Krishna Smriti #8

In this connection one thing must first be understood, something that has always puzzled people—a small child, Krishna: how could he defeat such powerful men? People had only one way to solve this riddle: assume Krishna to be God, omnipotent. Then all riddles are resolved. But even that, deep down, amounts to saying only this: a greater power conquers a lesser power. There is some demon, some mighty wrestler; Krishna appears small but is all-powerful. In my view, this kind of interpretation has not understood Krishna’s being at all. It is basically wrong, a misunderstanding. Because its underlying assumption is that big power wins over small power. I want to say something else; that has to be understood.

In this world, the one who does not want to win, wins—and the one who wants to win, loses. In all these stories, for me, the meaning is this: the one who does not want to win, wins; the one who wants to win, loses. In fact, hidden in the desire to win is a deep defeat; and hidden in the state of not wanting to win is the sense of already being victorious. Understand it this way: the person who wants to win is, deep down, afflicted with an inferiority complex. He knows he is inferior and wants to prove by winning that he is not. The person who is not eager to win is established in his own superiority. He has no inner sense of inferiority that would make victory necessary to disprove it.

If we understand this through Tao, it becomes very easy.

Lao Tzu once said to his friends, “In my life no one has been able to defeat me.” A man stood up and asked, “Tell us that secret as well, because we too want to win, we too want that no one can defeat us.” Lao Tzu laughed and said, “Then you won’t be able to understand the secret, because you didn’t even listen to me fully and you interrupted in the middle. I had said: No one has been able to defeat me…let me complete the sentence.” Lao Tzu completed it: “No one has been able to defeat me because I was already defeated. I was defeated from the very beginning. It was difficult to win over me because I never wanted to win.” He told them, “If you think you will understand my secret, you are mistaken. Your very desire to win will become your defeat. The craving for success becomes failure in the end; the over-desire for life becomes death in the end; the obsession with being healthy leads into illness. Life is very strange: that which we demand most intensely is exactly what we lose; that which we do not demand, comes on its own. In truth, our not demanding means it is already given.”

I will not say Krishna wins because he is very powerful, because then we are back to the old law of power: the big fish eats the small fish. In that there is nothing special about Krishna. If the demons had been more powerful, they would have won. That reduces everything to a mathematics of power, like weights on a scale—the heavier side goes down. Where then is Krishna’s great victory? Yet those who have interpreted Krishna’s victories so far have thought only in this way, because they have only this arithmetic.

Jesus has a saying: “Blessed are the meek, because they shall inherit the earth.” A very contrary statement: blessed are the meek, because they will be the owners of the earth.

Krishna is not at all eager to win. Children are not eager to win; they are eager only to play. Winning comes much later, when the mind has become very sick and diseased. Krishna is playing. Even when he is fighting great demons, he is in play. The demons are eager to win, and they are defeated by a humble child who has no thought of winning, who is simply playing—utterly innocent and delicate. They will be defeated.

In Japan there is an art called judo; another name is jujutsu. Keep two or three points about this art in mind—it will be very helpful. Judo is the art of wrestling, but its secret is very contrary. The rules one learns in judo for fighting are the exact opposite of our usual rules of fighting. If I fight you, I will strike you; you will defend. You will strike me; I will defend. This is ordinary fighting. The rule of judo is the opposite: I should never attack; whoever attacks will lose, because attacking expends energy. I should provoke the attack, entice the other to attack, and I should remain absolutely at ease, within myself, not moving even a little. I should do nothing—only provoke the other to attack. I should make him angry, inflame him, irritate him—and remain quiet. And when he attacks, I should not resist. When he hits me, throws a punch, I should not stiffen my body against it; I should keep the body loose and relaxed so that my body drinks in his punch.

Have you ever noticed: if you sit with a drunk in an ox-cart and the cart overturns on the way, you will be hurt; the drunk will not. Have you ever wondered what the secret is? Is the drunk stronger and therefore unhurt, and you weaker and therefore hurt? No. When the cart overturns you are sober: the moment it tilts you think, “Now I’ll be hurt; I must save myself,” and you become rigid; you tense up; your nerves and bones brace themselves against the ground in defense. You become hard. The drunk has no idea the cart has overturned—or, for him, it was already overturned; it makes no special difference. He falls, and he cooperates with the fall. He does not stiffen against the ground; he becomes one with it. A drunk falls like a sack—he just falls; that’s why drunks fall every night yet do not get injured. If you were to fall that much, you would know. Children fall every day and do not break their bones; if you fell as much, in one day everything would be ruined. Why is that? Is the child stronger? No. Even in falling, the child becomes one with the fall; he does not oppose it. He consents even while going down; there is acceptability in the very act of falling.

So the art of judo says: when someone hits you, become willing to be hit, and do not resist inwardly even a little—a very difficult art. Be willing; drink in his blow. First, do not attack at all, because in attack your energy is wasted. And when the other strikes, drink in his strike; then his energy becomes yours. That is why, in judo, a big wrestler can lose and a weak person can win—he does win.

I am not saying Krishna knew judo. All children already know judo—that is the secret of the child’s life. If Krishna could win—I am not saying all the stories are historical; I am speaking about the psychological truth within them—if Krishna could win, it was play for him: a performance, a lila, delight, fun. He was not the aggressor; he had not set out to conquer anyone. Someone else had come to win. And I maintain that if some wrestler attacks a child like Krishna, we can say this wrestler will be defeated—because to go and attack a child, inside he must already be a very defeated man. He cannot have much confidence; he has no self-trust at all. A huge wrestler goes to attack a small child—this itself is the indication that he will lose. He has already lost. He didn’t need to fight at all; from the outset he should have accepted that he is defeated. Whenever we attack someone, whenever we become eager to attack, deep down we have accepted our own inferiority before them. In truth, those who are superior attack no one, because no one appears before them as someone before whom they feel inferior and must attack. There is no need to attack. The worm of inner inferiority makes one attack.

Krishna’s being weak, a child; Krishna’s not being eager to fight; Krishna’s having no ambition to conquer anyone—this is the secret. Whether the events are historical or not is of no concern to me; I am speaking of the psychological truth. The entire philosophy of judo, the entire art of jujutsu, begins in Krishna’s life. I would say Krishna is the first master of jujutsu. No one in Japan knows it, no one in China knows it, no one in India knows it—that the secret of this man’s victories is precisely this: he does not want to conquer; for him, it is all play. In that play he becomes absorbed. The other is tense, anxious, eager to win, troubled—divided and fragmented within, falling apart—he will be defeated by himself. To defeat a child is difficult—that is the meaning.

We do not have the eyes; otherwise, everywhere we would behold the Vast. We do not have the eyes; otherwise, everywhere there is the cosmos. Krishna is only a conduit. Yashoda could see the universe in his mouth. For that matter, which mother does not see the universe in her child’s mouth? Which mother does not see the Divine in her son? It fades slowly—that is another matter. But at first it is seen! Yashoda could behold, in Krishna’s mouth, the Vast, Brahman, the universe—what every mother glimpses. But Yashoda was a mother in the fullest sense, so she could see it fully. And Krishna was a son in the fullest sense, so he could serve as the instrument. There is no miracle in this. No magic. If you could look at me with love, you too could see the cosmos. Two things are needed: the eyes that can see, and a worthy instrument—nothing more. In a tiny flower the whole world can be seen. It is indeed hidden. In every atom the Vast is concealed. In a single drop the entire ocean is contained. If someone truly sees the drop, the whole ocean is revealed.

Arjuna too could see; he was no less in love with Krishna. Such friendship is rare on this earth. In that moment of friendship, if Krishna became the instrument and Arjuna could behold, there is nothing surprising, no miracle. And it is not that it happened only once; it has happened thousands of times. That it went unmentioned or was not compiled is another matter.

What is worth understanding is this: can divine vision, once given, be taken back?

Neither can divine vision be given, nor can it be taken back. In some moment divine vision happens—and it can be lost. Divine vision is a happening. In some instant you touch that summit of consciousness from where everything is seen clearly. But to live on that summit is very difficult. It takes lifetimes to learn to live there. One has to return from that peak. As when you leap up from the ground: for a moment you are outside the pull of gravity, open to the sky, like a free bird—only for a moment. Then the moment passes and you are back on the ground. For a moment you knew what it is to be a bird. Just so, consciousness has its own gravity, its own pull, its own magnetic elements that hold it down. In some moment, some occasion, some situation, you leap so high that the Vast is revealed—for a moment. Like a lightning flash. Then you come back to earth. Certainly, you are no longer the one you were before that vision. You cannot be. For even if for a single instant you have seen the Vast, you cannot remain what you were; you have become someone else. But what was seen is gone.

It is like a dark night and lightning flashes. For a moment you see flowers, mountains—and then it is gone, dense darkness again. But now I am not the same as I was before the flash. Earlier, I did not even know that mountains, trees, flowers were there. Now I know. The darkness is thick, yet now the darkness cannot take those flowers away from me, cannot snatch those mountains from me. I have known them; they are now part of me. Whether I see or do not see, whether it is apparent or not, deep within I know there are mountains, trees, flowers. Their unknown fragrances will touch me; messages will come to me in their unknown breezes. Darkness can hide them now, but it cannot erase them from me.

No one gives divine vision. Yet Krishna seems to say, “I give you divine sight.” This creates difficulty. In truth, human language is full of tangles. We are forced to use words that are not actually alive. We have to speak in terms of giving and taking. We often say, “I give love to so-and-so.” But can love be given? Is love an object to hand over? Love happens; it is not given. Yet language says, “I give love.” A mother says, “I give my child love.” Has any mother ever given love to her child? Love has occurred. It has happened; it is not handed out. In the same way, it is only a matter of language, nothing more. No one gives and no one takes love. Love happens. It can happen, and it can be lost. Heights happen and they fade. To live on heights is difficult. Hillary and Tenzing went up Everest, planted a flag, and returned. To live on Everest is hard. Perhaps one day we will arrange to live there—then we won’t have to return; we will be able to stay. But to abide on the heights of consciousness is far more difficult. It is very hard to remain there.

Even so, it can be done. Individuals like Krishna abide there. Individuals like Arjuna leap, see, and return. The event happens; it is not a matter of give-and-take. But our language thinks in give-and-take. This creates many difficulties. We say, “We gave so-and-so our sympathy.” Who gives sympathy? It simply happens. The accurate way to put it is this: between Krishna and Arjuna at that moment, divine vision happened. Krishna became the instrument; Arjuna became the one who leapt. But how will you say this in language? In language we will say, “Krishna gave divine sight.” As I said, if I am sitting here and someone can look at me with completely open, loving eyes, something can happen. But when it happens to you, you too will say, “You gave it.” But where am I the giver! Perhaps, to speak in your language, I too would say, “You received it from me.” But what can anyone receive from me!

There is a word in chemistry you should understand: catalytic agent. A catalytic agent is that in whose presence something happens—though it does not participate in the reaction. For example, if we want to combine hydrogen and oxygen to make water, the presence of electricity is required. Without electricity in between, hydrogen and oxygen will remain separate; they cannot combine. Even the lightning that flashes in the sky does so for this very reason; otherwise the hydrogen and oxygen in the sky could not become water. It is because of that flash that clouds can form water. Yet, investigate as much as you like, you will not find that electricity contributes anything of its own. It contributes nothing. It does not “do” anything to make oxygen and hydrogen combine. Nothing is spent from electricity—only its presence, just its presence, is necessary. Without its presence, it will not happen; in its presence, it will. In chemistry there are many such catalytic agents whose presence is necessary, yet every measurement shows nothing comes from them, nothing is lost by them, nothing is “done” by them.

Krishna is such a catalytic agent. And what we have been calling “guru” till now is a great misunderstanding. There are no gurus in the world—only catalytic agents. In consciousness too, events can happen in someone’s presence that perhaps would not happen without that presence. In Krishna’s presence, the event happens. Poor Arjuna will certainly say, “You gave it to me.” In Ramakrishna’s presence, something happens to Vivekananda. Vivekananda will surely say, “You gave it to me.” And if Ramakrishna does not want to get into the hassle of language, he too will say, “All right.” People generally do not wish to get entangled in such linguistic knots—except people like me. The give-and-take phrasing is serviceable. But it is not the right word, not appropriate, not precise. And we have no other word.

Ask a painter—ask Van Gogh, “This painting you made…” Van Gogh will say, “I did not make it; it was made through me.” But we will say, “What difference does it make?” It makes a great difference. And perhaps, to avoid the hassle, Van Gogh too may say, “Yes, I made it,” because the whole world saw him painting. It is not untrue; witnesses will testify that the man was painting. But Van Gogh’s inner being says, “I did not make it; it happened through me. It was a happening, not a doing. It arose from within me. I did not paint it; it was made to be painted through me. I was only present, only a witness.”

So the event of divine vision that happened between Krishna and Arjuna did not happen just once; it has happened many times—between Buddha and Moggallana, between Buddha and Sariputta, between Mahavira and Gautam, between Jesus and Luke, between Ramakrishna and Vivekananda—thousands upon thousands of times. There is no miracle in it. Miracles do not happen in this world. Ignorance does not understand and so it calls it a miracle. All so-called miracles are born of ignorance. Miracles cannot be. Whatever is happening is truth, is fact. In this world everything is factual, everything is true. Only when we fail to understand, it becomes a “miracle.”

You ask whether the divine vision is panic-inducing—like Arjuna, who got frightened. It can be. If there is no prior preparation, even sudden good fortune can make one panic. A lottery win will show you. Poverty rarely kills people; if sudden wealth crashes down on someone, he may just die of it.

I keep telling a story. A man won the lottery. His wife was very anxious, because all at once they had won five hundred thousand rupees. She was scared and thought, “My husband has just gone to the office—he’s a clerk—he’ll return, and for him even five rupees are hard to come by. Five hundred thousand! Who knows if he can take it?” There was a church nearby, so she went and told the priest, “I’m in great difficulty. My husband will be home soon, and I have to give him a very dangerous piece of news: we’ve won five hundred thousand in the lottery. What if the shock to his heart is too much?” The priest said, “Don’t worry, I’ll come.”

The priest came and sat down. The wife asked, “What will you do?” He said, “This happiness has to be given in installments, in pieces. Let your husband arrive. I’ve made a plan.” The husband came, and the priest said, “Do you know? You’ve won fifty thousand in the lottery.” He thought, start with fifty thousand. If he can handle that, we’ll say it’s a hundred thousand. If he can take that too, and we see he doesn’t die, we’ll make it a hundred and fifty thousand, and so on. But the clerk said, “Fifty thousand? Are you serious? If I’ve got fifty thousand, I’ll give twenty-five thousand to the church.” The priest had a heart attack right there. “Twenty-five thousand!” he gasped. “What are you saying?” Those twenty-five thousand fell on him all at once.

What happened to Arjuna was very sudden. What happened to Sariputra or Moggallana was not sudden; there was great prior preparation. For those who are traveling on the path of meditation, the experience of the divine will never be panic-inducing. But for those who have not undertaken any journey toward meditation, the initial taste of divinity can be very frightening, very shattering. Because it is so sudden and so blissful that both together become hard to bear. So sudden, so intense, that the heartbeat can stop, pause; the life-breath can be thrown into turmoil. Sorrow never startles us so much, because sorrow is our habit; we are always prepared for it. We suffer it daily. From morning till night we live in sorrow. We are reared in sorrow and grow up in it. Sorrow is our way of living. So even if the greatest sorrow arrives, within two or four days we manage and return to our groove. But happiness is not our way of life. If even a small happiness comes, our night’s sleep is lost, our peace is gone. And what descended upon Arjuna was not ordinary happiness; it was bliss. And it descended in a single instant, with great intensity. He panicked and cried out, “Stop! Take it back! This seeing is beyond my capacity!” It was natural—completely natural. It’s amusing, but that’s how it is.

In this world there are many strong people who can bear the greatest sorrows; very few are strong enough to bear great happiness. We pray for happiness, but if it were to come all at once, we would find ourselves crying, “Enough, stop! I can’t bear this—take it back.” That is why God, too, gives happiness in installments—moment by moment, slowly, with difficulty; you must weep much, shout much, ask much, and slowly it comes. And when, in a moment of great intensity, it happens all of a sudden, it can indeed be panic-inducing.

This too needs to be understood.
What appears to us as killing is not killing for Krishna. Whoever understands the Gita will be able to see it. What looks to us like killing is not killing for Krishna—that’s one. From Krishna’s side, no one is killed, nor can anyone be killed. Then what is Krishna doing? Yet we see that he killed some demon, some Putana, someone or other.

To understand this, we have to go a little deeper and also keep in mind a few principles that lie beyond the ordinary understanding. If we grasp it in the precise language of the full science of dharma, it means simply this: the setup of a particular demon or evildoer was dismantled—the whole web of that person’s samskaras, their body, their mind, was dissolved. And the soul within was freed from its old mesh of habits and samskaras. In the terms of dharma, that is all. And if it becomes clear to Krishna that this person cannot be transformed with this particular body, then sending him on a journey toward a new body is actually an act of help. If this body has become so inert that change has become impossible within it, it will be easier if a new body is obtained. Like this: if you had to send a seventy-year-old to primary school, then the day science has the means we too will do what Krishna did. Science is gradually acquiring those means. Then we will not enroll this old man in adult education; rather, we will want to give him the body of a new child. Because educating an adult is very difficult: his slate has so much already written on it that tracing new letters on it becomes very hard—and even if you manage to trace them, they don’t show. And the net of habits becomes so dense that to get free of that net is hard. Even when one understands, the net of habits keeps pursuing; even when it is clear in the mind, the net of habits keeps pursuing.

That is why it is so striking that Ravana, dying at Rama’s hands, could offer thanks. Those who died at Krishna’s hands could also give thanks. From the very depths of their inner being, gratitude arises: a net has broken, a mesh has been destroyed, and a new journey can begin again from the A-B-C. But to us it will only appear that he killed that man. From my side I would say: he gave that man a new life, a fresh beginning. He restarted his journey from the A-B-C. He gave him a white, clean slate.

In Krishna’s reckoning, or in mine, no one dies. There is no way to die. This does not mean you should set out to commit violence and start killing anyone. Yes, the day you could be permitted to kill would be the day you have truly realized that no one dies. But remember, on that day your own readiness to die must be just as complete—only then will it be known that understanding has happened. Krishna displays that readiness in full. Again and again he steps into the jaws of death. That is the touchstone. As a small child he grapples with a terrible serpent; as a small child he clashes with mighty demons. What message is he giving? Only this: no one dies. Death is the only untruth—the only illusion. The only maya: that which is not, yet appears to be. If death is untrue, then we can even feel the need to change the body.

Consider it this way. One of your kidneys is damaged and the doctor removes it and grafts another kidney—no problem. In one sense, your body has been changed. Your heart is damaged and a different heart, even a plastic one, is implanted—in one sense, your body has been changed. For now we can change parts, but sooner or later we will be able to change the whole body; there is no great difficulty in that. Until Krishna’s time, science had not developed to the point where he could tell a scientist, “Change this demon’s body.” One had to hand it over to nature: sever the head and hand him to nature—“Change it.” In the future it may become possible that if we find a criminal, a chronic criminal, someone who cannot be changed by any means, we won’t punish him; we will transform his entire body. This too could happen tomorrow in humanity’s laboratory. Only then will we fully understand Krishna; before that it is very difficult to understand, because we don’t yet have sufficiently clear facts.

Therefore I do not accept that the wicked were annihilated; I say they were transformed. They were only sent on the journey of transformation. They were returned to nature’s laboratory, to nature’s workshop—with a request: kindly give them a body again, eyes again, a mind again, so that their new journey can begin afresh.

It does not change by itself. But if one gets the chance to die at the hands of a man like Krishna, it makes a great difference. Not everyone gets that; it comes as the fruit of great merit.

Ordinarily, it does not change. When a person dies, only the body changes; nothing else within changes. But to die at the hands of a man like Krishna is a tremendous event, because a catalytic agent is present. In the presence of such a man, this event of your dying is taking place, and the moment your body drops, the subtlest web of rays that spreads from that man’s being will be absorbed into you; you will catch it, you will drink it in. The body that was obstructing your meeting with Krishna will be removed from between, and then meeting Krishna becomes easy. In that meeting, much will happen. For Arjuna, that meeting happens just so, because Arjuna can leap outside the body.

In love we leap outside the body. In enmity we do not leap outside the body; we sit inside it, turning it into a fortress. That is the difference between love and hatred. If I love you, and you love me, then in the moment of love we leap beyond each other’s bodies and meet where bodies do not meet. But if I hate you, then both of us turn our bodies into forts, into citadels, and sit inside. Then we do not come out of the body at all. Your body appears to me, my body appears to you; at most our meeting can happen only on the plane of the body—nowhere else. But in love we leap beyond the body.

Arjuna does not need to be killed in order to be transformed, because he is filled with love. Someone else may need to be killed to be transformed, because he is filled with hatred; his fortress has to be demolished. Then he will come out of the body. And the same moment will be created that, with Arjuna, happens without killing. With a wicked person it is brought about by killing. But Krishna’s compassion is equal for both; there is no difference in it.

But, as I said, this will go a little beyond understanding. So don’t try to understand it; listen—and forget it.

Marshall McLuhan is a remarkable thinker. His statement, “the medium is the message,” is very precious. It has not always been understood this way. It has been understood that the message is one thing, the medium another; the message is expressed through the medium, but the message is not the medium, and the medium is not the message. A dualistic outlook always creates such separations. The dualist mind splits everything into two: it says body is separate, soul is separate; the body is the medium, the soul the message. It says movement is separate, the mover is separate; light is separate, the light-bearer is separate; the world is separate, God is separate.

Exactly this dualistic outlook has operated regarding expression and the medium of expression. I call Marshall McLuhan a nondualist—whether he knows it or not, I do not know; I call him a nondualist. For the first time he declares nonduality with respect to the relation between medium and message. He is saying that what you say, and the way you say it, and the path, the method, the medium through which you say it—these are not two things; they are one. To understand this, a few things will have to be seen.

A sculptor makes a statue. The sculptor is separate, the statue is separate—so it seems clear to us. The statue is being made and the sculptor is making it. Then the statue is finished; the sculptor stands apart and the statue stands apart. Only a very deep nondualist could say the sculptor and the statue are one. Great difficulty would arise: our eyes will not bear witness, our hands will not agree; our mind, our intellect will say, “What madness! The sculptor and the statue are separate. Tomorrow the sculptor will die and the statue will remain.”

Very deep eyes are needed to say: how can the sculptor die so long as the statue remains? Very deep eyes are needed to see that however far the sculptor goes, how can he really go far? Space is no longer the relationship. Now there is an inner unity, an identity between the two that will remain to infinity; it cannot be erased. But it is difficult to see this with the sculptor, so let us leave that example and take the dancer—and that will bring us closer to Krishna.

A dancer is dancing. Are the dancer and the dance two, or one? Here it is much easier. Separate the dancer and the dance is lost; separate the dance and the dancer is no longer a dancer—he is an ordinary person. The dancer and the dance are one. The flute and the flautist are one. The song and the singer are one. Nature and the divine are one. What is said and the medium through which it is said are one.

In many things it will be easier to see this because even our gross eyes can recognize it: the dancer and the dance are one. But if the outlook is very dualistic, even here we can split in two. We absolutely can, because the dance is an outward manifest act, and the dancer is an inner hidden life. Life is not dancing—life stands within the dance; the dance is happening outside. The dualist can say the dancer can, if he wishes, watch his own dance, be a witness; then they will be two. What appears two can be one from a deeper vision; what appears one can, from a shallow vision, be split into two.

But the flute is being played. Where is that point at which the lips of the player and the flute are separate? And if they truly are separate, how can the lips play the flute? A gap would arise between them, a space left in between; the lips would be apart, the flute would be apart—how would they join? How would they be one? If the notes are born from the lips, how will they reach the flute? No—flute and lips only appear separate. If we understand rightly, the flute is the extended form of the lips, an instrumental extension, stretched further, spread further.

Understand it another way—one McLuhan would enjoy. There is a telescope; we put it to the eye and look at the sky. Stars we could not see with the naked eye become visible through the telescope. Are the telescope and the eye separate? Or should we say the telescope is the eye’s extension? Science has extended the eye; joined to the telescope, the eye has become larger. When I touch you with my hand, am I touching you, or is my hand touching you? It looks as if my hand is touching you. But is there any gap between my hand and me? Any difference, any interval, any place where I end and my hand begins? No—my hand is my extension. And if I take a stick in my hand and touch you with the stick, you might say, “Now you are not touching me.” Even then I am touching you—the stick is a further extension of my hand. When I speak to you on the telephone, still my lips are speaking; the telephone is only a scientific extension of my lips. If we look this way, when I see stars through the telescope, the telescope is an extension of my eyes. But why should the stars be separate from my eyes? The fact that I can see the stars means there must be some inner relationship between the stars and my eyes—otherwise how could I see? I cannot see the stars with my ears; I cannot hear music with my eyes. There must be some attunement, some link, some harmony between the eye and the stars—some interrelationship, some intimacy. So not only is the telescope my extension; the stars are also an extension of my eyes. Or, from the other side, the eye is the extension of the stars. Then nonduality becomes visible; then things appear to us as one; then we see one inner spread through all things; and then all becomes one. Then the medium is the message; then the medium is the message and the message is the medium.

So you ask rightly: are Krishna’s flute and the notes played upon it not prayers addressed toward the divine?

I would not call it prayer, because a man like Krishna does not pray. To whom would he pray? In prayer, a little distance remains. In prayer, there is a little separation: the supplicant is other than the one to whom the supplication is made. Prayer is duality. It is good to understand this a little.

Prayer is duality. No—while playing the flute Krishna is not in prayer, he is in meditation. Meditation is nonduality. And that is the difference between the words prayer and meditation. Prayer is the search of the dualist: I am here, God is there; I make my petition. Meditation is the state of the nondualist: there is no God there, there is no “me” here; between the two, all is.

So Krishna’s flute is not a song raised out of prayer; it is a note rising out of meditation. It is not a prayer addressed to some God; it is a thankfulness offered to oneself.

Self-congratulation.

Self-congratulation: gratitude expressed toward one’s own being. It is a sense of grace, it is gratitude—not prayer. It is a feeling of benediction, an ahobhaava, because in prayer the feet can never be as free as they are in ahobhaava.

In prayer, hesitation and fear remain. In prayer, fear and desire remain: will the prayer be heard or not? Doubt remains: is there anyone to hear the prayer or not?

In gratitude no question remains. Whether anyone hears or not—there is no question. Whether anyone weighs it or not—there is no question. Whether anyone will accept it or not—there is no question. It is addressed to no one. Meditation is unaddressed; there is no name or address upon it. It is a direct feeling of grace offered to the whole. Let the sky hear, if it hears; let the flowers hear, if they hear; let the clouds hear, if they hear; let the winds carry it, if they carry it; if they do not, let them not. There is no desire behind it. There is no end to it. The thing is complete in itself. The flute has been played—finished. Krishna has offered his heart—unaddressed. It is not a petition to anyone; it is pure offering.

That is why Krishna could play this flute in such bliss. Meera could not dance with that much bliss. Meera is not in meditation; she is in prayer. For Meera, Krishna stands there as the other. However near, he is still other. However close, still far. However much, still not one.

Therefore in Meera’s dance there is not the freedom that is in Krishna’s dance. In Meera’s anklets there is a slight sound of dependence. In Meera’s bhajans there is sorrow, pain. In Krishna’s flute there is nothing but bliss. In Meera’s singing there are also tears—the singing is addressed, after all! There is an address written upon it: will it reach or not, will he hear or not? Who knows if a reply will come or not? She has made the bed ready; the petition has been sent; the waiting continues. Behind Meera’s singing there is a goal. Behind Meera’s singing there is a longing, an aspiration. Hence there are tears in Meera’s eyes; there is waiting in Meera’s mind; fear whether the aspiration will be fulfilled or not; trembling about it.

There is no trembling in Krishna’s mind. These are notes risen from meditation, not inspired toward some God, but arisen from the divine itself—vast toward the infinite, unaddressed, with no name or address. Krishna is not playing the flute for anyone; he plays it without cause. Or he plays it because there is no cause left to do anything else—now only the flute can be played.

Ordinarily we connect the flute with ease. We say, “So-and-so is playing the flute of peace.” In truth, the flute means a man is at ease. A man is at ease; now, except for playing the flute, nothing remains to be done. It is a gratuitous act, a purposeless act—there is no result to it. Nothing comes, nothing is gained. But something has already been gained; something has been found—that overflows and pours.

No, I never say that. I never say that prayer is a state of mind. I say: prayerfulness is a state of mind. Prayerfulness. Not prayer, but prayerfulness. Not prayer, but being prayerful.

A man praying in the morning—that is one thing. Another man gets up, sits, walks, and is prayerful. Even when he puts on his shoes, he is prayerful. Even when he picks up and sets down a shoe, he does it as he would place an image of God. That man is prayerful. He stands by a flower on the roadside as he would stand if God himself were before him. This man is prayerful; he is never “doing prayer.” He has never “done” prayer. I never call prayer a state of consciousness. Prayerfulness—a prayerful heart—that is a greater matter. A prayerful heart means it becomes meditation; then no difference remains.

Those who pray are precisely those who are not prayerful. How would the prayerful pray? He lives prayer; he is prayer. He does nothing else, and he cannot do anything else. The one who prays is the one who is doing many other things as well—he runs a shop, he hates, he gets angry, he does the marketplace—and among his big to-dos prayer is one more item. He does that too. But the prayerful one—if he runs a shop, that too is prayer.

Now Kabir: Kabir is weaving cloth. Someone asks him, Why are you busy weaving cloth now? He says, This is my prayer. He says, When I walk, that is my meditation; when I get up, that is my meditation; when I eat, that is my meditation; when I weave cloth, that is my meditation. He says, “Sadho, sahaj samadhi bhali”—O seeker, effortless samadhi is best. Whatever I do, that itself is samadhi; that is my meditation, that is my prayer. Kabir goes to the market to sell his cloth, dancing as he goes. Customers come to buy, and he tells them, Ram, I have never made such a fine thing before; into its every thread I have woven prayer. He addresses the buyer as Ram. Now, for him there is no buyer, no seller. Here Ram is the maker and Ram is the wearer. Here Ram is the weaver, and Ram is what is being woven.

This state is prayerful; it is prayerfulness. That is why no one ever saw Kabir “doing prayer”—as if he went to a mosque and shouted the azan; or went to a temple and cried, O God! Rather, he keeps saying, Is your God deaf that you shout so loudly? O mullah, why do you shout so loudly? Is your God deaf? For we find, without shouting, that he hears; without our saying, that he understands. Why do you make such a racket? Has your God gone deaf? So Kabir makes fun of all those who are engaged in prayer. And this man can make fun because he is prayerful; otherwise he could not. So I speak of being prayerful; I do not speak of prayer.

All the things connected with Krishna’s personality carry deep symbolic meaning. They must. Whatever is associated with a person like Krishna cannot be without value. It may even be invaluable. But even if we can grasp its value, that is already much; to understand the invaluable is a little difficult.

Krishna’s Panchajanya, his conch, carries great symbolic meaning. Man has five senses, five gates. Through these five gates man proclaims himself. The entire proclamation of his life is made through these five gates—through his eyes, his nose, his ears, his mouth. The five senses are the five gates of our relationship with the world. And when the storytellers say that Krishna blew the Panchajanya, the whole meaning is simply that in the war he was present totally, with all his five senses. Nothing more than this. The war was not one activity among others for him. For him nothing was just a task. As Kabir went to the market to sell cloth—he went whole, entirely—so too, by blowing the Panchajanya Krishna proclaims: I have come into the war wholly. I have left nothing behind. He never moves leaving something of himself behind. Wherever he is, he is there in his entirety. Thus, as the symbol of the five senses, he blows the Panchajanya and declares: with all my senses I am present here. It is the announcement of his presence. All the conches announce their owners’ presence. Each conch has its own name, and each one’s blowing is his own proclamation. Every conch has its own tone, and each conch is related to the inner personality of its bearer. But Krishna’s conch is beyond comparison. No one else there is present in totality; only he stands there totally. And the amusing thing is: he alone is not present there to fight. Non-committed.

Yes, the non-committed one stands there. The truth is: only he whose being has no commitment can stand there whole. If there is commitment, you will stand there incomplete. In commitment something or other gets left behind; at least the one who commits is left behind—he remains behind. One can be total only when one is uncommitted. When there is no commitment at all, then there is no issue; we are whole, there is no reason not to be. Therefore Krishna has not come there to fight, yet he is present in the whole war. And his Panchajanya announces that this man is present here in his entirety. The news of total presence comes through the symbol of the five senses that is the Panchajanya. He is present in the war—but not present to wage war. It simply means that he has not come with a fixed resolve. There is no decision in his mind to fight. He has no purpose in the war, nothing to gain from it; he has no personal relation with the war. He is no-party. Who wins, who loses—it makes no difference to him. He has no stake, no self-interest. And yet a moment comes in the war when he steps in and takes the Sudarshan chakra in his hand—that is the name of his discus. That name too is profoundly symbolic.

In truth, those who composed the poetry labored greatly with words. The very life of poetry is the word. And they worked on words with chisel and hammer for centuries. Now, Krishna’s discus has been named Sudarshan. It is a carrier of death, and yet it is named Sudarshan—“beautiful to behold.” Death is not beautiful to see, nor is it pleasing in form. But in Krishna’s hand even death becomes beautiful. That is all it means. We could not give the atom bomb the name Sudarshan. It is as destructive as the atom itself. Its strike is unfailing; the death it brings is certain. Once released, it returns only after killing. Where death is absolutely certain, would we still call that weapon Sudarshan? And yet it has been so named. In the hands of a man like Krishna, even death becomes Sudarshan. In the hands of a man like Hitler, even a flower does not remain beautiful. The question is not what you hold in your hand; the question is always: whose hand is it? To die by Krishna’s hand can be blissful. And on that battlefield, both friends and foes acknowledge that to die by his hand can be a moment of good fortune. Therefore even his weapon is given the name Sudarshan.

A moment comes in the war—he takes the Sudarshan in hand and leaps into battle. This is the symbol of his spontaneity, his sahaj. Such a man lives in the moment, moment to moment. Such a man is not bound by the previous moment. Properly understood, such a man has no promise. Perhaps Jaspers defined man—many definitions of man are possible. Someone says, man is a rational being. Jaspers’ definition is: man is a promising animal. Krishna is not that. He does not give promises.

“Take Gandhi then.”
Yes, Gandhi would be among the promising animals.

Krishna is not a promise-giving creature. He is one who lives in the moment. Whatever the moment brings, that is how he will live. If the moment creates such a situation, he will not restrain himself. If the moment brings war, he will enter the war. The meaning of living moment to moment—and surely only one who lives moment to moment can live free. For the one who has made promises becomes bound to the past. Bound from behind, living bound to what is behind, his future freedom grows narrower each day. And the past begins to weigh upon the future.

So Krishna steps in to fight. He had not come to fight; there was no thought of war, no such matter—yet he descends into battle. This has been a great difficulty. Those who have thought about Krishna have found it hard to understand why he entered the war. The reason is only this: such a man is not one you can rely upon. He cannot be relied upon. Such a man will live as the situation is. And you cannot say to him, “Yesterday you were like this—today you are like that?” He will say, “Yesterday is no more. Much water has flowed in the Ganga. The Ganga is where it is now. Today I am like this; and what I shall be tomorrow—nothing can be said. When tomorrow comes, then we shall know.” You cannot predict such a man. Astrologers lose with such a man. They never win with such a man. Because the astrologer foretells the future—looking at today’s man he says what this man will do tomorrow. But with Krishna astrology becomes meaningless, collapses completely. Because what Krishna will do tomorrow cannot be said at all. From today’s Krishna nothing issues for tomorrow’s Krishna. Tomorrow’s Krishna is born tomorrow. Between today’s Krishna and tomorrow’s Krishna there is no chain-like connection. Tomorrow’s Krishna will be born tomorrow; today’s Krishna was born today.

See it a little more clearly.
There are two kinds of lives. One life is chain-bound. And one life is atomic. One life is like a series, and one life is like atoms. The man who lives in a chain has a bridge between his yesterday and his today. His today arises from his yesterday. His life issues from his dead parts. His knowledge issues from his memory. His being today arises from the ashes of his yesterday. The flower of his life blooms upon his grave.

But there is another life. It is not a chain-life; it is an atomic life. In it, today’s being does not arise from yesterday—it arises from today itself. It issues from the entirety of this today’s existence. My being today does not arise from the chain-like existence of memory, from my samskaras, from my conditioning. It issues from today’s vastness, from today’s existence, from the existential present of today. It is existential. From today’s moment it arises; in the next moment it arises from that moment; and in the next it arises from that one. There is a sequence in such a life too, but it is not bridged. It issues afresh each day, each moment.

Such a man lives each moment and dies to each moment. He lives today, and he dies today. At night he sleeps—he dies to today. In the morning he lives again, he awakens again. Living each moment and dying each moment—dying to every moment—only then is he born anew each moment. Thus he is ever new and never grows old. Such a man is always young, always fresh. And his being issues from the total existence; therefore his being is bhagavat.

The meaning I give to “Bhagavan,” to God, is just this. God’s life is atomic, existential; it issues from existence, from sat—daily, every moment it arises and is. He has neither past nor future—only the present. If Krishna could be called Bhagavan, called bhagavat consciousness, called Divine Consciousness, it means nothing else. It does not mean that some God is sitting somewhere and has descended into this man. It only means that Bhagavan—meaning the Whole, the Total—this man’s being keeps arising directly from the Total. Therefore, if we go looking for consistency in such a man, we will face some difficulty. If we go looking for coherence, for a chain, we will have to ignore many things. Or we will have to force many things to fit somehow. Or we will have to cobble together some alignment. Or we will have to say, “It is lila.” When it does not fit our understanding, we will have to say, “We do not understand—it is lila, divine play.” But the difficulty and obstruction arise from not understanding serial existence and spontaneous existence—chain-bound existence and sahaj existence.

It can be written. Rama’s life can be written. He was a man of maryada—of code and restraint. There is a joke hidden in this: when it is said that Valmiki wrote Rama’s life beforehand, it only means that Rama is the sort of person whose life can be written in advance—what he will do. He is a character. What he will do and what he will not do can be fixed beforehand. It isn’t that Valmiki literally wrote it earlier. There is a big joke hidden in this incident—and this country has made profound jokes that we fail to catch. What is hidden here is that Rama’s life is so bound that a poet like Valmiki could write it even before Rama lived. Such a serial existence. About Rama you can be certain what he will do. Even before he is born, it can be said what this man will do after being born. It is not that Valmiki wrote it first; it was written later. But because Rama’s life is so serial, this joke became current in those circles that understand the meaning of a joke. It became current to say: Does Rama even have a life? He is a character. As a film is written—the script is written first, then it is played. This one was written first; its script can be written in advance. Rama’s case is all settled, certain; one can say that if Sita is abducted, what Rama will do; one can also say that after bringing Sita back from Lanka he will surely ask for an agnipariksha—the fire test. All this can be said. And even after that, even if the fire test happens, still if a washerman says, “I have doubts,” he will banish her. The whole matter is absolutely fixed. In Krishna’s case, nothing can be said for sure.

No. Martin Buber, when all is said and done, is dualistic; he is not nondual. In fact, Martin Buber’s roots lie in Hebrew and Jewish thought. So whatever Buber says is, at most, an ardent longing to create a deeper and deeper inwardness and relationship between I and Thou—to bring about such an intensity of feeling between I and You that I flows into Thou and Thou flows into I. But Buber is not prepared to dissolve the I and the Thou.

Ultimately, is he not?
No, not at all. In the very tradition from which Buber comes, there is no readiness to dissolve duality. The Jews crucified Jesus precisely because he made statements that were nondual. Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” That became dangerous. Jewish thought could not understand it. They said, this is beyond tolerance. Say whatever you like—God is above and you are at His feet. You cannot proclaim that you are God. Muslims persecuted Sufis and crucified them for the same reason—the same tradition of Jewish thought. When Mansoor said, Ana’l-Haqq—“I am God”—that became intolerable. They said that however high you rise, you cannot be God. Even Muhammad was not granted the status of God by Muslims; they said he is a messenger, a prophet, not an avatar. Because God is separate and we are separate. The highest height for us is at His feet.

It is hard to call it “Superman.” When we say, “I become Brahman,” then the “man” doesn’t remain at all—the human being disappears. When I become Brahman, only Brahman remains; the man does not remain. That is sheer transcendence; after that nothing is left. It is simply transcendence.

So, regarding Rama, it is possible. The joke is deep. But we are very serious people, and those who ponder over Rama and the like are heavily serious people; they cannot understand a joke. The poor fellows keep offering grave interpretations. The joke is simply this: “Rama, you are such a man that the poet Valmiki can write your story in advance.” That’s all—there is nothing more to it; there is no greater difficulty in you than this.

No. In a sequence-bound life, your very being will emerge from your memory. In a spontaneous life, your being will use your memory. That is the difference. In a spontaneous life you will be new every moment; if you wish, you will use memory! Memory will remain stored in the treasury of your consciousness—present, not erased; it will remain. But it will be like the basement of your house filled with many things: when needed, you take something out. That is why Buddha gave it a name; he called it agara—an abode. Smriti-agar: a storehouse, the storehouse of consciousness. A repository of consciousness, set aside. When you need it—even your spontaneous existence will need memory—you will use it. If you have to return home, you will need the memory of your home; you will use it.

That's another matter, that's another matter. What I am saying right now is this: the memory of a person living a spontaneous life will not be destroyed. Memory will remain completely fresh, fully alive and present, but the consciousness of a spontaneous life, becoming new each moment, will use it; it will be its master. In the consciousness of a chain-bound, sequential life there will be no new person; the past memories themselves will go on giving birth to the new person. The memories will become the master, and the person will become a slave.
Now, what is it you are asking—what are you asking?

Life is spontaneous at every moment. He does use memory—that is what I am saying. I am saying: in using memory he is the master. And you are not the master in using your memory; you are a slave. Memory is using you; you are not using it.

A man is sitting beside you. You ask him, “What is your community?” He says, “I am a Muslim.” Instantly you have a memory about “Muslim,” and you will apply it to this man. It has nothing to do with this particular Muslim. Perhaps in your village there was some Muslim ruffian who set fire to a temple; that has nothing to do with this poor fellow. Now you slide away and sit at a distance—because he is a Muslim. Now you have become a slave of memory; you have begun serving memory. Hindus in India will kill some Muslim, and in Pakistan revenge will be taken on some Hindu. What madness! Memory is at work. You are living out of memory—killing one person for another. What connection is there between two Muslims? What connection is there between two Hindus? But no, your memory about “Muslim” you will apply to every Muslim. You are making a great mistake. Memory is using you; you are not able to use memory. If you were, you would say, “All right, this man is X Muslim, that one was Y Muslim; that has nothing to do with him. All right, we understand only this much: you follow the same religion that that man followed. But what difference does that make!” You would not edge away; you would make no decision on that basis. You would not fix a prejudice about this man. You would see this person, understand him, and live from that understanding.

Spontaneous life uses memory. Chain-bound, mechanical life is slavery to memory.

Absolutely causeless. Absolutely causeless. This play is happening.

And when I say “the fruit of virtuous karma,” I mean only this much: in this manifested, this apparent world, whatever happens is not without cause. Even meeting Krishna in the world of events is not accidental or by chance. Nothing here is accidental. So to die by Krishna’s hand certainly cannot be accidental. In this world nothing is accidental. Whom we meet or are meeting; with whom we have fought or are fighting; with whom we are in love or loving; to whom we are friends, to whom enemies—all of it issues out of our total being, our infinite being. In this being there is no accident. In the manifest world nothing is accidental. And when in the manifest world something appears to be causeless, we start calling it a miracle—because it carries news of the unmanifest. Krishna’s very being is utterly causeless. Krishna’s relationship with Arjuna is not causeless. From Arjuna’s side toward Krishna it is certainly not causeless.

This will be a little hard to grasp.

With a person like Krishna, our relationship becomes one-way traffic. We love him. It cannot be said that he loves us; it can only be said that he is loveful. We go to him, and his love meets us. Therefore we may think he loves us. But he is simply loving. We go near him and love showers upon us. From our side, we love. But it is one-way traffic: from the other side love does not “come,” there is love. From our side it goes; we take it as if it were coming to us—that is our understanding.

From Krishna’s side, someone’s being killed is utterly causeless. But the one who is killed is not without cause—from his side there are causes. He lives in a long, chain-linked arrangement of life; his life is not a natural, spontaneous one. In truth, how could a demon’s life be natural? Or, if anyone’s life is not natural, how could it be anything other than demonic? His life is not natural; it is chained to the past—he lives out of his past. So if he dies by Krishna’s hand, that link is only an extension of the chain of his past. It issues from his past.

For Krishna it is acausal. If he does not die, Krishna is not going to go around looking for him. If Krishna is loving someone and that person is not found, he will not go around seeking him. If he appears before him, that is another matter. If no one at all meets Krishna and he is sitting alone in the forest, he will go on loving—the emptiness of the forest, that stark solitude, that desolation will go on receiving his love. It will make no difference.

All that you are saying about Krishna—describing his virtues—and it seems as if we are swept away by the current of devotion. Is it not possible that he, too, has some faults? Is it necessary that we justify every one of his acts—whether the rasa-lila, or the stealing of clothes, or saying “Ashwatthama is dead,” getting a man like Yudhishthira to lie? If we keep thinking only along this stream, it seems to me our approach will not remain very scientific.

This point is well taken. It is perfectly right to ask why we should not see a few faults in Krishna. But will the attempt to see be scientific? Will the effort to see be scientific?

No. If we decide in advance not to see faults, that is not scientific. If we decide in advance that we must see faults, that too is not scientific. What is scientific is only this: we look at Krishna and see him as he appears.

I am saying how he appears to me. If I insist that you also see him as I do, that would be unscientific. If he appears that way to you, fine; if not, fine. If faults appear to you, see them plainly; do not accept my view at all. I can only see him as he appears to me. If I try to see him otherwise, that very trying becomes unscientific—because then it becomes an effort.

A second point—also worth pondering—is this “scientific approach.” We must think a little: are all things in the world such that a scientific approach can be applied to them? Are there also some things to which applying a scientific approach would itself be unscientific? There are such things. Take love, for example: we simply cannot think about love in a scientific way; there is no means. The very existence of love is unscientific. If we think scientifically, we will be forced to deny that love exists at all; there will be no other conclusion. The very being of love is unscientific. Now the difficulty is this: either we must think about love in an unscientific manner—and I hold that that will be the truly scientific attitude regarding love, because you must think of love as it is—or else we think about love scientifically and come to the finding that love does not exist.

Let us understand it like this. As I just said, the eyes see and the ears hear. If we try to think about what the ears have heard by using the mode of the eyes, there will be trouble. The eyes will naturally declare that the ears do not see—which is fair. And the eyes cannot hear; so how will the eyes admit that the ears hear? The eyes will decide two things: first, that the ears do not see—which is correct; and second, that the ears do not hear—because the eyes themselves cannot hear—which would be incorrect.

The scientific process is such that nothing ever comes within its grasp except matter. In the eyes’ grasp nothing comes except light. In the ears’ grasp nothing comes except sound. The scientific approach, its methodology, is such that nothing comes within its grasp except matter. Then only one option remains: for the scientist to declare that nothing exists except matter.

Now the scientist is in even greater difficulty. Because, in searching for matter, he has reached a point where matter itself no longer comes within his grasp. So in the last fifteen or twenty years science has had to concede that there is something which does not come within our grasp, and yet exists. Because if we deny it, the very foundation of what does come within our grasp slips away. If they deny electrons because they do not come within our grasp, then the atom slips from our hold—because the atom is within our grasp, but it stands upon those very things that are not.

Therefore in the last twenty years science has had to bow its head and admit: there is something that does not come within our grasp, and yet is. But science will not grant it outright. It says: if not today, then tomorrow it will come within our grasp; we will keep trying to grasp it. But there are many other things. Perhaps electrons may come within our grasp one day; but it does not seem that love will ever come within the grasp of a laboratory. And if we set out to grasp love, maybe the lungs will come into our grasp, but the heart will not. Therefore scientists are not ready to admit that anything like a heart exists within you. They say: there are lungs, all that is there—don’t talk about the heart; that is poetry. They say there is no such thing as a heart.

But how shall we accept that there is no heart? In our own personal experience the heart appears. There are many moments when we do not live by the lungs, we live by the heart. We live by the lungs twenty-four hours a day, but some moments arrive that overrule the lungs and belong to the heart. And sometimes that heart becomes so important that we sacrifice the lungs for it. A man dies for love. The lungs keep life going, and a man dies for that heart which, they say, is not.

But now a man dies—what shall we do? Either we must say he did not die, that this death is false. But the man died. We have seen Majnu—crazy for the heart. Either we must say this madness is false. But even if you call it false, still it is—how will you deny it? Majnu is. He may be wrong, mad, but he is there in some way. His being, too, is. He thinks of Laila, composes poetry, sings songs, lives within; but he does live, somewhere. And by examining his lungs, Laila will not come into our grasp; but within his heart something of her keeps moving. We all examine his lungs; nowhere does Laila come within our grasp, nor does Laila’s love. We keep the lungs in view and can grasp the heartbeat, the flow of blood, the oxygen—everything comes within our grasp; one thing eludes us—the very thing for which he is ready to give up his entire lungs. That love—for which he is ready to give up breath, lungs, chest, body—does not come within our grasp. There are only two ways: either we say it is not. But how can we say that? Or we abandon the scientific mode and search for it by some other mode.

If we proceed with Krishna by the grasp of the scientific method, what will remain is a great man—who will have faults as well as virtues, good as well as bad. But remember: that Krishna will no longer be Krishna. The Krishna whose search I am speaking of is not some particular great man; I am speaking of a phenomenon, an event. This event will not be understood by a scientific grasp. And you can at least understand this much: I am not anti-science. I drag science to the very limit—often to where it does not go. Only when it is gasping, breath broken, and collapses, do I let go. Otherwise I keep pulling it to its last breath. If any accusation can be made against me, it is that of over-scientificness, not of being insufficiently scientific. I pull it very far—but what to do? A point comes where science gives up the ghost. Then there are two options: either I too stop there—but I still see open space ahead.

Many times they do. And when they become one, a very significant event occurs.
Yes, he is asking whether, sometimes, mind and heart—thought and feeling—become one.
They do. In the very depths they are one; only on the surface are they separate. Just as the branches of a tree are separate above and below they become one in the trunk. In the same way, thought is a branch of our being, and feeling is also a branch of our being. Only on the surface do they appear separate; deep within they are one. And the day we come to know that thought and feeling are one, that day science and religion are no longer two. That day science has a boundary, and there is also a realm of transcendence where religion begins.
Krishna is a man of dharma. And I am speaking of him as a man of dharma, as he appears to me. There is not the slightest insistence that you should take him that way. If even a little of how he appears to me becomes visible to you, it could prove transformative for you.
Then we will talk tomorrow.