SECTION XXIV. KRISHNA LEELA.
This Krishna, the Lord of Absolute Love, the Seed and Soul of the Universe, comes down to this earth to serve and inspire men with His Love once in every Manwantara, once in every 71 Divine Cycles, that is, once in every 300,000,000 of our lunar years or more. Every Universe, of His countless Universes, likewise has its turn of being blessed by His visit as an Incarnation, once in a long period. This Universe of ours is the smallest of these Universes and its turn of Krishna's Incarnation comes off during the Junction Period of the Copper and Iron Ages of the 28th Divine Cycle of every Manwantara. This being the Iron Age of the 28th Divine Cycle of this Manwantara the Lord blessed this earth with His Personal Presence 5,000 years ago, His birth taking place within the appointed Junction Period.
Avatārs that come to earth to save mankind and protect the good from the bad, the Srimād Bhāgavat says, are innumerable; they are either partial manifestations or aspects of Vishnoo, "but Krishna is Lord God (Bhagavan) Himself," the Supreme Deity of whom Vishnoo Himself is the Fourth Manifestation. Nobody knows exactly when Krishna will come, for even Brahmā, the operating creator, knows it not. Brahmā only sees him for a second once in a long while, flashing through his meditation like a lightning flash. When Krishna came this last time on earth with His Second Manifestation, Sankarsana (who was born as His Elder Brother, Balarām), the time was ripe for an incarnation of Vishnoo. But as the moon and stars are covered by the effulgence of the Sun, the Avatār of Vishnoo could not appear separately, so he was merged in Krishna—the part was swallowed by the whole.
The story of the earthly career of Krishna, given in the Second Part of this book, is the story of the All-Love Krishna of Braja. This All-Love Krishna was the Krishna of Brindāban, also called Braja, the land where He played and roamed, where He went through His earthly career up to the age of eleven when He left Brindāban for Mathura. The Krishna of Brindāban is the Fullest Manifestation of Krishna, the Fullest Expression of His All-Love-Self. Hence the Krishna of Brindāban is called the Fullest Incarnation, which means All Krishna, the Krishna of All-Love. The Krishna of Mathura is called Fuller Krishna, which means three-quarters Krishna and one-quarter Vishnoo. And the Krishna of Dwārakā, half Krishna and half Vishnoo, is called Full Incarnation of Krishna.
Krishna being All Love, He knows nothing but Love, gives and accepts nothing but Love, acts nothing but Love, breathes nothing but Love, speaks nothing but Love.
The Asuras that He killed were not killed by Him, but by the Incarnation of Vishnoo which was within Him, and His part in those actions was to send the souls of those Asuras to His Absolute Love Realm, a reward reserved for His highest lovers and devotees, a kindness for enemies which Krishna alone can feel and show. Krishna has no power even to hurt a fly, for He is nothing but Love Itself, and does not know anything else but Love. This much can be said about Krishna's participation in these what seemed to be acts of killing, that the powers of Vishnoo within Him that committed them, found His Body the most perfect medium for their operations.
One word of explanation is necessary here as to who the Asuras were and how they could assume such shapes. These mentions of Asuras and demons in the Hindoo book prejudice the unknowing and unthinking Western minds against the veracity of Hindoo historians and incline them to think that ancient Hindoo history are mixed with myths and fables. A little calm and intelligent thinking ought to correct the mistakes of such hasty judgment. Modern science, too, is daily paving the way to belief in things which even a quarter of a century ago were thought absurd and impossible. Science is proving the fact of the unlimited potentialities of the human mind. Mind-force is at present the subject of all the most advanced Western scientists and philosophers. When these will succeed in discovering the laws and truths of the mental plane, as they are now doing of the material plane, no facts of Hindoo history or of the histories of ancient times will strike modern man as mythical or absurd.
The Asuras were the psychics of the ancient times. They cultivated their mind-force in order to use it for personal aggrandizement. They were Yogis, but their Yoga was divorced from pure spirituality, because their object was not spiritual. All they wanted was power by which to overpower others and keep them under subjection for their own earthly benefit. Some of them were exceptions to the rule; they cultivated their Sāttwic powers to some extent along with the development of Rājasic powers. These became great heroes in battles and some of them made very good kings. Others developed merely Rājasic and Tāmasic powers of the mind and became tyrants and oppressors of all good people. Wherever and whenever the earth groaned under the burden of their sins, partial incarnations of Vishnoo came down to earth to destroy them and bring peace and goodwill among mankind once more. But those Asuras who had only their Tāmasic (dark) mind-force developed, were the lowest of them all. Their minds were all dark and their deeds were all black. Their natural inclination was to do mischief to people for the sake of the mischief itself. These were called demons. These demons can be found reborn among us all, in the most advanced centres of civilization, but they are now shorn of their former psychic force. The mind's natural inclination, however, is still in them. They take to external means to satisfy this inclination of killing or hurting or doing mischief for the sake of the act itself. Formerly their dark mental powers were their most potent weapons. Through those psychic powers they could transform themselves into any shape they concentrated upon, and if they failed to assume the form of a saint or a god, it was because they could not grasp the idea of the personality of such pure souls with their impure minds. To assume the form of a beast was the easiest thing for them, because they were nothing but human beasts in their nature. They could also assume elemental forms too, such as a whirlwind, etc., as in Krishna Leelā. The modern Asuras cannot do any such thing because their mind-forces are scattered and distracted. The chief cause why people generally cannot be a high yogi or a black-psychic demon is the density of Rāja and Tama that at present pervades Nature, of which all beings are parts and products, which disturbs concentration.
The holding of the hill on the point of the little finger of the left hand, as Krishna did, was not a very great deed for Krishna to perform. This act can be performed by some of the Lords of Yoga. The Yogi, when he becomes an adept, inherits the partial attainment of the eight great powers (siddhis), which are in their fully normal states in Vishnoo and in lesser degree in those who remain merged in the Essence of Vishnoo and are sent therefrom to earth to serve mankind as Avatārs. These powers are (1) Animā, the power of becoming as small as an atom; (2) Mahimā, the power of becoming increased in size; (3) Laghimā, the power of becoming as light as desired; (4) Prāpti, to possess the power of the gods who are the presiding deities of the senses; (5) Prakāmya, the power of enjoying and sensing all objects seen or unseen; (6) Ishitā, or power over the forces of the Divine Will and over the lower forces of other beings; (7) Vasitā, non-attachment to objects and (8) Kāmavasāyitā, the power of attaining all desires.
Besides these the high Yogi may attain to ten other powers of the Cardinal Attributes: (1) Cessation of hunger and thirst; (2) Hearing from a distance; (3) Seeing from a distance; (4) Moving the body with the speed of the mind; (5) Assuming any form at will; (6) Entering into any other body; (7) Dying at will; (8) Playing with celestial damsels; (9) Attaining wished-for objects; (10) Power of irresistible command.
Five other minor powers are (1) Knowledge of the present, the past and the future; (2) Control over the Opposites, such as heat and cold, joy and sorrow, etc.; (3) Knowledge of another's mind; (4) Suspending the action of fire, sun, water, poison, etc.; (5) Invincibility.
These powers serve the Lord in His Leelās as humble slaves, whether he is conscious of them or not. Leelā means action of God Incarnate. The Rash Dance with the Gopis is the greatest Leelā of Krishna. It was the manifestation of the greatest might of His Love, the might possessed by the Supreme Being alone, by the Lord of the Lords of Yoga, by the Supreme Source of Yoga itself. Gopi means a milkmaid. But the milkmaids of Braja were extraordinarily spiritual beings born as milkmaids to serve the Lord in His Earthy Leelā. The chief of the Gopis is Rādhā, the Consort of Krishna in Glory and on earth. "Rādhā" means Adoration or Love-Devotion. Rādhā is the embodied manifestation of Krishna's Love-Principle, the Energy of His Soul, the Principle in Krishna which sets His Love into motion. Rādhā is inside of Krishna as this Principle of Love-Energy and she is outside of Krishna as the embodiment of that Principle. Rādhā is the First Active Principle of Nature, the Active Love-Principle which unconsciously gives birth to creation and pervades it as the purest spiritual energy. Like Krishna she is above and out of the reach of the creative Cardinal Attributes. Krishna is the Soul. Rādhā is the Heart-Soul and her eight chief companions are the Eight chief Devotional Aspects, and the other Gopis the inclinations and minor attributes of Her Ensouled Mind. Rādhā and her chief companions are Krishna's constant companions in Goloka. They came with Him from Glory and were born as Gopis in Brindāban. Other Gopis who were in the Rash Dance were incarnations of Vedic Hymns and Truths which, as I have ere now explained in the cases of Nature's attributes and forces, are entities in Nature, the form-centres of Nature's purest sentiments and conceptions. Other Gopis were incarnations of goddesses, the presiding deities of Nature's spiritual forces and attributes, while others were incarnations of some of the highest illuminated male Saints (Rishis) who had prayed for ages and ages in every birth to serve the Lord personally with the tender devotion of a loving woman. The love of these Gopis for Krishna was absolutely selfless. They loved Him for the sake of the spontaneous, causeless love they felt for Him and which His Personality inspired in them, for Krishna was that Causeless Love Itself. The Rash Dance represented the vibrations of the Soul-absorbed Mind, vibrations which filled the universe with the nectar of Bliss and destroyed its Karma of a whole Kalpa, the Karma which formed its Prarabdha for the time.
Krishna danced separately with each Gopi. Each Gopi had her own Krishna beside her. One Krishna became as many as there were Gopis and yet it was the Self-Same Krishna. The One Soul played like So Many Souls with so many hearts and yet the hearts saw but that One Soul. Each Gopi saw only her own Krishna and was unconscious of any other, as she danced, absorbed in that Krishna, round and round, arms round necks, eyes into eyes, all-forgetting, the world forgot, round and round in the whirl of ecstasy, afloat on the waves of Love that is Bliss—round and round with that One Krishna, the All-in-All of the heart and existence—round and round, the lover and the loved, the little soul twining round the Great Soul, the Great Soul pouring Its Nectar into the little soul.
Ignorant writers and prudish religionists of the West have dared to call this Gopi-Leelā of Krishna shocking to all religious sense, in the face of the fact that two hundred and odd millions of Hindoos of the present day and myriads of millions of Hindoos of the past—Hindoos whose giant intellect and all-towering height of spirituality the world of to-day are beginning to wonder at—call this Leelā the most transcendental of all Divine deeds that have ever been performed on the face of the globe. According to these little critics of the greatest Avatār of the Supreme Deity, that Supreme Deity cannot possess any other sentiments of love than those of a Father and a Saviour, that God ought not to feel or show the love of a husband for his wife or of a lover for his lady-love. If this be a fact, will they answer the question as to whence has man got these sentiments, if not from his Maker of whom he is but an imperfect image? Whence has he got them if not from the Source of Creation itself, of which he is such a tiny part and product? This denial to God of the possession of a lover's sentiment implies an impertinence which God alone, out of His infinite affection for His creatures, can pardon. It only betrays the dense ignorance of these critics in regard to the origin and laws of creation and of the relations of creation with its Creator.
Nature (Creation) is the materialized Will-Force of God. The Will-Force of God is a reflection of God Himself—the objectified phases of the semblance of manifoldness of the Absolute One. God is the husband, and the Energy of His Will, Nature, is His wife. God is the Lover and Nature is His loving Lady-love. By His All-pervading Essence, the only Support and Sustenance of Nature, He clasps His Lady-love to His bosom and dances with her to the intricate steps of the music of her Laws. This is His Rash Dance in the aggregate, the Rash Dance that is being performed every moment within Nature though hidden from our outlooking physical vision. What is true of the great Universe is true also of its miniature, man. Within our heart of hearts is the forest of Brindāban in which the microscopic blue river of love, Jumnā, flows, lapping with thrills of joy the bank of the bowery lawn where Krishna—our Soul—with His Gopis—our ensouled mental aspirations—is performing His ever-favorite, never-ending Rash Dance. And we are unconscious of it all, because our mind's outer ken is employed outside of us with outer objects. If we can withdraw the mind's vision from outwards and direct it into the depth of our heart then will belief come in the Rash Dance of Krishna with its practical realization. We are then of Braja and each of us, of the enlightened inner eye, a dancing Gopi—male or female whatever we may be externally it matters not. We are all Gopis, human male or human female, we are all spiritually feminine, for Krishna alone is the One Male and we all, particles of. Nature, are all female. We are all the lady-loves, the brides and wives of our One Husband, Lover and Beloved—Krishna. In the working out of the ever-beneficial laws of Inner Nature—the laws that throb for the weal of mankind—this innermost performance of Nature's constant Rash Dance with her Lord is reflected for a time upon her outer surface to fill outer Nature and mankind with the ecstasy of its supremest spirituality, the blessings of Absolute Love.
The twelve chief boy-companions of Krishna in Brindāban came with Him from Glory where they are His constant companions, while the other cow-boys were the incarnations of the gods and highly spiritual saints. The Kadamba-tree, under which Krishna usually played His flute, is a representation in physical form of the Tree of Life and the flute's dear strains the music of the soul. As Krishna and His Companions are constant, so are His Leelās (acts) constant. They can be seen now by any devotee possessed of the requisite vision.
With these words I humbly introduce the reader to the Nectar-Career of Krishna on earth embodied in the following pages. Let every reader read it with an open mind and the Nectar is sure to flow into his soul through that mind.