” What does this mean? Jesus broke time; he shattered the notion of time. Abraham lived hundreds, even thousands of years earlier, yet Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I was.”

But the people around him had a certain notion of time—they had never seen an ocean, only wells. Such sayings must have seemed very mysterious to them. They said, “All right, he says so; it must be some secret,” but they did not understand that he was breaking the concept of time itself.

Someone asked Jesus, “What will be special in your Lord’s kingdom?” Jesus said, “There shall be time no longer.” The special thing will be: there will be no time. But who keeps records? Not Jesus; not Krishna. Records are kept by the people around them. The kind of people who were around Krishna were not the kind who gathered around Jesus. In this regard, those born on this soil were far more fortunate. Jesus did not find the sort of people Krishna had. Around Jesus were people of the “ABC” class. That is why they hung him on a cross—because he was so beyond their understanding that they felt no other option but to kill him.

We did not crucify Krishna, Mahavira, or Buddha—not because they were any less “dangerous” than Jesus—but because this country has a long journey of having endured very dangerous people, of having seen many extraordinary, otherworldly beings. Gradually we became reconciled to it, we developed a certain understanding and learned to use it. That understanding could not be used in Jesus’ time. It could not be used in Muhammad’s time. Muhammad did not have the kind of people that Mahavira had. Jesus did not have the kind of people that Krishna had. Hence the difference—only that, nothing else.

Understand clearly: neither Krishna nor Christ wrote anything. Those who heard them wrote.

Christ is staying in a village. A crowd has gathered to see him. A voice rises from the crowd, “Make way—Jesus’ mother is coming to meet him.” Christ laughs and says, “What do you mean, my mother? When was I born?” But the record-keepers fixed a date. They wrote down when he was born. Here is a man saying, “What mother of mine? Who is my mother? When was I born? I am from eternity.” The record-keepers noted that he said this—and they also noted when he was born.

The people who recorded Krishna were wiser. They said: A man who says, “I am from eternity”; who tells Arjuna, “It is not only to you that I am explaining—before this I explained it to so-and-so, and before that to so-and-so; and it is not that everything will be finished by explaining it to you. I will keep coming and keep explaining; and these people standing before you—you think they will die, and you are foolish and unknowing; they have been before and died, and before that too they were; they will die now and be again”—to write a birth date for such a man would not be right; it would be unjust. So it was not written.

If history sets out to research, it will be in difficulty—because we deliberately let the records be lost. We took every measure so that records would not be preserved, so that no trace of dates would remain. Who wrote the Upanishads, who wrote the Vedas? The author’s name was deliberately erased. Because the one who was speaking was saying, “It is not I who speak; the Divine speaks.” Then there is no need—leave me out; it can do without me. The West kept records. Jesus repeatedly says, “It is not I who speak, but my Father in heaven.” Yet the one writing will still write: “Sayings of Jesus.”

For this reason! It is not some deficiency of this country that it has no historical sense. It is not that we lack a sense of history, but that we have consciously set it aside—because we have, greater than the well of history, a sense of eternity, of the timeless. For us, events have less value than the soul hidden within the events. We did not worry about what Krishna ate or drank; we cared to know who it was within Krishna that witnessed the eating and the drinking. We did not worry about when he was born and when he died; we cared to know who it was that came in birth and departed in death—who was within. We cared for that innermost spirit, that inner atman. For that, dates have no meaning.

For those to whom the body has value, the gross events also have value. For those who take the body as a shadow, no value remains. Krishna never says that this body you see is me. Jesus also does not say that this visible body is me. They themselves deny it: don’t bother about this, because this is not me; and if you keep accounts of it, those will not be my accounts. For five hundred years after Buddha’s death no image of Buddha was made, because Buddha had said: if you make my image, do not make it of this body. But then how to make Buddha’s image? So for five hundred years after his passing, they would paint only the tree under which he sat—the Bodhi tree, where the event happened through which he became the Buddha—and they would leave the space below empty.

The gross body is no more than a shadow. There is no purpose in keeping accounts of it. Whoever has kept such accounts has done so only because they have no inkling of the subtle. For those who know the subtle, the gross becomes futile.

Do you keep any ledger of your dreams—what dreams you saw and when? You dream and you forget. Why don’t you keep accounts? Because you take them as dreams. The life of Krishna that appears to us is no more than a dream. Have we kept records of what dreams Jesus saw? We have not. It could even be that a time may come when people begin to ask, “If your Krishna existed, did he see dreams or not?” If he existed, surely he must have dreamed; and if he never dreamed, even his existence would be suspect. Such a thing could happen if dreams become very important and some community starts keeping meticulous accounts of dreams; then fine, those accounts will become important, and the very man about whose dreams we know nothing will have his existence doubted. What we call the gross life, Krishna or Christ or Mahavira or Buddha take that very life to be a dream. And if those around them also understood that it is a dream, then no accounts would be kept. They were not kept. The absence of records is very telling. Had records been kept, it would have meant people did not understand Krishna and therefore kept accounts.

I was saying that for five hundred years no statue of Buddha was made, no portrait either. And if anyone painted at all, they painted the Bodhi tree and left an empty space below where Buddha should have been—a blank space! Buddha was an empty space. Only after five hundred years were images and statues made, because in those five centuries the people who had understood that Buddha’s gross life was only a dream had disappeared, and those who insisted, “We must keep accounts: When was Buddha born? When did he die? What did he say? What did he look like? What was his body like?”—they had come to the fore. All that bookkeeping was done much later. The wise kept no accounts; when the wise were gone, the unwise kept accounts. The accounting of the gross body is born of ignorance.

And then, what difference does it make even if Krishna never was! No difference at all. In what way does Krishna’s having been make any difference to you? It makes none.

“No,” you will say, “if Krishna never was, that would make a difference to us.” What difference would it make? Whether Krishna was or was not makes no difference. The question is whether the inner possibility that Krishna represents can be or cannot be. The question is not whether Krishna happened; the question is whether such a person can happen or not. If it can happen, then even if he did happen it makes no difference; and if it cannot, then even if he did happen it still makes no difference.

To a mind established in samadhi this is of no use at all. If someone comes to me and says they never existed because there is no record, I will say, “All right, assume they did not. What is the harm? That is not the question.” The significant question is: Is such a person possible? Is there the possibility of such a being? If your mind comes to see that such a person is possible, your life can be transformed. Even if it were firmly established, carved in stone, that they did exist, even if the whole story were available, and yet your mind were not willing to admit that such a person can be, then you would say, “No—it’s written on stones, it’s written in books, but it must be a story; such a man cannot be, because there is no possibility of it.”

There is the possibility of Krishna. That is why he happened, that is why he can happen, that is why he is. But this requires taking the inner person into account.

What we see is the body; what is inner is not visible, so we become very curious about the body. Buddha is dying and someone asks him, “Where will you be after death?” Buddha says, “Nowhere, because even before I was nowhere. And what you are seeing is not me, and what I am seeing is me.” Therefore the outer life becomes only a story seen, a play. It has no value. To say emphatically that it has no value, we have kept no accounts of it—and we are never going to provide any, either.

But the mind of this country has grown weak and frightened. A fear has arisen: Christ seems historical, our Krishna seems like a tale. Against Christ we have no evidence for Krishna; for Christ there is evidence. The national mind has weakened. Our consciousness too has been influenced by the same assumptions that tried to preserve Christ’s life. So we also ask the same questions, which are meaningless. It would be good if the day our courage returns we could say to them, “You too are crazy: a man like Christ happened and you kept ledgers of his birth and death dates! You wasted your time. Concerning so precious a man, there is no need to hoard such worthless information.”

Therefore I say, do not worry about it at all. Your concern only reveals what, for your mind, is important—birth and death? The existence of a body? Events? These are the outer circumference of life. Or is what stands among and within all these—detached, unentangled—the important thing? That which stands within them as a witness—is that what matters? If at the moment of your own death you look back, what difference will remain between the life that has passed and a dream? Even today, if you look back at your past, how will you distinguish whether you truly lived it or merely dreamed it? How will you decide whether what you remember you actually lived, or you dreamed it?

Chuang Tzu has made a very deep joke. One morning he got up and said, “I am in great difficulty; all of you gather and resolve my problem.” Everyone in his ashram gathered, very surprised, because Chuang Tzu always solved their problems; they had never thought he could have one. They asked, “You—and in difficulty! We thought you had gone beyond difficulties.” Chuang Tzu said, “It is that very kind—a beyond-difficulty difficulty.” They asked, “What is your question?” Chuang Tzu said, “Last night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly, fluttering over flowers.” They said, “What is so difficult about that? We all dream.” Chuang Tzu said, “The matter doesn’t end there. In the morning I awoke and found I had become Chuang Tzu again. Now the question is: could it not be that the butterfly fell asleep and is dreaming that it has become Chuang Tzu? If a man can fall asleep and dream, if a man can be a butterfly in a dream, then a butterfly can be a man in a dream. So I ask you: what is real? The dream I saw of being a butterfly—was Chuang Tzu dreaming that? Or is the butterfly now dreaming? Now I am in a great quandary.” The people of the ashram said, “We cannot solve this; you have put us in trouble too. Until now we were at ease that what is seen at night is a dream and what is seen by day is reality.” But Chuang Tzu said, “Fools, at night what you see makes you forget what was seen by day; just as by day, when you wake, you forget the dream. In fact, there is something more amusing: by day, upon waking, a little of the night’s dream is remembered; but at night, while dreaming, nothing of the day’s waking life is remembered at all. If memory is decisive, then the night’s dream would be more real than the day’s dream. And if a man were to sleep on and on and never wake up, how would he prove that what he is seeing is a dream? In a dream, the dream appears true; in a dream, it does not appear as a dream.”

In truth, what we call life, what we call the gross, is no more than a dream for a person like Krishna. Those who were around them also came to understand that it is a dream; that is why no account was kept. This happened knowingly; it is a record deliberately left blank. In that omission there is a message, a hint: do not keep accounts of this either. Do not get entangled in this bookkeeping. If you do, you may never come to know the one who stands outside the account, laughing.

Very much needed. When Krishna says, “Even to die in one’s own dharma is preferable—svadharme nidhanam shreyah—and to die in another’s dharma is dreadful,” there are two or three things to understand.

First, by “dharma” here he does not mean Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Jain. The distinction he is drawing is between “one’s own” and “another’s.” Who that “own” is—Hindu, Muslim, Christian—is irrelevant. The real issue is “authentic” versus “borrowed.” He is saying: don’t get into imitation; don’t start walking on someone else’s path. Don’t imitate another; don’t follow another. Don’t become anybody’s follower. Don’t make anyone your guru. Be your own guru. Don’t let your intimacy, your innermost core, be covered by anyone else. Don’t fall in line behind someone. Someone may be going somewhere—that may be authentic for him but will become dependency for you—and it will. What is authenticity for Mahavira cannot be authenticity for someone else. What is a path for Christ cannot be a path for another.

There are reasons. Wherever we go, we can only go as ourselves. Upon arrival, the “self” will dissolve—but for now it is there. And the day the “self” dissolves, the “other” dissolves as well. The dharma revealed then is timeless, eternal. But right now we are not like the ocean; we are like rivers. Every river must go to the ocean by its own course. Reaching the ocean, rivers disappear, and so do their paths. But this is being said to rivers, not to the ocean. This is being said to Arjuna, to a river. Krishna says to the river: don’t abandon your own course to walk along that of another river. That river has her own path, her own movement, her own direction; by that she will reach the ocean. And you too are a river. Fashion your own path, your own movement, your own way—and reach the ocean. Rivers don’t travel on pre-laid roads. Life cannot move on readymade tracks. And whenever we imitate another, a ready-made path appears before us. Then we begin to commit suicide. We kill our own being and wear the other like a garment. If someone walks behind me, he kills himself. He must keep his eyes on me: do as I do, live as I live, rise when I rise. He will slay himself and drape me over him. And however much he wraps me around himself, I can at most be a garment for him. A garment is all I will remain. Deep within he is still what he is—the one who is wearing. He cannot become what is being worn. The wearer stands inside, separate.

So when Krishna says “svadharme nidhanam shreyah,” he is saying: even to die in your own way is preferable; to live in another’s way is not preferable—because living in another’s way is living dead. To die in your own way means discovering a new life. If I can even die in my own way and keep my authenticity even in dying, then my death too becomes authentic. It is my death. I am the one who dies.

But we have turned our lives into borrowed, second-hand things; they are inauthentic. So Krishna says: in life be authentic. And being authentic has one meaning: preserve your individuality. There will be pressures from all sides, people from all sides inviting, “Come, follow me.” In truth, if someone walks behind me, my ego feels gratified. If one follows, two follow, ten follow, a hundred thousand follow—great gratification! Then I feel I am something worth following. I am something. And whoever follows me I will want to enslave. I will want to enslave him totally. I will impose my command, my discipline upon him. I will not allow even a little of his freedom to remain—because his freedom will be a challenge to my ego. I will want him to vanish, and only me to be imposed upon him. Every “guru” does this. And when Krishna says what he says, he says something astonishing—something a guru has no courage to say; only a friend can.

Remember: Krishna is not Arjuna’s guru; he is only a friend. He never stands in the place of a guru—only in the place of a friend. A guru could not have sat as charioteer. The guru would say, “I’ll sit in the chariot; you be the charioteer.” The guru would say, “I should hold the reins? I should drive the horses? I will sit in the chariot; you be the horse, you be the reins.” Krishna could sit as charioteer—an extraordinary event. It proclaims a relationship of friendship. In friendship there is no higher or lower. When Krishna tells Arjuna, “Seek your own self, your own intimacy, that which is your individuality—recognize it authentically. Be that; do not deviate from it”—why did he have to say this at that moment?

Arjuna’s whole inner being is that of a kshatriya, a warrior. He is a fighter to the very marrow. A soldier. But he is talking like a sannyasin. He speaks like a renunciate, like an escapist—not like a warrior. He is a fighter. If he takes sannyas and sits in the forest, and if a lion appears, he will not chant hymns—he will grapple. He is neither a brahmin nor a vaishya nor a shudra. He cannot find joy in labor, nor in discourse on knowledge, nor in amassing wealth. His joy is in challenge. His joy is in risking himself somewhere. He can find himself only in some campaign, some adventure. But he is speaking otherwise. He is deviating from his own dharma. Krishna says to him: What kind of talk is this! I had taken you to be a kshatriya, Arjuna—thought you were a fighter, not an escapist. Yet you speak the language of flight. You say, “They will die, or I will die; and dying is terrible.” Since when has a kshatriya spoken of death this way? Are you draping yourself in someone else? Have you wrapped yourself in hearsay? If you cover yourself in borrowed words you will achieve nothing—you will wander. Find what you are. If you are truly a brahmin, Krishna will not tell you to fight. He will say, “If you are a brahmin, go.”

Even Arjuna cannot muster the courage to say he is a brahmin. He is not. The sharp edge of his being is a sword’s edge. He will flower only with a sword in his hand. Only in the intense moment of battle will he find his soul. He will not find it elsewhere. Therefore Krishna says: even to die in your own dharma is better. Die as a kshatriya. If to kill does not appeal to you, death at least can. Fight and die. But do not run from the battle. For if you run, you may live, but it will be a dead life—a living death. And a living death is worse than a vital dying.

By “dharma” there Krishna does not mean Hindu, Muslim, Christian. He means the intrinsic natures. And this land divided intrinsic natures into four broad categories. What we call varnas are broad divisions of individuality. It is not that two brahmins are identical, or two kshatriyas. No—no two kshatriyas are the same either. Still, there is a similarity in the being of kshatriyas. After long, painstaking observation over millennia, man was broadly grouped into four. Someone cannot taste bliss without service. That does not make him low. The mistake came later: those who did not know made rules over what the knowers had seen. The knowers said only this much: someone will find joy through service; if his service is taken away, he will be emptied of joy—his soul will be lost.

A woman may come to me and say, “Let me press your feet for a few moments.” I have not asked; I do not insist; and pressing my feet will bring her nothing from me. But something happens to her. In serving, she will indeed receive something—not from me, but her own soul. From me nothing can be given; but if service is her juice, she will find her own being, her own intimacy.

Someone can abandon every possession for the sake of knowing. He can go hungry, beg for alms, leave home and hearth. It surprises us. A scientist places a poison on his own tongue to find whether it kills. He may die—but he is a brahmin in his nature; his quest is to know. He finds his soul. By placing poison on his tongue he learns, “Yes, this kills a man.” Perhaps he will not survive to say it—or somehow he will. Some poisons leave no words possible; then his dying itself will speak. Even that will satisfy him. He will find his soul in it. We are amazed—“Madman! He left a thousand joys and went to test poison! Was there no other way? Couldn’t he have tested something else?” But the current of his mind is knowing. Service will not give him any juice. You can tell him a thousand times, “I feel such joy pressing someone’s feet.” He will say, “If it gives you joy, you press mine. As for me, I won’t. I feel nothing.” It is beyond his understanding.

Someone else finds his full radiance only in a moment of battle—of whatever kind. He must come to a point where everything is staked. He is a gambler: he cannot live without staking. And small stakes won’t do—money on the table won’t satisfy him. Until his whole life is at stake—deciding moment by moment, life or death—only then will what is hidden within him open and flower. He is a kshatriya.

Another—some Rockefeller, some Morgan. A secretary once joked with Morgan, “Before I knew you, I dreamt of being Morgan. But after working as your personal secretary, if God gives me another chance, I would never want to be Morgan. Better to be Morgan’s secretary.” Morgan asked, “What trouble do you see in me?” The secretary said, “I’m amazed. The office peons arrive at 9:30; the clerks at 10; the secretaries at 10:30; the directors at noon. The directors leave at 3; secretaries at 4; clerks at 5; peons at 5:30. You come at 7 in the morning and leave at 7 in the evening! I’d rather be your peon. What are you doing to yourself?” Such a man cannot understand Morgan. Morgan has the mind of a vaishya. He is fulfilled; he is finding his soul. He laughs: “What joy is there in arriving at 9:30 as a peon compared to arriving at 7 as the owner? Granted the directors leave at 3—but they are only directors; they must leave. I am the owner.”

Such a person can be satisfied only in deep ownership.

This land, after the study of millions over thousands of years, decided that human beings can be divided into four broad types. There was no higher or lower in this division—no hierarchy. But soon those who did not know imposed a hierarchy: who is low, who is high. From that, suffering arose. The varna insight has its scientific truth, but the varna system has its sting. Varna need not be made into a social mechanism. It is an insight into human personalities. And personalities are like that.

So Krishna tells Arjuna: see clearly who you are. And die in what you are. Do not attempt the madness of living in what you are not. Even varna is not sufficient for this “self,” because varnas are very broad. No two persons are alike; each person is like himself alone—unique, incomparable. God is not a mechanic, not a technician; he is a creator. If you ask Rabindranath to write again the same poem he once wrote, he will say, “Do you take me to be finished? Am I dead? The poem I wrote, I wrote—finished. If I write it again, it means the poet in me has died. I can write another poem. No painter can paint the same painting twice.”

A delightful incident happened. A Picasso painting sold for three or four hundred thousand. The buyer brought it to Picasso and asked, “It is authentic, isn’t it? Original? Not a copy?” Picasso said, “Not authentic—a copy. You wasted your money.” The man said, “What are you saying? Your wife testified you painted it.” Picasso’s wife came and said, “You are wrong. This is your painting—I saw you paint it; this is your signature. It’s not a copy.” Picasso said, “I never said I didn’t paint it. But it is a replica of an earlier painting—I painted it again. It is fake, not authentic. What has this to do with Picasso? Any other painter could have traced it. While making this I was not a creator; I was only an imitator. I imitated myself. So I cannot call it authentic. It is not ‘by Picasso’; it is ‘after Picasso.’ The first painting was authentic: I created it, I did not copy it.”

God is creating. He doesn’t make a second leaf identical to the first, a second flower identical to the first, a second pebble identical to the first, a second man identical to the first. And he has not run dry. The day he runs dry he will begin to repeat; he will start making non-authentic men. For now he makes a Mahavira once, a Krishna once, a Buddha once—and he makes you also only once. He will not repeat you. This is a great dignity, a great glory. You have been made only once—neither before nor after. You will not be repeated.

So do not lose your intimacy, your uniqueness, in imitation—because even God did not imitate; he made you new. Do not make yourself fake. That is why Krishna says, “svadharme nidhanam shreyah”—to die in your own dharma is better; “paradharmo bhayavah”—another’s dharma is fraught with dread. Beware of it. Be afraid of it. Never, even by mistake, go by another’s path; never, even by mistake, try to become someone else. The effort to become yourself—that alone is dharma for the river. For the ocean there is neither “self” nor “other”—but that is a matter of attainment, the final station. From where we start, that is not the place. From where we start, we must walk as persons. Where we arrive, we become impersonal. There, there is neither self nor other. But you will reach there as a “self”; you will never reach there as an “other.” With that in view Krishna has spoken.

There are two or three things to understand here.

First, if you understand Arjuna’s personality even a little, you cannot say that being a kṣatriya is not his innateness. He is a kṣatriya. And when despondency seizes him, that despondency is an event that has come for a moment. The reason despondency catches Arjuna is not, “Someone will die.” The reason is, “My own people will die.” Had his near and dear ones not been standing on the battlefield, Arjuna could have cut them down like radishes.

Arjuna’s despondency is not because of violence; it is because of attachment. It is not that he feels killing is bad. “Killing is bad” is the rationalization he goes looking for. The real, basic sadness is that these are his beloved ones: some are his own kinsmen, some relatives. His guru stands before him—Droṇa—from whom he learned everything. There is grandsire Bhīṣma. The Kauravas too are all brothers with whom he played and grew up, whom he never imagined he would have to kill. If violence itself were the cause, if Arjuna were saying, “Killing is bad; I am seized by grief at the prospect of killing,” then he had been killing long before; this was not his first occasion to kill. He has killed plenty. He is not a being who shies away from killing. No fear arises in him from killing; the fear is in killing his own. Attachment is what grips him. Therefore, this is not about becoming a brāhmin, because becoming a brāhmin means precisely that attachment drops.

The truth is that what Krishna is saying is: drop attachment. Had Arjuna said, “The impulse to kill does not arise in me at all,” Krishna would not have said what he said. Krishna could not have explained these things to Mahāvīra. Mahāvīra too was born in a kṣatriya house—by social order a kṣatriya. All twenty-four Tīrthaṅkaras of the Jains are kṣatriyas; not even one was born in another varṇa. Buddha too is a kṣatriya. It is most surprising that the idea of nonviolence in the world arose from the kṣatriyas. There is a reason: where violence was dense, only there could the idea of nonviolence also arise. Where it was violence twenty-four hours a day, only there could the idea of nonviolence be born. Therefore ahimsa was born from kṣatriyas.

Krishna could not have persuaded Mahāvīra. Because Mahāvīra was not saying, “These are mine.” He was not saying that. His despondency was not, “How can I kill my own?” He had left “mine” behind without any despondency. “Mine” was no issue. No, his question was altogether different. His question was: Why kill at all? What is the purpose of killing? What is the meaning of killing? There is no dharma in killing—that would have been his question. And if Krishna had told him, “svadharme nidhanam śreyaḥ,” he would have said, “My svadharma is that I do not kill and I die. Don’t tell me your thing—that will become para-dharma, another’s dharma.”

If this very Gita had been spoken to Mahāvīra, Mahāvīra would have stepped down from the chariot, bowed, and gone off to the forest. Nothing would have made a difference to him. These words appealed to Arjuna—not because Krishna managed to make them appeal, but because Arjuna was indeed a kṣatriya. A temporary phase had come upon him—thoughts like, “They will die; these are mine; this one, that one.” All these thoughts were temporary; therefore Krishna could remove them. These were not the sky of his mind; they were passing clouds that could be blown away. Had it been the sky of his mind, there would have been no question of Krishna removing it, nor would he have tried to remove it. He would have explained in a different way—not to remove. There would have been no question of removal at all. The Gita would not even have occurred if, in Krishna’s view, that was the sky of Arjuna’s being. But the sky does not arise suddenly. Arjuna’s whole life says that the sky of his being is that of a kṣatriya. His whole life says so. This was not his sky.

Therefore what Krishna removes is a temporary phase. And I maintain that had that been his svadharma, what need would there be to make Arjuna turn back? Krishna is precisely saying that it is better to die in one’s own dharma. Arjuna could have said, “My svadharma is that I should die. Now, forgive me; I am going.” The matter would have ended there. Because Krishna is not saying, “Accept another’s word”; he is saying, “Recognize what your own svadharma is.” The entire endeavor throughout the Gita is for Arjuna to recognize his own self. There is no desire to impose anything upon Arjuna.

Your second point is also worth thinking about.

I said Krishna is not a guru; he is a friend. I did not say Arjuna is not a disciple. I did not say that. Arjuna can be a disciple—that is the relationship from Arjuna’s side. It is not the relationship from Krishna’s side. And Arjuna is a disciple; he wants to learn. He wants to learn, therefore he asks. Questions are asked by disciples; wanting to learn, they ask. Arjuna asks. Asking has its own discipline. If you want to ask, you have to sit lower. That is part of asking. If you want to ask, you have to hold your hands out. If you want to ask, you have to show eagerness to understand. If you want to ask, you have to understand with humility. In this, Krishna is not telling him to be humble. He is not telling him to sit below. From Krishna’s side he is a friend. It is as a friend that he is explaining. It is from friendship alone that he could explain so much. Had he been a guru, he would have become angry very quickly. He would have said, “Enough, now that’s it. Do what I say! Doubting is not right; suspicion is not proper; have faith in the guru! When I say ‘fight,’ then fight! What need is there to explain?”

No—this Gita is so long, and from Krishna’s side it is a sign that he is continuously ready to explain. Nowhere is he in a hurry. Arjuna keeps raising the same questions. The questions are not new; in the Gita they revolve and come back to the same place. But not once does Krishna say to him, “You ask the same thing again. You ask the same thing again!”

Now Kriyanand is asking—he keeps asking the same thing again. (Audience laughter.) But it makes no difference. It makes no difference.

A guru would get annoyed and say, “Enough! You have already asked this; I have already told you. Now understand and accept.” No. If you are asking again and again, it means you have not understood; then the effort to explain will continue. That is how such a long Gita became possible. This Gita is not Krishna’s gift; it is Arjuna’s grace. Arjuna keeps on asking. Arjuna keeps on asking, therefore Krishna has to keep on speaking. And later, what appears to us—that Krishna got it done; we feel as if Krishna made it happen, that Arjuna was running away and, after so much explanation, Krishna threw Arjuna into the war. We may feel that way because Arjuna was running away and then did not run, he fought. But the whole time Krishna is only setting Arjuna free and bringing forth what is possible in him, his capacity—manifesting it, revealing it. And even if, after hearing the entire Gita, Arjuna had said, “I have heard everything, but I am going,” Krishna would not have taken his hand to stop him. No one would have stopped him.

It is most delightful that Krishna had decided not to take part in the fighting. He himself is not going to fight in the war. One who is not fighting in the war is explaining to Arjuna to fight. He stands outside the war. The idea of fighting is not his. And the fun is that Arjuna is learning from the man who is not going to fight. This must be of great significance. If Arjuna were to get the idea that Krishna is imposing himself upon him, then what would be proper is that Krishna should advise, “Run away,” because he himself is not fighting. Do you know one of Krishna’s names? It is Raṇchoṛdās—the one who fled from battle! This Raṇchoṛdās is explaining, “Fight.” If Krishna had wanted to impose himself, he ought to have said, “Absolutely right—you have become my disciple; come, let us both run away.”

No, there is not the slightest trace of imposition. For Krishna is only saying this much: “As I understand, you are a kṣatriya. I know you from very close—closer than you yourself know yourself—that you are a kṣatriya. I am reminding you of this much.” Throughout the Gita it is only a reminding of “Who are you?” And once you remember, then do whatever seems good to you. It so happens that what Krishna explains is what happens; therefore we may get the notion that he made him do what he wanted. But Krishna does not want anything at all. There are many astounding reasons for this non-wanting.

Krishna alone is fighting on Arjuna’s side, while all his armies are fighting on the other side. These are not the ways of those intent on fighting—that their own armies fight for the enemy. Krishna is on the Pāṇḍavas’ side, and all of Krishna’s army—leaving out Krishna alone—is fighting for the Kauravas. Such ways of fighting have never been heard of! If these are the ways of fighters, then all other fighters are wrong—only this man who fights this way is right. Could Hitler agree that his armies fight on the enemy’s side? He could not. Armies exist to fight on one’s own side. A war-mongering mind arranges everything to fight. This is a very strange war. In it there is one man fighting from this side, and all his armies are fighting from the enemy’s side. This is not a man with a great relish for fighting. Fighting does not serve him much. But the situation is one of war. And so he has even divided himself into two parts—so that later you cannot blame him, you cannot lay accusations upon him.

Krishna’s position is utterly wondrous. The whole mold of his personality is wondrous. And this war too is most amusing! Evening falls, the war stops, and everyone goes into one another’s camps to chat. They go and ask each other, “Who died today, and what happened?” They go to express sympathy. In the evening the gossip gathers. It is a very strange war! It does not feel like the war of enemies. Enmity seems like a drama, like a play, like an inevitability that has descended from above. But there is no sense of enmity. Evening comes, the bugles sound, the war ends, and it is hard to tell who is where—everyone has gone into one another’s camps—and discussions go on in each other’s camps. There is sorrow and sympathy too—who has died. It is not only Krishna’s case; there are many such cases in which someone is fighting from that side while his companion is fighting from this side.

And how delightful that when the war ends it is Krishna who advises the Pāṇḍavas to go to Bhīṣma and take the lesson of peace—from Bhīṣma, who is the foremost on that side of the war, the commander of that side’s army. From the commander of the enemy’s army, to take the lesson of peace: they go and sit like disciples. Bhīṣma’s message is the Śānti Parva. Most strange—miraculous! Has anyone ever gone to take a lesson of peace from the enemy? Lessons of unrest are taken from enemies—and one does not need to go to them for that. From the dying Bhīṣma the lesson of peace is being taken, the law of dharma in statecraft is being understood. This is not an ordinary war. And the warriors who have stood on this battlefield are not ordinary soldiers who have gone to fight.

That is why the Gita can call it a dharma-yuddha. It is called a dharma-yuddha for a reason. Krishna does not get the war done by persuasion; Krishna, by persuasion, brings to light Arjuna’s being a kṣatriya.

A sculptor comes to my mind. A sculptor is carving a statue out of a stone. Someone has come to watch him making the statue. The stone chips fall away, the chisel keeps cutting the stone. Then the statue begins to emerge. Then the whole statue emerges. And the onlooker says, “You are a marvelous craftsman. I have not seen anyone make a statue as you have made it.” The sculptor says, “Forgive me—you have misunderstood a little. I am not the maker of the statue; I am only the revealer. Passing by here, I saw a statue in this stone, so I merely removed the unnecessary stone. Passing by here, the statue appeared to me in this stone—ah, a statue is hidden in this stone—so I simply took away what was not needed, and the hidden statue came forth. I am not the maker; I am only the revealer.”

Krishna only reveals Arjuna; he does not make him. He reveals what already was. His chisel only removes the unnecessary stone. The Arjuna who appears afterward is Arjuna’s own being, his innateness. That is the kind of man he was. But to us it will seem that the sculptor made the statue. “What is this man saying—that he did not make it? We saw him making it; we saw him cutting the stone with his chisel.” Yet this is not just one sculptor’s saying; many sculptors say that they first see the statues in the stones, and then they reveal them; stones speak to the sculptor, “Come here—something is hidden here; reveal it.” Not all stones are useful; many stones are meaningless. Wherever something is hidden in a stone, that innateness has been revealed. Therefore the whole Gita is a process of unveiling. In it Arjuna has manifested as he could have been.

(Yes, Kriyanand, ask!… Now if all of you start asking, it will become difficult… yes, speak… yes, one minute…)

(deep, affectionate laughter...) We’ll take this later.
The way the process has been set—that Kriyanandji asks—what becomes awkward is that the question, in truth, is addressed to me, for my very being is the illustration; but the petition is made to Kriyanand. As it goes on like that, it begins to feel a little dishonest to me.
No. The difficulty with that is that not only you—many others will want it, and then it will become very difficult. I have no difficulty.
We should set aside a day for that.
Yes, yes, we’ll keep it like that, we’ll keep it like that.

“Samshayatma vinashyati”—one whose being is in samshaya does perish. This is a great truth. But the mistake comes in understanding the meaning of samshaya. Samshaya does not mean doubt. Samshaya means indecisiveness—being in a state of non-decision.

Doubt is not indecision; doubt is itself a kind of decision. Doubt is a decision, and faith is a decision. Doubt is a negative decision; faith is a positive, creative decision. One person says, “God is”—that is his faith. It is a decision. Another says, “There is no God”—that is his doubt. That too is a decision, a negative decision. But when someone says, “I don’t know whether God is or is not,” that is indecisiveness; that is samshaya. Samshaya destroys, because it leaves you suspended in non-decision.

When Krishna says to Arjuna, “Do not fall into samshaya—be decisive, become resolute; attain a decisive intelligence. Decide who you are,” he is saying: Don’t vacillate—Am I a kshatriya or a brahmin? Am I to fight or to renounce? Decide; come to a clear decision. Otherwise you will perish. Indecision will destroy you. You will wander, you will fragment, you will divide within yourself, you will fight inside, and you will break and be ruined—you will be disintegrated.

Samshaya has often been taken to mean doubt—and there lies the mistake. I am in favor of doubt; I am not in favor of samshaya. I too say: doubt is very right. And Krishna does not deny doubt at all. He fully allows it: “Ask!”—and asking means doubt. Ask more! Asking itself is doubt. But he says: Don’t get filled within by samshaya—don’t get confused, don’t be clouded by bewilderment. Don’t become incapable of deciding what is to be done and what is not to be done. Don’t fall into the either–or.

There was a thinker, Soren Kierkegaard. He wrote a book—Either–Or. The title is: This or That? It wasn’t only the title; his personality was exactly that—This or That? In his town, Copenhagen, people forgot his name and he became known as “Either–Or.” When he passed through the lanes, people would shout, “Either–Or is going!” He would stand at a crossroads wondering, “Shall I go by this road or that one?” He would put the key in the lock and ponder, “Shall I turn it this way or that?” He loved a woman, Rozina; when she proposed marriage he could not decide his whole life—“Shall I, or shall I not?” This is not doubt; this is indecisiveness.

So what Krishna says to Arjuna is: If you fall into samshaya, you will be destroyed. Whoever falls into samshaya is destroyed, because samshaya fragments you. You split into opposing parts. You break into pieces. You must become whole; and decision makes you whole.

If you have ever taken any decision in life, then at least for a moment you become immediately integrated in that decision. The bigger the decision, the greater the wholeness it brings. If someone makes a total decision in life, will—resolve—arises within him. He becomes one, unified; yoga becomes available to him.

So Krishna’s whole effort is to remove samshaya—not to remove doubt. Doubt you should fulfill. Remove samshaya. And I am in favor of doubt. I say: do doubt. Use the chisel of doubt until the statue of faith emerges. Keep cutting, keep fighting to the very end; don’t accept anything secondhand. Keep cutting and cutting—one day the moment will come when the statue will shine forth. Then nothing remains to be chipped away; now to keep cutting would be to cut yourself. The useless stone has fallen away; now faith will arise.

The ultimate fruit of doubt is faith; the ultimate fruit of samshaya is derangement. A person goes mad—belongs nowhere—loses everything. In that sense, the point becomes clear.

Then we will set aside a day or two when everyone can ask.