About 40 years ago, I used to listen to one song, which became my favourite. It was a song composed by Pandit 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 lyrics:
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
The real devotees of Lord Krishna worship him as Purnavtar — the perfect incarnation of God — and they trust that when they pray to him, their prayers would be heard. Krishna means different things to different people as he is not one dimensional as any other incarnation of God — 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 Gopis. 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 the Bhagavad Gita. 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 Gita shows the way — how to maintain 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 is consciousness. And this consciousness remains available to all who are receptive to it. Krishna promised this with his famous shloka:
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.)
Man’s ego is such that it does not know how to surrender. And unless one surrenders the ego to the divine, one would not be helped by the divine.
Osho concludes: Krishna says in the Gita to Arjuna, “Fight, but fight with absolute surrender to God. Become a vehicle.” Now, to surrender means absolute awareness, otherwise you cannot surrender. Surrender means dropping the ego, and ego is your unconsciousness. Krishna says, “Drop the ego and then leave it to God. Then let his will be done. Then whatsoever happens is good.”
