Krishna Smriti #6

Whether it is Krishna’s birth or anyone else’s, there is not much difference in the situation of birth. This needs to be understood a little. But we have always imagined differences—because we did not understand certain symbols.

Krishna is said to be born on a dark, moonless night. Everyone is born in darkness, on a moonless night. Birth happens in the dark. In fact, nothing in existence is born in the light; all birth takes place in darkness. A seed sprouts in the dark of the earth. Flowers open in the light; birth happens in the dark.

The process of birth is so mysterious that it can happen only in darkness. Whatever is born within you too arises from deep darkness. A poem is born in the unlit depths of the unconscious. A painting is born in the bottomless recesses of the mind where no worldly light reaches. Samadhi is born there, meditation is born there—meaning, in a dimension where the light of the intellect does not reach at all, where thinking and understanding have no access, where you cannot see even your hand before your face.

The story says that on the night Krishna was born it was so dark that you couldn’t see your hand. But when has anything ever been born that was not born in darkness? There is no specialness to hunt for here. This is the general law of birth.

A second thing associated with Krishna’s birth is this: he is born in bondage, in a prison. Whose birth is not in bondage and prison? We all are born in a prison. Perhaps by the time we die we may be freed—though it is not necessary; we may die still in prison. Birth brings you into bondage, into limitation. To come into a body is to come into a great bondage, a great prison. Whenever a soul takes birth, it takes birth in a prison.

But this symbol was not understood rightly. This very poetic statement was taken as a mere historical incident—and therein lies the mistake. All births are in prison. Not all deaths are in prison. Some deaths are in freedom; most are still in prison. Birth will be in bondage. If by the final moment we break free of all chains, then the journey of life has succeeded.

A third thing with Krishna’s birth: along with birth there is the fear of death; a threat to his life. For whom is it not so? With birth, death becomes possible. A moment after birth, death can occur. From birth onward, death is possible at every moment. For death there is only one condition: birth. No other qualification is needed. A baby who has lived one moment is just as qualified to die as a seventy-year-old. With Krishna’s birth comes the threat of death—so it is with everyone. After birth, what else are we really doing but dying day by day? What we call life is only a long journey toward death—beginning at birth and completed at death.

But there is a fourth thing linked to Krishna’s birth: many attempts to kill him arise, yet he slips past them all. Whoever comes to kill him is the one who dies. One could say death itself dies in front of him. This too has a great meaning. With us it is not so. Death will take us in the first attack; we will not survive even the first blow. For the truth is, we are almost dead already; a slight shove and we are gone. We have no taste of that life at whose threshold death is always defeated.

Krishna is such a life, at whose door death comes in many forms and returns defeated. In many forms. We know the stories of how many forms death took to surround him, and how it failed. Yet it hardly occurs to us to try to understand these stories in depth. The truth in all those stories is one: Krishna goes on winning toward life, and death goes on losing, day after day. The threat of death one day dissolves. Whoever tried, in whatever way, to bring his end—those ways all failed, and Krishna kept on living. This means the victory of life over death. But such matters were not stated as directly as I am stating them now. The ancients had no way to say it so straight. This too needs to be understood.

The further back we go in antiquity, the more the mode of thought is pictorial, not verbal. Even now at night you dream—have you ever noticed whether you use words in dreams or images? Dreams do not use words; they use pictures. Because dreams are our primitive language. In dreams there is no difference between us and a person ten thousand years ago. Dreams are still ancient, still primitive; no one sees a modern dream. The cave-dweller who slept in a cavern and dreamed at night saw the same kind of dreams as the person sleeping in an air-conditioned apartment.

The beauty of dreams is that their entire expression is in images. If a man is very ambitious, how will ambition appear in his dream? As an image: perhaps he grows wings and flies in the sky. All ambitious minds will dream of flying. Flying means to be above everyone. Flying means there is no limit to rising. Mountains fall below, people fall below, moon and stars fall below, and one keeps rising. The word “ambition” will not appear in the dream; the image of flying will. That is why we fail to understand our dreams: by day we speak a language of words; at night we dream in pictures. By day our language is of the twentieth century; at night the dream-language is primitive. Between the two there is a gap of millennia; hence we do not grasp what the dream is saying.

The older the world to which we return—and Krishna is very ancient in this sense, belonging to the dawn when man begins to think about life and the world, when words are not yet fully formed and everything is said and understood through symbols and images—the events of Krishna’s life were written then. Those events have to be decoded, translated from images into words. For this reason, note that Christ’s life begins almost the same way as Krishna’s. There is little difference. Therefore many people have even fallen into the illusion—some still do—that Christ never existed; that the story of Krishna traveled and reached Jerusalem. Because the birth narratives are strikingly similar: in a dark night, surrounded by the fear of death, Jesus is born. Here Kamsa threatens Krishna’s life; there King Herod threatens Jesus. Here Kamsa has infants slaughtered so that his killer not be born; there Herod has infants slaughtered for the same fear.

No, Krishna’s story is not Christ’s story. Jesus is a different person with a different journey. But the symbols are the same—and the symbols are the same because the primitive mind is the same. It is like saying: whether an Englishman dreams, or a Chinese, or a Japanese, the language of dreams is one. Our spoken languages differ; the language of myth, of the puranas, is one. So the symbols that arose in the ancient mind got attached to Krishna’s birth, and the same symbols attached to Jesus’ birth.

Another reason for the confusion is that Jesus’ name is Jesus, but later the title “Christ” was added. The word “Christ” can be seen as a transformation of “Krishna.” I know a man whose name is Krishto Babu. I asked him, “What kind of name is this?” He said, “My name is actually Krishna, but in English, writing it again and again, it became Krishto.” I said, “Extraordinary! Do you know some people even think the word ‘Krishna’ itself became ‘Christ’?”

It is possible. Jesus is a different person. But it is possible that the word “Krishna,” traveling, became “Christ.” Because “Christ” is a title, just as “Mahavira” is a title of Vardhaman. Vardhaman is the given name; when he attained enlightenment he became Mahavira. “Buddha” is not a household name; Gautama Siddhartha is. When he awakened, he became Buddha. “Jesus” is the given name; when he attained, he became Christ. It may be that the word “Christ” came from “Krishna”—there is no great difficulty in that. But Jesus’ personality is distinct. In the birth narratives there is indeed a harmony. That does not make them one person. The harmony arises not from one person’s birth, but from the same kind of symbols rising from the collective unconscious.

Carl Gustav Jung made a very wondrous discovery about the human mind, which he called “archetypes.” He says that in the deep mind of man there are basic archetypes—fundamental symbols—which are the same all over the world. They repeat. In the birth stories of Christ and Krishna, those same archetypes recur. And as I said, if we understand this event of birth rightly, it is the event of everyone’s birth.

Now the word “Krishna” also needs to be understood a little. Krishna means “center.” Krishna means “that which attracts,” the center of gravitation, the magnetic center. In one sense, everyone’s birth is the birth of Krishna, because the soul within us is the center of attraction. Around it the body crystallizes, the family crystallizes, the society crystallizes, the world crystallizes. Around that Krishna-center within, that deep point of attraction, everything happens. So whenever a person is born, in a sense Krishna is born. That point of the soul, of attraction, is born—and then everything begins to form around it. Around that Krishna-point crystallization begins and personalities are formed. Therefore Krishna’s birth is not only the birth of one particular person; it is the birth of every person.

Darkness, prison, the fear of death—all have meaning. But why did we associate them with Krishna? I am not saying that the incidents described in Krishna’s life—being born in prison, in chains—did not happen. I am not saying they did not. I am only saying: whether or not he was born in bonds, whether or not he was born in a prison, once a person like Krishna becomes available to us, we assimilate into his person all that is involved in the birth of every soul.

Remember, the stories of great ones move opposite to ours. An ordinary person’s story begins at birth and ends at death—a sequence from birth to death. The stories of the great are written retrospectively. Great ones are recognized later, and their birth stories are written later. A man like Krishna appears to us only long after he is born. Years have passed. When he comes into view he has already traveled forty or fifty years. Then the narrative grows around this wondrous, majestic person. Then we select from his life. Then re-interpretations begin. We pick events from earlier, we give them meanings.

Therefore the lives of great ones never remain merely historical; they become poetic. They are reconstructed by looking back. And when we look back, everything becomes symbolic and takes on meanings that were not present in the moment when events actually occurred. And the lives of people like Krishna are not written once; each century writes them anew. Thousands write them; and when thousands write, a thousand interpretations arise. Slowly Krishna’s life ceases to be the life of a single person. Krishna becomes an institution. He becomes the essence of all births. The story of the birth of man-as-such becomes his birth story.

So in a strictly personal sense I do not assign much value. A person like Krishna does not remain a “person.” He becomes a symbol of our mind, our heart, our collective psyche. And all the births our psyche has ever seen are assimilated into him.

Understand it like this. A great painter paints a woman—a very beautiful woman. People ask, “Who is this woman on whom the painting is based?” The painter says, “She is no one woman. She is the essence of the millions of women I have seen. These are someone’s eyes, someone’s nose, someone’s lips, someone’s complexion, someone’s hair. Such a woman will not be found anywhere. Only the painter can see her. So do not place too much trust in the painter’s woman, do not go out searching for her—because the one you will meet will not be that one, she will be an ordinary woman.” This is why the world gets into trouble: we go searching for women who do not exist—they are painters’ women, poets’ women, the essence of thousands. They are the perfume distilled from thousands of women—not to be found anywhere. Thousands have been blended into one; she is a melody discovered among thousands.

So when a person like Krishna appears, the essence of what has been found through millions of births flows into him. Do not take him as a mere individual. He is not. And if someone goes looking for him in history, perhaps he will not be found. Krishna becomes a symbol of the birth of man-as-such—of a particular human sensitivity born in this land; what this land’s humanity has experienced is contained in him. In Jesus is contained the experience of another land. We are born with our own birth and die with our own death. But into the symbol of Krishna, additions keep happening—endlessly. Every age adds to it, enriches it, because more experience has been gathered; it keeps being assimilated into that collective archetype.

For me, what matters is the meaning I have been pointing to. These events may have happened, they may not have happened. For me, events as such have no value. The value is in understanding Krishna—how we came to see these events in him. And if we can see this rightly, we will see these events in our own birth as well. And the one who finds in his own birth the resonance of Krishna’s birth—perhaps, by the time he reaches his death, he may attain in his death too the resonance of Krishna’s death.

First, about what I said yesterday: yes, when I quoted “for the protection of the virtuous and the destruction of the wicked, I will come again and again,” I said Krishna is joking profoundly there. I said that yesterday. But I did not say that in “sarva-dharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja” Krishna is joking. I did not say that. So understand this a little, then we can move on.

When Krishna says, “Renounce all dharmas and come to the refuge of me, the One”—renounce all dharmas. In this world there can be only one Dharma; yet one who sees many “dharmas” will fall into great delusion. “Renounce all dharmas” means: abandon every qualified, adjectival religion. Leave the many and come to the One. Krishna could have said, “Come into my refuge.” But the phrasing is astonishing: “mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja”—“take refuge in me, the One.” Here Krishna is not speaking as a person; he is speaking from the stature of Dharma itself. Here he is Dharma. Renounce the religions and come into the refuge of Dharma. Leave the many and come to the One. That’s the first point.

Second: he says, “Take refuge in me.” If we understand this deeply, it is delicious. “In me”—but whenever I say “I,” it is my I. For you, my “I” becomes “you”; it is no longer “I.” For you, your “I” is your “I”; mine cannot be yours. If the meaning were “take refuge in Krishna,” for Arjuna that would be taking refuge in “you,” not in “I.” But if Krishna’s meaning is “take refuge in me,” then Arjuna’s “I” is not Krishna; Arjuna’s “I” is Arjuna’s “I.” He will go into that refuge—into his own svadharma, his innermost nature.

This Krishna has not said in jest. It is a marvelous, profound statement—its depths are unfathomable. Of all utterances made on this earth, few even touch its depth: renounce the many for the One; renounce “you” for “I”; renounce adjectival religions for Dharma itself.

But there are further depths. If Arjuna says, “I will take refuge in my own I,” he still has not understood. For one who goes into refuge must drop the “I.” Refuge means the “I” dissolves. Surrender means the “I” does not remain. If Arjuna says, “I take refuge in my own I,” he has still missed it—refuge is where the “I” is not. Refuge means: leave the “I” and come. This becomes subtle and difficult: take refuge in your own nature, but leave yourself; take refuge in Dharma, but abandon the religions; take refuge in the One, but abandon the many.

Yet if even the One remains, the many remains. We cannot conceive the One without the many. So one who would take refuge in the One will have to drop the One too—drop number altogether. Later, when it was seen that the word “one” could create confusion by setting it against the many, we did not coin “one-ism”; instead we spoke of Advaita—non-duality. Not “one,” but “not two.” Be careful only that there are not two. And remember, if the one remains, the second will remain, because the one is known only against the perspective of the two. If I know “I am,” I know it only against “you.” Otherwise where would my “I” begin and end? Whoever knows “I am” knows it only in contrast to “you.” If someone says, “Only the One is truth,” the very insistence betrays that he still sees the second which he is denying.

So this statement has great depths. First, remember: it is not said for taking refuge in Krishna; it is said for Arjuna to become self-refuge. Second, remember: it is not said for taking refuge in Arjuna’s ego; it is said for taking refuge in egoless nature. Third, remember: it is said for the renunciation of religions—and in that renunciation no special religion is left over. It is “sarva-dharmān”—all religions. Not “keep Hinduism and drop the rest”—drop them all. Because so long as someone clings to any religion, Dharma cannot be attained. As long as someone clings to any label, how will he come to that non-qualified Dharma which is bound by no adjective? Drop religion, drop religions, drop qualifications, drop Krishna, drop number, drop “I,” drop ego—and what remains, that is Dharma. This has not been said in jest.

Now, to your second question: shall we distinguish between the Krishna of the Gita and the Krishna of the Bhagavata? The friend who asked came a little later, so what I said earlier may not be in his mind; I will say a little.

Our mind will prefer to divide, because we will find it hard to reconcile the Krishna of the Bhagavata with the Krishna of the Gita. They look like very different men—indeed, opposite. The Krishna of the Gita is very grave; the Krishna of the Bhagavata utterly non-serious. We will fail to harmonize them. So we will want to split them into two persons—or else we will say Krishna is schizophrenic: two men inside one man. Sometimes he speaks one way, sometimes another; as if split into opposing halves, like certain madmen. Then there are “periods”: six months calm, six months restless; mornings fine, evenings something else. Or we will say Krishna is multi-psychic, many-minded—many men within him. This would be the psychologist’s road. If we ask a historian, he will say these must be two different individuals of different times—it cannot be one man. The idea that one man can be so many is beyond his imagination. So he will manufacture a dozen Krishnas: that Krishna, this Krishna—different persons.

But I want to tell you, I will accept neither Freud’s counsel nor the historian’s. Not Freud’s, because a schizophrenic, a fragmented personality, does not arrive at the bliss that Krishna radiates; a split, deranged personality does not attain the supreme peace that Krishna embodies. Nor the historian’s, because his difficulty arises from the same source: how can one man do all this? They must be many men, different times, or even the same time but different persons. What the psychologist divides inside one man, the historian divides across time into different men.

My own vision is: this is one Krishna—and this is precisely Krishna’s greatness. If we prune this, Krishna becomes meaningless; his very value disappears. His significance is that he is everything at once. His significance is that he is simultaneously opposites—and there is a harmony within those opposites, a music within those contradictions. The Krishna who can dance playing the flute is the same Krishna who can take up the discus and fight. There is no contradiction. The Krishna who can break the butter pot is the same Krishna who can utter the grave proclamation of the Gita. The Krishna who can be a “thief” can be the supreme yogi of the Gita. All this together, in one person—that is Krishna’s majesty. This privacy, this uniqueness of personality, you will not find in Christ, not in Buddha, not in Mahavira, not in Rama.

Krishna is a confluence of opposites—the meeting of all contradictions. And I can say this because I see that there is no reason for these opposites to be truly opposed. The very truth of life is the confluence of opposites. All life stands upon oppositions—and there is no discord in them; there is music. The man who is a child is the same man who grows old—where is the opposition? If I ask you the day you ceased to be a child and became a youth, it will be hard to say. If I ask the day you became old—equally hard. Words make youth and old age seem opposite; but which day does youth end and old age begin? There is no such day. Each day youth becomes old age. We can say of the young man that he is the “to-be old”; of the old man that he is “youth accomplished.” You cannot truly separate them.

We take peace and unrest as two things. But have you ever noticed the place where peace ends and unrest begins? In the dictionary they are opposites; in life you will see happiness becomes sorrow, sorrow becomes happiness; peace becomes turmoil, turmoil becomes peace; birth becomes death, death becomes birth; morning becomes evening, day becomes night; light turns into darkness, darkness into light. Life is a confluence of all opposites. Debit and credit are not contrary—they are one power at play.

If we see this meaning of life, this eternal harmony, this music, then we can understand Krishna. Therefore we called Krishna a “purna avatara,” a complete incarnation—the whole symbol of life. Buddha is not the whole symbol of life. Buddha is the symbol only of what is auspicious in life, the morning, the dawn, the light. What of evening? What of the night’s darkness? You can hold the full moon—what of the new moon? You can take the nectar—what of the poison? Therefore Buddha is clean and tidy. No one will say the Buddha of one book is different from the Buddha of another—there is no cause. The Buddhas of all books are one. No one will say Buddha’s mind is schizophrenic. One, unfragmented, of a single flavor. With Krishna this question will arise.

Rather than splitting Krishna into many persons to save our mental categories, it is better to drop our categories, throw this mind aside, and see Krishna whole. Even if it turned out, historically, that the Krishna of the Bhagavata and the Krishna of the Gita are separated by two thousand years, I would not worry. I would say: there is no separation for me. For me, Krishna has meaning only if he is one person. If not, then it becomes futile. Whether or not it “happened” historically is not my concern. I maintain: whenever life’s wholeness flowers in a person, many persons will flower together within him. Whenever life’s completeness blooms in someone, there will be a unity within his apparent inconsistencies; an un-opposition within his oppositions. His personality will have opposite poles, yet they will be connected. It may be the threads are not visible to us—our eyes are weak.

Think of it like this: I am climbing the stairs of a house. If I see the first step and the last step but not the steps in between, can I ever think there is a connection between the first and the last? Never. If the middle steps become visible, I can say the first and the last are not two steps but two ends of one flight. The journey begins at the first step, completes at the last—it is one continuous thing.

The middle steps of Krishna’s personality we do not see—because the middle steps of our own personality we do not see. You have seen your unrest and your peace; but have you seen the instant in between? You have seen love and hatred—have you seen the journey between them, how love becomes hatred, how hatred becomes love? You have made friends and enemies—but have you seen by what alchemy friendship becomes enmity and enmity becomes friendship?

There were alchemists who toiled to make iron into gold. People did not understand them; they thought these men were literally trying to turn iron into gold. They were saying: if there is iron and there is gold, somewhere there must be a link. It cannot be that iron and gold are unlinked. Somewhere there must be a middle link we do not see. The world cannot be unlinked. If there a flower blooms and here I sit, there must be a link; and if I feel joyous, the joy of the flower must have some share in it. Perhaps the link is invisible. The flower withers there and I become sad here—and the link is unseen. Life is linkage; everything is connected.

The alchemists said: if there is the baser and the higher, they must be linked. We will find a way by which gold becomes iron, iron becomes gold. And not only this: what we call low must be linked with what we call high. The baser must be linked with the higher. Somewhere sex must be linked with God. Somewhere earth must be linked with sky. Somewhere birth must be linked with death. Inert matter must be linked with consciousness; the stone must be linked with the soul. Otherwise, how could it all be? Krishna is the symbol of this great linkage.

I say such a person was—just so. If history piles up arguments, I will toss them into the trash. If psychologists expound, I will say: your minds are out of tune; you will not yet understand. For you understand the clean-split fragments, but not the linkage of all the fragments. Freud investigates much: as much as anyone about anger. Yet give him a little push and he too becomes angry. His knowledge remains external, not inner. He does not even know when non-anger turns into anger. Freud knows much about madness; yet he himself can go mad—he has the potential; occasions come when he acts madly.

So what the psychologist says has little value for me, because Krishna is one who has gone beyond mind—beyond. There is another kind of integrity: the integrity of the Self, which can be present in all minds, in every kind of mind. Therefore I will speak assuming him to be one person.

You ask whether I will regard the Gita as the authentic words of Krishna?
If there has been a person like Krishna, then a discourse like the Gita would indeed be authentic. The question is not whether Krishna actually spoke it or not. The question is that if Krishna were to speak, he could only speak like this. And even if Krishna did not speak and Vyasa alone wrote the Gita, it doesn’t make much difference, because Vyasa could not write it unless there were a person like Krishna. In the end one has to say—let it be Vyasa who wrote it, it makes no difference—but Vyasa too would be speaking the Gita, no! What difference does it make? It makes no difference. Whether Krishna speaks, or Vyasa speaks, or A, B, C—someone else—speaks, to speak the Gita there must be someone within. This Gita doesn’t drop out of the sky. It is born from somewhere. What does a name matter? Whether that man’s name was Vyasa, or Krishna, or whatever—it makes no difference.

Therefore I think in the reverse way. I do not say that the Gita is authentic because it is Krishna’s word; I ask instead: is the Gita-word authentic or not? I say: the Gita is—this is authentic; it is news of Krishna. This is how I see it. The Gita is: it was spoken, it was said, it was written, it exists. It cannot exist without Krishna. There has to be someone who speaks it, who writes it! Who that was—what does it matter? What his name was—what does it matter? But there must be a consciousness from which it is born. Gangotri is not the proof for the Ganga; the Ganga is the proof for Gangotri. If the Ganga is, we can say that Gangotri must be—whether it is there or not; whether we find it or not; whether we can discover it or not. If the Ganga is, Gangotri will be. If the Gita is, Krishna will be. Moving from the Gita toward Krishna seems right to me, because the Gita is here now. If you move from Krishna toward the Gita, there will be complications, because there may be the fear that Krishna was not, and then the Gita becomes doubtful, and then we will have to look for some other person for the Gita. But we go on doing very mad things.

First, Sigmund Freud’s idea of libido is very precious. If we give a precise word to libido, it is kama-urja, sex-energy. Not only in human life, but in the very life of the cosmos, in creation itself, sex-energy is the hidden core. The Puranas say Brahma created the world afflicted by Kama. Creation is not possible without desire. All creation issues forth from desire. Whatever is, is the expansion of kama. The entire play of life, every expression of life—flowers blooming, birds singing—is the dance of sex-energy. Think of an ocean of sex-energy with infinite waves rising in infinite forms. Even the Divine, in the very depths, is the center of this energy.

In Krishna’s life there is a natural, innocent acceptance of sex-energy—an embrace of spontaneity. There is no prohibition and no repression. Those who try to suppress, distort, or refashion Krishna’s episodes merely reveal their own guilt-ridden tendencies, their repressed sexuality, the sickness of their own minds. Naturally, there has been a persistent attempt to say that when Krishna climbed the tree with the maidens’ clothes he was very young. We feel relieved if he was very young; it makes acceptance easier.

But even at a very young age, children are curious about their bodies and about differences. As soon as bodily self-awareness begins, awareness of the other’s different body begins. This curiosity is utterly natural. There is nothing wrong in it. It is simply the primary link in our bodily acquaintance. So if Krishna had in fact been very young, the incident is still conceivable.

And if he was older, it is not impossible either. It may be impossible for us; it is not impossible for Krishna—because Krishna lives life as it is, in spontaneous acceptance. And the culture in which he was born must also have accepted a great deal of naturalness.

Had Krishna been born in our society, we would have excised such references altogether. We would never have written them. Those who recorded these events wrote them with ease, without any sense that something wrong had happened; otherwise we would have edited them out. For thousands of years, no one raised the question, “What sort of man is Krishna?” We have only just begun to ask it. In the culture where this event occurred, it was accepted as natural. If it were a singular, shocking act, it would have been criticized. In all likelihood, not only Krishna but many boys must have done such mischief.

The girls involved would not have been of an age devoid of self-awareness. They would have been at that threshold where a girl becomes aware of being a girl—where modesty begins, where she knows she is different in matters of sex and has something to hide. The very moment that awareness arises in her, the complementary curiosity arises in someone else to know and to see. These two happen at the same time, in the same season of life. So the ages would not have been far apart: Krishna eager to see, and the girls eager not to be seen.

On this point, understand a major difference between male and female psyche. The male wants to see the female naked—he is a voyeur. The female does not have the same eagerness to see the male naked; she is not a voyeur. Hence the world is full of nude statues of women, not of men. Where nude male statues do exist, they arose in cultures where homoerotic currents were strong—ancient Greece in the time of Socrates and Plato. Women are not particularly excited by nude images of men; that is why there are no magazines for women filled with nude males to the same effect. Men, however, are very pleased by nude images of women, much to women’s puzzlement. In the deepest moments of love, the man wants to see; the woman is less keen to look. The man’s eyes tend to remain open; the woman’s tend to close. Her joy is in absorbing, in becoming one—not in looking. The man’s joy is very much in seeing. And the man’s eagerness to see gives birth to the woman’s eagerness to hide. Hence she covers herself.

But the woman faces a dilemma. If she hides too much, she becomes unattractive to the man. So she must both veil and reveal. With the same garments she has to conceal and also disclose; she must maintain a fine balance: cover here, uncover there—continually adjusting the ratio.

So if the girls emerged from the water covering themselves, that is entirely natural. The incident is very simple. And if Krishna said, “Fold your hands and bow to the deity of the river,” that too is natural—this is the male mind at play. Krishna is a direct, spontaneous male mind—indeed, purely male in that sense—without repression or opposition. And those who wrote these stories must also have been simple people; they described things as they were, without cutting, trimming, or “improving” the events. Our difficulties came later, when new theories, new notions, and new moralities arose and we tried to retroactively impose them upon the past.

I would say only this much: Krishna did not plan any of it. There was no blueprint such as, “If they cover themselves, I will tell them to raise their hands.” It happened spontaneously: the girls covered themselves; Krishna said, “Raise your hands and bow to the deity of the river—why offend the river-god?” Such is his spontaneity. Only a being of the quality we call divine can be so simple and spontaneous; the ordinary human is pre-planned.

I hold that the most natural flowering of sex-energy happened in Krishna. He never treated it as an obstacle; he lived it simply. And the society around him accepted it simply; that society too must have been natural.

You ask whether I too am an advocate of nakedness. In one sense, yes. Not as an opponent of clothing—if I were against clothes, I would be turning the clock back. Clothing has utility, meaning, purpose—but no morality. In the cold, certain clothes are needed; in the heat, certain others. On the street, too, clothes are needed—because if someone does not wish to see you unclothed, you have no right to impose that sight; it would be a trespass. But that does not mean that if no one else is involved, we are not free to be without clothes in our own home or at chosen moments. Let clothing be like shoes: at home we take off our shoes; outside we put them on. No one says, “Your feet are naked,” yet they are.

Clothes should be used easily, without sting. And that ease is possible only if nakedness too is accepted with ease; otherwise clothes acquire a false moral burden. Humanity has piled on so many garments that, because of them, countless efforts are made to strip them off—and then “immorality” is born.

If we accept nakedness as a simple truth—as we are born naked, remain naked under our clothes, and die naked—the whole obsession changes. This does not mean we must remain unclothed. God sends sunlight; we use an umbrella. We are not opposing God; the shade the umbrella casts is also part of God’s laws. We are simply exercising our freedom to sit in sun or shade. But if someone makes “sitting in the shade” into morality and “sitting in the sun” into sin, then shade becomes a burden, and the sun an offense—and people begin to sneak into the sunlight. We create needless guilt and crime around what was utterly simple.

So I say: nakedness is a fact of life. Accept it simply; do not run from it. Because we run, we create twenty-five substitutes: the streets fill with scantily clad posters. Such things would vanish if, at home, people could sometimes sit unclothed, bathe at the river, sun themselves, or chat freely among friends—without throwing away clothes altogether or fleeing backward in time. If we do not discard clothes but also accept nakedness, we go beyond both the merely naked and the merely clothed. That, to me, is progress.

Nudist clubs are rebellions—reactions to societies obsessed with clothing. I am not in favor of nudist clubs—just as I am not in favor of the cloth-obsessed society that produces the need for such clubs. Remove the obsession, and there is no need for a club. If families could be at ease with naturalness in private spaces, you would be surprised how the artificial distance between the sexes would diminish. Where there is space for simple, respectful closeness, there is no need for pushing and transgression; the very compulsion to violate dissolves. When a society is relaxed and natural, aggression loses its allure.

Excessive moralism breeds immorality; too much morality creates its opposite. Wear too many clothes and you get nudist clubs. I am not on either extreme. I say: accept life as it is, with simplicity. And Krishna is a wondrous symbol of this—a direct, spontaneous acceptance of what is.

As far as naturalness is concerned, there is no difference between any part of the body and the hand. The difference appears to us because we have created it. The difference is manufactured; it is not there. All parts of the body are alike. We see differences because we have partitioned the body. One part of the body is like a drawing room, which everyone may see. Another part is like a warehouse, for which you need a license. We have divided the body into many parts, whereas the body is whole and together. In it there is no difference of parts. And the day man truly becomes wholly healthy and natural, that day there will be no difference.

But you are right to ask: to what limit? If someone takes another’s hand in his own, one might think it is fine. But two points are worth considering. In the natural, spontaneous society I speak of—or the natural possibility I speak of—just as it is not right to needlessly, without cause, obstruct another when he takes someone’s hand, in the same way it is part of naturalness that, while taking another’s hand, one does not needlessly, without cause, cause the other pain. For when I take someone’s hand, I am taking the hand of a person. It may be blissful for me to take that hand, but if it is painful for them, then they too have their freedom. If I am entitled to enjoy my joy, the other is also entitled to look after theirs. If I like taking someone’s hand in mine, it is also necessary to know whether they like it or not. If I am free for my happiness, they are also free for theirs. From the very point where the other person begins, from there begins the responsibility of my freedom toward the other’s freedom. That is utterly natural, spontaneous. For you may come and embrace me, but if it only produces anxiety in me, then you may be entitled to your delight, but I too am entitled to be spared my anxiety. Therefore, a natural society will make requests—only requests. And their acceptance is essential, because the other person has entered the picture at once.

You asked what I call morality—what I call morality. I call this morality. I call this morality: respect for the other person’s personhood. To give the other exactly the same respect that my own self has in my eyes—this I call morality. Beyond this, there is no other morality for me. And I hold that all other moralities follow on their own from this. Equal respect for the other as for myself is the root of morality. The day I place myself above the other, that very day I become immoral. The day I use the other as a means and make myself the end, that day I become immoral. Every person is an end unto himself. So long as I keep this in remembrance, I remain moral.

So in my understanding, marriage is an immorality. Love is morality; marriage is immorality. And on the day the world is truly good, two people may live together for their whole lives, but that living together will not be a contract. It will not be a bargain, not an institution; it will be the outcome of their love. It is their love that keeps them together.

The day love becomes law, love is killed. The day I can say to a woman, “I am entitled to demand love from you because you are my wife,” that day love has become law. If the wife says, “Today I am not in a moment of love”—and love has moods, love has moments—very few are capable of being in love twenty-four hours a day. Only one who has become love can be in love all the time. Ordinary people are in love at certain moments; they are not in love twenty-four hours. But the law will not see the moments. I can tell my wife that I want love right now. Love can be demanded, because you are my wife. And she will have to give love. And when love has to be given, it is no longer love. But if the wife says, “Today there is no moment of love; in this moment you are nobody to me—because the only bond is love, and right now there is no love—right now you are as much a stranger as any other,” then legal difficulties will arise.

But let us also understand whether what we have created in the name of morality is even possible. In the name of morality we have imposed many impossibilities. And because of those impossibilities, great immorality has arisen. Today I love one person; can I make a firm promise that tomorrow I will not love another? How can I? It is absolutely impossible. Tomorrow has not yet come; the person toward whom my love might flower has not yet appeared—how can I promise? And if I do promise, tomorrow there will be turmoil. The turmoil will be that tomorrow that person may appear—he does not see my promise; tomorrow that inner hour may arrive—it too does not see my promise. An event may occur when I become loving toward someone, but then my promise will stand in the way. Then there will be a double difficulty. Either I fall in love with someone secretly—which will be immorality, because in a world where even love has to be done secretly, what else remains that we can do honestly? On one side, I will love in secret; on the other, with the one to whom I promised love I will have to act love. For how will love be possible with her now? And in a world where even love has to be acted, what is left that can be lived authentically?

So I consider “husband” and “marriage” to be immoralities invented by an immoral society. And along with them a thousand other immoralities are born. When we tighten husband and wife too much, the prostitute arises—arises immediately. The prostitute is the protection of the Sati-Savitris. If you want to save the Sati-Savitri, you will have to create the prostitute. But even women will prefer that their husband go to a prostitute rather than fall in love with the neighbor’s wife. Because love involves involvement; it is dangerous. If the husband falls in love with the neighbor’s wife, the wife feels threatened. If he goes to a prostitute, there is no danger. He returns in the morning. It is a money transaction; there is no threat in it. Therefore wives agreed to prostitutes; they did not agree to love.

Now, when I say all this, you rightly say that a man full of taboos, brought up among a thousand kinds of institutions, conditionings, habits, and moralities, will land in great difficulty. I tell you, he is already in great difficulty. What I am saying can take him out of it. Where is the person who is not in difficulty? Everyone is in difficulty. But if the difficulty is old, we do not see it. If it has become habitual, we do not see it. If the disease is chronic, we forget it. What I am saying will be a new difficulty—not because problems will newly come into life, but because there will be only one difficulty: you will have to drop the habits and conditionings of the old difficulty.

And if someday the earth agrees to make life simple and not impose impossibilities upon it, then millions of personalities like Krishna can be born. It is not necessary that only one Krishna be born; the whole earth can be filled with Krishnas.

He was a man of many colors! A colorful man! He cannot be described in a single color. That’s the point—he was a man of many colors. Many hues were present in him at once. The body may have been of one color, but the man was of many. And then, much depends on the eyes that behold—what color appears. So whoever looked with whatever eyes, those are the colors that became visible to them.

Yes, even one person can see three colors in three different states. Because is a person really the same person in all three states? Sometimes when I am in love, you see one color. When I am in anger, you see another color. And sometimes when you are in love toward me, you see a different color; when you are angry with me, again another. And those colors keep changing day by day. Colors change moment to moment. Everything keeps changing. Nothing is fixed here. In this world the very idea of fixity is false. Everything here is in flux.

But most people saw a dusky hue in him. There are reasons for that. It seems the dusky hue must have been his steady undertone—the enduring note of his changefulness. That is, his very restlessness played in a dusky key. In the mind of this land there is a certain fondness for duskiness. In truth, the fair color is never as beautiful as the dusky can be. There are many reasons. Yet ordinarily fair looks seem beautiful to us because the shine of fairness hides many uglinesses. In blackness nothing is hidden; therefore a very dark person is rarely called beautiful. Fair people often appear very beautiful—because blackness conceals nothing; it lays everything bare. In the glitter of whiteness, much gets concealed. So many fair people will appear beautiful; someone very dark is beautiful only once in a while. But when a dark person is beautiful, the beauty of the fair fades at once. That is why we called even Rama dusky, and Krishna dusky—whomever we perceived as truly beautiful, we envisioned in a dusky hue. The beauty of duskiness is a rarity; it is very rare. Among the fair there are many who are beautiful; that is no rarity, no special distinction. To be beautiful in fairness is quite ordinary; to be beautiful in duskiness is quite extraordinary.

There are other reasons as well. In white there is no depth; there is spread. That is why a fair face is flat, not deep. Have you seen a river? When it grows deep, it turns dark. In the dusky color there is depth—no mere spread, but an intensity. A dusky face does not end at the face; within it there is a certain transparency, strata. Within the face of the dusky person there are faces—layers of faces within faces. The fair person is flat; his face is plainly and immediately what it is. Therefore one gets bored very quickly with fairness. With duskiness, boredom does not arise; new tones keep appearing. And a man like Krishna is such that one cannot grow bored of him.

You will be surprised to know that the beauties of the West are eager to become dusky. They lie on the seashore hoping the sun will brown them a little. What kind of madness is this? In truth, whenever a culture reaches its peak, breadth becomes of lesser value and depth of greater value. We may find Western people beautiful, but the West knows that now beauty must be sought in depth—that earlier chapter is over. So the beautiful Western woman tries to become dusky. Even the most handsome Western face is not transparent; it becomes blunt, dulled. That is the defect of fairness. Its merit is that many can look beautiful in it; its defect is that very deep beauty cannot arise in it.

Therefore we saw Krishna as dusky. I do not insist that Krishna must actually have been dusky; it is not necessary. We saw him so. He was such a beloved man that we could not imagine him fair; we imagined him dusky. He may indeed have been dusky—that is secondary to me.

For me facts are very secondary; poetry is what matters. We could not think of this man as fair because he was a man of so many hues, so deep, that one felt like peering and peering into his face, like drowning in it. There were further depths that kept opening. Therefore an individual saw him in many colors, and many people did too; but as a single enduring color we conceived him as dusky. For this we gave him the name Shyam. Shyam means dark; Krishna too means dark. Not only did we imagine him so, we even gave him names that carry duskiness—Shyam, Krishna—both symbols of the dark hue.

And one more thing he has asked: on the one hand Krishna unmasks and unveils, on the other he throws garments over the disrobed Draupadi. In truth, the one who has never truly uncovered keeps tearing things open all his life.

But the one who has uncovered and seen can now cover.

There is another great difference between covering and uncovering. Love may give permission to unveil; love seeks to be revealed. But Draupadi was not being unveiled by love—she was being stripped in great disgust. The eyes upon her were not eyes filled with the curiosity of love. As for the event itself, it has no value for me—as I keep saying, facts have no value for me. Whether some miracle happened—that Krishna from afar kept casting cloth over her—I take all that as symbolic. I only hold that in one way or another Krishna prevented Draupadi from being disrobed that day; in one way or another he became an obstacle to her stripping—that much I accept.

But when a poet writes it, it becomes poetry. And when poetry is made, and later we turn poetry into fact, then miracles begin to appear. Beyond that, poetry is the only miracle; there is no other. In some way or other, in that court Krishna must have become an obstacle on behalf of the Draupadi who was being made naked. That obstacle must have become inevitable.

And there is a further delightful point: his name is Krishna, and one of Draupadi’s names is Krishnaa. The truth is, there has been no man as magnificent as Krishna, and no woman as magnificent as Krishnaa. Draupadi has no equal. We have discussed Sita and others a great deal and have spoken of Draupadi rather little—because Draupadi makes us uncomfortable. She is the wife of five husbands—there she overwhelms us. But remember, to be the wife of even one husband is a very difficult thing; to be the wife of five husbands could only be the work of an extraordinary woman.

Krishna has a great love for Krishnaa; among his deepest beloveds, she is one. Therefore if love were not to come to her aid in that moment, then when would it? But that is another matter; we shall speak of Draupadi some other time.

Two things should be understood here.

First, by “spiritual intercourse” I do not mean that I am condemning physical intercourse. By spiritual intercourse I simply mean that not only the bodies of two persons have met; their souls have met as well. What is born of the meeting of bodies cannot attain the heights that what is born of the meeting of souls can attain. I regard Krishna’s birth as the fruit of spiritual intercourse; I regard Christ’s birth the same way. That is why those who understood Christ could say that Christ was born and yet Mary remained a virgin, remained a maiden—because on the bodily plane there was no lust and no deep desire. The union happened on the plane of the soul; the body followed like a shadow. Hence the shadow bears no responsibility.

But your question is certainly important: then what of the children of Krishna and Rama?

There are other reasons. The first is that it is impossible for a son greater than Krishna to be born. A son greater than Vasudeva can be born—Vasudeva is an ordinary man. Krishna is a height, the ultimate height possible. Any son of a father like Krishna will be forgotten by history; he inevitably falls into the shadow of such a being. A peak that may look very high in the Vindhyas would find itself in great difficulty standing beside Everest. Things are seen relatively—next to Krishna no one can be seen.

Therefore those who touch the peak of life, the utmost height, do not produce “very great” sons in the eyes of history. It has never happened—neither with Buddha, nor with Krishna, nor with Rama, nor with Mahavira, nor with anyone. The reason is simply that they stand at such a height that, however high Lava and Kusha may be, they are lost in Rama’s shadow. Had Lava and Kusha been born in another house, they too would have left a name in history; they were not ordinary. But leaving a name is always relative and comparative. Beside Rama they cannot leave a name. They were not ordinary sons—Rama cannot have an ordinary son—but history will inevitably compare them with Rama.

Dasharatha is a very ordinary father. No one would even know of him had Rama not been born; he would have had no significance. Because Rama happened, Dasharatha has a name. If a great son is born in the house of a small father, the father also becomes great. And if a great son is born in the house of a great father, he becomes small.

The intercourse was spiritual. Those who were born were born of the spiritual. But our assessment will always be relative, comparative; there will be comparison.

We all know the story: Akbar drew a line and asked his courtiers to make it shorter without touching it. No one could do it—then Birbal drew a longer line beside it. Without touching the first line, it became small; the line itself remained the same.

Lava and Kusha are what they are. But Rama’s line is very long; beneath it they disappear completely. Had Rama’s line not been there, Lava and Kusha would also be visible; history would have remembered their footprints as well. But there was no need—coming after Rama, they have no independent significance.

For those who look to the scriptures, it has always been a great difficulty that Radha is not mentioned. And then some even began to say that no such person as Radha ever existed—that Radha is the poets’ later invention. Naturally, for those who live in history and facts, this is hard. Radha’s mention begins only in later texts; in the ancient texts there is no mention at all.

My position is exactly the opposite. I hold that the sole reason for the lack of mention is that Radha became so one with Krishna, so merged, that a separate mention was unnecessary. Those who were separate are mentioned. She who was not separate but was like a shadow—there is no need to mention her. To mention someone, there must be a someone. Rukmini is separate. She may love Krishna, but she is not Krishna-suffused. She may relate to him, but she is not absorbed into him. Relationships are for those who are other. Radha has no relationship with Krishna. Radha is Krishna. So if she was not mentioned, I would say it is just; she ought not be mentioned.

So first keep this in mind: her not being mentioned has a cause. She is shadow-like, invisible—so not even that separate, not even that distinct, that one would notice and recognize her; not so separate, not so distinct that one would give her a name or a place.

Second, it is also true that without Radha, Krishna’s personality would remain simply incomplete. Incomplete because I said Krishna is the complete man. This needs a little understanding. Very few in this world are complete men. Within every man there is a feminine component, and within every woman a masculine component. Those who know the psyche say so: within every woman there is man, within every man there is woman. The difference is only of degree, of proportion. What we call a man is sixty percent masculine, forty percent feminine. Hence there are men who appear effeminate, and women who appear mannish. If the inner feminine is very strong in a man, it will dominate; if the inner masculine is very strong in a woman, it will dominate. But in this sense too, Krishna is complete, as I was saying. He is the complete man—there is no feminine element in him. And Meera I would call the complete woman—there is no masculine element in her. And whenever there is a complete man, in one sense he will be left incomplete; he will require a complete woman; otherwise he will be left incomplete. Yes, an incomplete man can live without a woman—his own inner woman suffices. But a man like Krishna, inevitably, will have his Radha standing beside him. And he needs a complete woman.

Now it is a delightful thing to understand a little what a complete woman and a complete man mean—though there are many nuances beyond this too. The deepest depth of man is aggressive, assertive. The deepest depth of woman is of surrender. No woman who is not wholly woman can ever surrender wholly. No man who is not wholly man can ever be wholly aggressive. Hence when two incomplete man-and-woman meet, conflict goes on continuously—and will go on. Because within the woman there is something aggressive too—she also attacks. And something is surrendered too—she also yields. At one moment she presses a man’s hands, massages his feet, even puts her head at his feet; and at another moment she becomes fierce and is eager to grab his throat. Both forms arise from within her. A man at one moment is very aggressive, wants to dominate completely; and at another he becomes utterly meek and starts trailing after the woman. Both are within him.

Rukmini cannot have a very deep harmony with Krishna, because within her there is a man. Radha could drown herself completely—she is sheer woman, surrender brought to completion. Only complete surrender could become union with Krishna. With anything less he will not agree; anything less will not do. He will demand the whole. Of course demanding the whole does not mean he gives nothing; demanding the whole, he gives the whole. Therefore it happened that Rukmini fell away—the one who had scriptural mention, who was a claimant. Others too were claimants; they fell away. And the one who was utterly unclaiming, who had no claim at all, whom Krishna could not even call “mine”—Radha was another’s; Rukmini was his. With Rukmini the tie was institutional, of marriage. With Radha the tie was of love, not institutional—over which no claim can be laid, in whose favor no court would give a verdict that “she is yours.” In the end it happened that those for whom a legal claim could be made—who could demand maintenance from Krishna—were lost; and that woman grew deeper and deeper; and the time came when Rukmini was forgotten, and with Krishna only Radha’s name remained.

And the wonder is that Radha left everything for Krishna, yet her name did not get attached afterward—it came first. No one says Krishna-Radha; we say Radha-Krishna. Whoever surrenders all, gains all. Whoever stands at the very back, comes to the very front.

No, we cannot conceive Krishna without Radha. Radha is all his gracefulness. Radha is all that is tender in him, all that is delicate. Radha is his song, the anklets to his dance. Radha is all that is feminine within him. Because Krishna is sheer man—utterly masculine—therefore the name Krishna by itself is not meaningful. Thus they have become one together: Radha-Krishna. As Radha-Krishna, the two opposites of life have been brought together. For this too I say: this is one more fullness in Krishna’s completeness.

Mahavira cannot be conceived standing with a woman; woman is incongruent there. Mahavira’s personality is without woman. Mahavira married, he had a daughter; but one sect of the Digambaras holds that no, he did not marry, nor did he have a daughter. I think perhaps the historical fact is that he did marry and had a daughter, but psychologically the Digambaras are right: to yoke a woman to a man like Mahavira is meaningless. Even if it happened, it cannot be acknowledged. How would Mahavira love a woman? Impossible! Nowhere in Mahavira’s personality is there even the shadow of that. With Buddha there was a woman, but he left. With Christ too it is difficult to join a woman; their significance lies in their being bachelors. In this sense they are all incomplete. In the order of this world, as positive electricity is incomplete without negative, as the affirmative is incomplete without the negative, so there is also a supreme union of man and woman—not man and woman as persons, but of femininity and masculinity; of aggression and surrender; of conquest and yielding.

If we set out to find a symbol for Krishna and Radha, then across the whole earth there is but one symbol in China: what they call yin and yang. They have a symbol—Chinese being a pictorial language—they call it the symbol of the cosmos: a round circle in which two fish meet each other—half white, half black; in the black fish a small white circle; in the white fish a small black circle; and together a full circle. One fish’s tail meets the other’s mouth; the other fish’s mouth meets the first fish’s tail; and together they form a perfect circle. Yin and yang—one negative, one positive; together they are the full circle of the world.

Radha and Krishna are a full circle. In this sense too they are complete. Krishna cannot be thought of as incomplete, nor can he be thought of apart. Thought of apart, he goes empty; all color is lost; the background is lost against which he stands out—just as we cannot think of the night’s stars without the night’s darkness. On the moonless night the stars appear very, very bright, very pure, very lustrous. In the day too the stars are there—do not think the stars are lost. Where would they be lost? The sky is full of stars even now; but in the sunlight they are not visible. If you go down into a deep well—two or three hundred feet—you will see stars even in the day, because a layer of darkness comes in between; then the stars can be seen. At night the stars do not come—they are merely seen, because the sheet of darkness is spread out, and upon that sheet the stars begin to shine.

The whole personality of Krishna shines against Radha’s mantle. On all sides Radha’s mantle surrounds him. In it he blossoms fully. If Krishna is the flower, Radha is the root. Together they are the whole. Therefore they cannot be separated. That pair is complete. Hence Radha-Krishna is the complete name; Krishna alone is an incomplete name.