FORM SOUL OF THE   THE KRISNA BHAKT DR. C.S. TRIPATHI

The Jayanti of Bhagavan Sri Krisna, also known as Sri Krisna Janmashtami, falls on the eighth day in the dark fortnight of the month of Bhadrapada (Aug-Sep). The observance of this holy day and the performance of this sacred worship to the great Incarnation is a symbol of an intensification of our soul's yearning to come nearer to God as much as possible. Bhagavan Sri Krisna is regarded as Purna-Avatara, which means the full incarnation, Avatara is 'Incarnation,' and Purna is 'the full'. He is considered to be a complete manifestation of God. The Incarnation comes to reveal the divine nature of man and makes him rise above the petty materialistic life of passion and egoism.

Lord Krisna descended on the planet earth through Devki’s womb in Dwapar Yuga. Krisna is loved by all as a child, as an adolescent and as an adult. One can love Krisna in any form. This makes it easier to focus one’s meditation on Krisna . As a child and adolescent he kills many daemons and as an adult he guides Arjuna through the battle of Kurukshetra. Krisna ’s life can be divided broadly into two periods.

At Gokul – Where he spends time with his friends as a child and Adolescent.
At Mathura , Dwarka – Where he is the ruler and the King.
Lord Krisna was great in knowledge, great in emotion, great in action, all at once. The scriptures have not recorded any life fuller, more intense, more sublime and grander than the life of Sri Krisna.

Krisna has played various roles during His stay in the world. He was Arjuna's charioteer. He was an excellent statesman. He was a master musician; he gave lessons even to Narada in the art of playing the veena. The music of His flute thrilled the hearts of the Gopis and everyone else. He was a cowherd in Brindavan and Gokul. He exhibited miraculous powers even as a child. He killed many demons. He revealed His Cosmic Form to His mother, Yasoda. He performed the Rasa Lila, the secret of which can only be understood by devotees like Narada, Gauranga, Radha and the Gopis. He taught the supreme Truth of Yoga, Bhakti and Vedanta to Arjuna and Uddhava. He had mastered every one of the sixty-four fine arts. For all these reasons He is regarded as a full and complete manifestation of God.

He ruled Mathura and Dwarka but he chose the battlefield of Kurukshetra as the place to deliver the divine message for all known as Shrimadbhagvat Gita. Did he deliver this message in Gokul? Yes, he did. How? Through his flute to Gopi and Gwal, who were using their heart to love?

Understanding the message of the Lord at Gokul was possible by only those who loved him. The love towards God was personified in the form of Shri Shri Radha Ji. Krisna is the embodiment of the beloved and Radha is the embodiment of love. The life of Krishna at Gokul revolved around this love. Radha became the master of Gita much before Arjun heard it from the Lord because in love of Krisna , Radha became a part of him. She got fused in him. Radha along with her friends used to wait for Krisna to come over and play his flute. Once it happened that Krisna got delayed. Radha and her friends kept waiting for him and ultimately Radha herself decided to dress up like Krisna and interact like him with the other friends. In the process of becoming Krisna , she focused so much on the Lord’s form that she lost her own self. She asked her friends “where is Radha?”. “Shyam, shyam ratat’ ratat’ radhe ban gayi shyam. Poochhan lagi sakhiyan se, kahna gayi radhe”.

This is the ultimate form of concentration or meditation which fuses the lover into the beloved. This is the ultimate fusion of the soul. Once the soul is fused into the beloved, there is no difference between the beloved and the lover. There is no difference between the God and the devotee. Did Radha practice meditation? No. Or, did she light the candles in the darkness like a yogi and focused on light? No? Was she a master of yoga? No. Did she perform rigorous rituals like a Tantrik to achieve the concentration? No. She did not have to do all this. She did not even know about Yoga, concentration, focus or tantra. Out of all the desires of this world she had only one desire, Krisna. She wanted to keep looking at Krisna . The senses of the body are the sources of all the desires. If one desires god, he need not desire anything. Desiring Krisna freed her from all other desires and SHE CAME OUT OF THE MATRIX (MAYA). She knew Gita without knowing that she has learnt it. LOVERS DO NOT NEED TO FOCUS OR CONCENTRATE OR MEDITATE. They become embodiment of meditation through love. In modern time true love of giving and forgiving is missing and the form of vasana (getting and forgetting) is progressing. West is adopting this philosophy and we are ignoring and loosing our peace.

Sri Krisna is the ocean of bliss. His soul-stirring Lilas, which are the wonder of wonders, are its waves. The honeyed music of His flute attracts the minds of His devotees from all three regions. His unequalled and unsurpassed wealth of beauty amazes the animate and the inanimate beings. He adorns His friends with His incomparable love.

The life and message of Sri Krisna is the most stirring saga of one of the greatest saviours and propounders of Dharma and more useful in today’s material world, where we are losing our spiritual belief in the race of materialism. Lord Krisna was born in the dungeons of Kamsa who was out to kill him at the very moment of his birth, Sri Krisna's life is replete with many such mortal dangers which he successfully triumphs over. He was the unchallenged hero of his times both in terms of his bodily prowess and his intellectual brilliance. The story of how he killed, one after another, all the demonic adversaries - Pootanaa, Shakata, Agha, Dhenuka, Baka, Keshi and a number of others - even in his infancy, signalled the advent of a peerless saviour of mankind. He also liquidated the wicked kings like Kamsa and Shishupala and got vanquished the terrorizing Jaraasandha and Kaalayavana. His role in the historic Kurukshetra war in humbling the arrogant and despotic Kauravas and crowning the just and noble Paandavas, finally earned him the unchallenged position of Dharma Samshaapaka - the establisher of Dharma.

A striking feature of his character was his supreme detachment to power. Though he had personally destroyed many an evil ruler, he never coveted those kingdoms for himself. He installed the next of king as the rightful heirs in those places. And he himself remained utterly simple and unassuming till the very last. After the killing of Kamsa, he chose for himself a menial task like the receptionist at the court of Ugrasena whom he himself had installed as the king of Mathura. Himself a king and known all over the land as the mightiest and the wisest on the face of the earth, he however mixed freely with one and all. He embraced his old, poor friend Sudaama and ate with extreme relish the dry beaten rice offered by him and left him endowed with rich presents. This was indeed a wonderfully rare, inborn trait with him. He mingled freely with the cowherd boys and girls in the Nandagokula and they loved him more than their life for his charming manners and heroic exploits. He subdued Kaaliya, the dreaded seven-headed King Cobra. Once he protected the Nandagokula against the wrath of Indra himself. Indra, growing jealous of Krisna's superiority, had brought down rains in torrents and the entire area was threatened by deluge. Sri Krisna called his cowherd playmates and asked them to apply their little fingers to the adjoining Govardhana Mountain and raise it up - he himself taking the major burden. And lo, the mountain went up and acted as an umbrella over the Nandagokula. Indra conceded defeat and Krisna's unchallenged superiority was established. How beautifully the story depicts Krisna as a born organizer of men who could inspire even boys with a high purpose and for superhuman efforts!

The towering genius of Sri Krisna lies in a particularly baffling aspect of his personality. This relates to some of his apparently outrageous violations of the prescribed code of conduct. A strange anecdote in his life helps us to unravel this enigma. When all the children of Paandavas were killed by Ashwatthaama and even the child in the womb of Uttara, the wife Abhimanyu, was killed by him, Sri Krisna came forward to save the progeny of Paadavas by breathing life back into that still born child. Sri Krisna's utterance at that moment makes strange reading: "May this child come to life, if I have observed brahmacharya, if I have stuck to truth and if my wealth of virtues has never diminished." And of course, the child came to life and became the future king of Bharatavarsha, Parikshita. Sri Krisna had indeed uttered falsehoods so many times, had broken his pledges, had wives and even `married' 16,000 ladies! But still none of these actions violated the truth of his statement. The inference is that he did all these actions in a spirit of supreme detachment, motivated only with the highest goal of safeguarding Dharma.

Sri Krisna himself often affirms this role of his while he explains to Arjuna the intricacies of the highest spiritual philosophy. At one place he says that he was engaged incessantly in worldly actions only for the welfare and sustenance of society, though he himself had no need or desire to be satisfied by the society. On another occasion he assures that he would take birth whenever Dharma declines and Adharma rises its ugly head. He declares his role as the protector of the good and the holy and the destroyer of the unholy and the wicked, and as the establisher of righteousness.

Sri Krisna personified in himself all the various Divine Paths - the Bhakti, the Jnaana and the Karma to reach the highest goal of God-realization. And his personal example gave authority to the great gospel he preached to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. It is said of Bhagavadgita, "The Upanishads are the Cow, Krisna the milker, Partha the calf, and nectar of Gita, the milk." No other scriptural text propounds all the various paths to Divinity in such a profound and yet so concise and easily intelligible manner to the commoner as the Bhagavadgita. The setting of the Gita is also wonderfully unique, Kurukshetra representing the eternal battlefield in the human soul.

With all his superhuman qualities and achievements, Sri Krisna never appeared distant to any of his fellow human beings. In fact he was dearer to them than their own nearest kith and kin. He was ideal in all his human relationships - a darling son to his parents, an endearing friend and comrade, a devoted disciple, a loving husband and a trusted brother. The shadow of his greatness never marred these bonds of the heart.

After preaching the sublime teachings of Bhagavadgita and manifesting his awe-inspiring Vishwaroopa to Arjuna, he remained his bosom friend as ever before. That was his unique trait even as a tiny tot. Once, Yashoda - the foster-mother - learnt that her child Krisna had eaten mud. She was alarmed and asked him to open his mouth. But when Krisna did so, she was stunned to see illimitable universes dancing in the little cavity of his mouth. However, her shock of coming face to face with Divinity Incarnate did not last long. Again, the child Krisna cast his spell with his mischievousness, and remained the adored child of Yashoda as before.

Sri Krisna Jayanti, therefore, signifies not merely the birth of a great and Divine Teacher of mankind in some distant past but the lighting of the spark of the Divine Power in every one of us, which spurs us on to play our dynamic part in this world of practical and hard realities with a sense of high spiritual purpose. For the benefit of youth we will review some western perspectives on the philosophy of Lord Krisna in the form of movie Matrix.

MATRIX I is the movie that is based on this concept in westernized form and on the philosophy of Lord Krisna about Maya. Matrix is everywhere and it does not allow us to see or face the reality. We do not wish to see ourselves as the slaves of our senses and we go after something unreal. What is real? Something communicated by our senses. Once freed from the matrix, we come to know the reality. Matrix can be compared with Maya. In Hinduism, the word “Maya” is given to something “unreal”. In fact matrix is constituted by “Moha” or attachment. If I have the feeling that whatever I have is given by God and I can enjoy my life through the materialistic belongings, I am out of the matrix. The moment I think that everything is mine and must remain with me forever, I get into the matrix. In the movie Matirx, Morpheus brings Neo out of the Matrix. To meet Neo he enters the matrix, not alone but with a team member. See any similarities? To get the people out of Maya, Lord Krisna comes to the planet earth, not alone but with his brother Baldau “incarnation of Shesh Nag”. A human being is so engrossed into the pleasures received by his senses that he does not want to look beyond even if he is given a chance. Neo does not want to believe Morpheus and wishes to remain in the matrix. Because Matrix is superficially pleasant. We all wish to remain in the dream which is life. Our senses give us pleasure and we do not wish to sacrifice it. But at the same time we forget that the ultimate pleasure or the joy comes from God which is called “Anand” or “Paramanand” (supreme joy). Once this stage of Parmanand becomes permanent our heart gets converted to Sat Chit Anand and we become a part of Sachchidanand.

What is this joy? Who can be overjoyed? To achieve the supreme pleasure, we have to get rid of sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures lead to selfishness. Pleasure arrived by helping others will lead to “Parmarth” or selflessness. Getting pleasure through other’s satisfaction leads to love because love is defined as the state of mind when you care more for someone else than yourself. Love leads to joy and bliss. So, the one in love with the humanity can be truly blissful. Bliss comes by the grace of God. Our senses cannot make us blissful. They give us a temporary feeling. The eternal love leads to eternal joy. Krisna says it in Gita that one is given this choice, either to be in the matrix or to come out of it. In the movie Matrix, Morpheus gives two pills to Neo. Red and Blue. The choice is Neo’s. One pill leads back to the Matrix and the other to the reality. After the discourses in the battlefield, the Lord gave the choice to Arjuna. He said that I have done my job and showed you the path. The choice is yours to follow it or not. We as the human beings are given this choice.

Spiritual development is possible in human body because our spine is vertical. In this body, it is easier to enhance one’s consciousness and merge with the universal consciousness defined as “God”. Consciousness travels at much faster speed than that of light. It goes beyond time – “kal”. Krisna helps you in reaching that goal through love. Love leads to the ultimate concentration. Ultimate concentration leads to concentrated consciousness which works like a laser and projects itself beyond the galaxies. Once it merges with the super consciousness, it becomes omnipotent and omnipresent. It can warp the time or turn the events. Consider Krisna as Q – Krisna or quantum Krisna. But at each step of our life, he gives us the choice. Do you wish to merge with the super consciousness or you wish to remain in the matrix? Various paths to achieve bliss by selfless Karma, pure knowledge and by Love. Take this challenge and have some time for yourself on the occasion of Lord Krisna’s Birthday and start loving yourself and others, I can guarantee that your life will be blissful forever.

This is the Truth behind things, for which His life and teachings stood and which He Himself embodied in His own life. This is the message for us today, which we should try to imbibe into our lives by invoking His grace and putting forth honest efforts. As the Gita concludes, where Krisna and Arjuna are together, i.e., where Divine Grace and human effort go together, there is prosperity, victory, happiness and firm polity.

Choice is yours.

Jai Shri Krisna

The song with titles in the end of Matix III (Music by Rehman)

Asato ma sad gamaya
Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya
Mrtyor mamrtam gamaya
(Brihadaranyaka Upanishad I.3.28)

Lead me from the unreal to the Real
Lead me from darkness to Light.
Lead me from death to Immortality

May the blessings of Lord Krisna and Sri Radhaji be upon all on the occasion of Lord Krisna’s Jayanti. Happy Krisna’s Jayanti.