Swami Chaitanya Keerti
About 40 years ago, I used to listen to one song, which became my favourite. It was a song composed by Pt. Ravi Shankar and sung by his sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar. The song was a rare Shankar composition in the Western pop genre, with English lyrics, and was written as a love song to Lord Krishna. The melody kept haunting me for many years. Following are the word of this simple song of love:
I am missing you
Oh, Krishna where are you
Though I can't see you
I hear your flute all the while
Please come wipe my tears
And make me smile
Lord Krishna is incomparable. Hindus worship him as Purnavtar-- the perfect incarnation of God. He is not one dimensional as any other incarnation--he is multidimensional. Some poets like Surdas are delighted with Balkrishna--his childhood phase of stealing butter, playing pranks on Gopis, and his hide-seek games with them. Some poets are hypnotised by his youthful romantic stories of playing the flute to allure Radha and other Gopies. Some poets see him as the saviour of Draupadi and others see him fully involved with the politics of epic war Mahabharata. Krishna as a benevolent guide becomes a charioteer for his confused friend Arjuna, who finally becomes a disciple and wins the war. During this phase of a large-scale war, Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna gives birth to an all-time bestseller holy book Geeta. This scripture has made way into the hearts of all Hindus forever. It is an eternal song of the divine. It happened in the past but it is always meant for the present and the future. Most of the people everywhere in the world find themselves in a dilemma of this kind or that kind, and just like Arjuna, they don't know which way to go. In such moments Krishna's Geeta shows the way--how to remain in perfect inner balance in the time of vicissitudes. Krishna proved it with his own life, that's why is worshipped as Yogiraj Krishna.
Krishna happened thousands of years ago, but he belongs to the future, better to say that he belongs to eternity. What does it mean? It means Krishna is not a physical form--Krishna consciousness. And this consciousness remains available to all who are receptive to it. Krishna promised this with his famous sloka:
yada yada hi dharmasya glanir bhavati bharata abhyutthanam adharmasya tadatmanam srjamy aham ( Whenever and wherever there is a decline in religious practice, O descendant of Bharata, and a predominant rise of irreligion--at that time I descend Myself.)
In his discourses on Bhaj Govindam, Osho tells a story--how Krishna responds:
Once Krishna sat down for a meal. Rukmani was serving the food. Krishna had hardly taken the first morsel when all of a sudden he got up and ran out. But no sooner had he reached the door than he came back and sat down.
Rukmani couldn’t understand this behaviour. She asked him, “Why did you run? for what? Then why did you come back from the door? You ran as if some house was on fire and you had to extinguish it before having your meal. But then you came back as if nothing had happened.”
Krishna replied, “Yes, certainly something was on fire, but by the time I reached the door it was extinguished, so I came back. One of my devotees was walking on a street of the capital. People were throwing stones at him, his forehead was bleeding and he was calling, “Govinda, Govinda!” He was neither reacting nor trying to save himself. He had trusted himself to me entirely. So to save him I had to run.”
When one becomes helpless like that man, existence has to take care of him. When a person becomes so empty that in spite of being stoned he is doing nothing to save himself, he is not even running away and not even reacting, then the whole existence comes to save him. When there is a pit, water rushes from all sides to fill it up. Rukmani asked, “Then why did you come back?”
Krishna replied, “By the time I reached the door, he had changed his mind. He had picked up a stone in his hand. He himself was reacting so I was not needed anymore.”
God is needed when you are helpless, and in that helpless condition when “Govinda, Govinda!” is uttered by you, then that is bhajan, devotion. There is no need to say the word Govinda aloud; the inner emotion is enough. When your eyes full of love look towards the sky, when your heart is opened towards the sky and you’re making no effort to do anything from your side, that is the moment when the divine rushes towards you. If you become a pit, he is always ready to fill it up.
Osho concludes: “If you dance, the whole existence becomes a dance. It is already a dance. Hindus call it Ras-Leela, God is dancing, and around God the stars and the moon and the sun and the earth and the whole existence. The whole existence is dancing around God. God is Krishna and the whole existence is his gopis. This is the ras that is continuously going on, but one will realise it only when one learns the ways of dance, the language of ecstasy.”
