Krishna/fi

Krishna

Krishna on jumalallinen olento, jumaluuden inkarnaatio, avataara. Hän on yksi kaikkien aikojen kuuluisimmista intialaisista sankareista. Hän on valloittanut hindujen mielikuvituksen ja saanut monissa muodoissaan nämä omistautumaan hänelle kaikkialla – olipa hän sitten leikkisä, ilkikurinen lapsi, paimentyttöjen rakastaja tai mahtavan soturi Arjunan ystävä ja viisas neuvonantaja.

Krishna tunnetaan Vishnun, hindulaisen kolminaisuuden toisen persoonan, kahdeksantena inkarnaationa. Hänen tarinansa kerrotaan Bhagavad Gita -teoksessa, Intian suosituimmassa uskonnollisessa teoksessa, joka on kirjoitettu 400–100 eKr. ja joka on osa suurta intialaista eeposta Mahabharataa.

Kun osoitamme Krishnalle omistautumista mantran ja pyhän laulun kautta, avaamme rakkauden valtatien Krishnan sydämeen, ja hän avaa tien toisen pään. Hän moninkertaistaa omistautumisemme omalla rakkaudellaan ja lähettää sen meille takaisin.

Historiallinen Krishna

Jotkut tutkijat pitävät Krishnaa historiallisena hahmona, joka eli noin 650 eKr. Sanskritin tutkija David Frawley uskoo, että hindulaisissa teksteissä olevat astronomiset viittaukset sekä viimeaikaiset arkeologiset löydöt paljastavat, että Krishna eli ainakin jo 1400 eKr. Hindulaisen perinteen mukaan Krishna syntyi 3102 eKr. nykyisen aikakauden alussa, joka tunnetaan Kali Yugana – ristiriitojen aikakautena.

Nimi Krishna on peräisin sanskritin kielestä ja se tarkoittaa ”mustaa” tai ”tummansinistä”. Hänet kuvataan usein tummaihoisena – joskus sinisenä, joskus sinimustana tai mustana.

Tietoa Krishnasta löytyy useista hindulaisista pyhistä kirjoituksista. Ne kertovat yksityiskohtaisesti Krishnan elämän vaiheista, mukaan lukien hänen varhaisvuosistaan ilkikurisena lapsena ja rakastavaisena nuorukaisena. Useimmat tutkijat uskovat, että nämä tarinat ovat liioiteltuja kertomuksia historiallisesta Krishnasta. Seuraavassa on joitakin kertomusten kohokohtia.

Lapsuus ja nuoruus

Krishna syntyi Intiassa Delhin eteläpuolella. Ennen hänen syntymäänsä taivaasta kuului ääni, joka ennusti, että hän tuhoaisi setänsä, pahan kuningas Kamsan. Heti Krishnan syntymän jälkeen hänen isänsä salakuljetti jumalallisen avun turvin vastasyntyneen turvaan elämään paimenten keskuudessa.

Kamsa yritti tappaa Krishnan lähettämällä kätyrinsä ja demoninsa surmaamaan kaikki poikalapset. Mutta Krishna-vauva tappoi ihmeellisesti nämä demonit yhden kerrallaan. Lapsena Krishna kasvatettiin lehmipaimenten johtajan Nandan ja hänen vaimonsa Yasódan luona.

Sanskritin kielellä lehmipaimenia tarkoittaa sana gopa. Naispuolisia lehmipaimenia tarkoittaa sana gopi. Gopala ja Govinda ovat nimiä, jotka viittaavat Krishnaan nuorena lehmipaimenena. Gopala tarkoittaa ”lehmien suojelijaa” ja Govinda tarkoittaa ”häntä, joka miellyttää niin lehmiä kuin aisteja”. Ymmärrämme, että tämä symboloi Krishnaa kaikkien sielujen suojelijana ja myös sellaisena, joka herättää ja aktivoi henkiset aistimme.

Kirjailija David R. Kinsley maalaa kuvan Krishnasta lapsena:

Krishnan elämä viittaa jumalalliseen vapauteen. Lapsena Krishna käyttäytyy täysin spontaanisti. Hän ryntäilee lehmipaimenten kylässä vanhemman veljensä kanssa, leikkii omalla varjollaan, pyöriskelee pölyssä, tanssii saadakseen rannekorunsa kilisemään, syö multaa huolimatta äitinsä varoituksista, nauraa itsekseen tai istuu hiljaa uppoutuneena omaan mielikuvitukseensa. Krishna viettää aikaansa leikkimällä, seuraamalla jokaista mielijohdettaan, toimimalla ilman laskelmointia ja ilahduttamalla koko lehmipaimenten kylää.

Poikana Krishna piti ilkikurisista kepposista, kuten voin varastamisesta. Tämä on tarina Krishnan voivarkauksista, joka perustuu A. S. P. Ayyarin kertomukseen kirjassaan Sri Krishna, The Darling of Humanity.

[Krishnalla] oli paljon ystäviä Nandan klaanin lehmipaimenien joukossa. Gopit antoivat Krishnalle vastavalmistettua voita, mutta se ei koskaan riittänyt hänelle ja hänen ystävilleen. Joten hänellä oli tapana mennä ystäviensä kanssa gopien koteihin ja ottaa niin paljon voita kuin hän halusi ja jakaa sitä.

Monet valittivat hänen äidilleen. Äiti nuhteli häntä ja käski hänen ottaa omasta kodistaan niin paljon voita kuin halusi, mutta äiti ei antanut hänelle tarpeeksi, jotta hänen kaikille ystävilleenkin olisi riittänyt. Mutta Krishna kertoi äidilleen, että voi, jonka hän otti salaa muista taloista, maistui makeammalta!

Joskus gopit yllättivät hänet voin varastamisesta ja löivät häntä kirnumännällä. Hän otti iskut vastaan ilman värähdystäkään. Tämä sai helläsydämiset gopit katumaan julmuuttaan, ja niin he antoivat hänelle niin paljon voita kuin hän halusi itselleen ja ystävilleen. Krishna tuli tunnetuksi nimellä ”Tuoreen voin Krishna”.

Krishnan ottaman voin jäljelle jäänyt osa oli maultaan hienompaa ja erittäin kysyttyä ostajien keskuudessa. He maksoivat siitä mielellään kaksinkertaisen hinnan ja taistelivat siitä. Gopit alkoivat valittaa, jos Krishna ei käynyt heidän taloissaan ottamassa voita. Monet gopit katselivat suurella mielihyvällä oven takaa, kun Krishna ja hänen ystävänsä ottivat voita.

Ayyarin mukaan tämä symboloi sitä, että uskovat rakastavat katsella, kun Herra hyväksyy heidän uhrauksensa.

Voi on hinduille merkityksellistä. Puhdistettu voi, jota kutsutaan sanoilla ghrita tai ghee, on hindujen uskonnollisissa rituaaleissa käytettävien voilamppujen polttoaine. Hinduille ghee symboloi valaistumista ja henkistä selkeyttä. David Frawley huomauttaa, että sana Kristus, joka tulee kreikan sanasta Christos (voitelu), on johdettu sanskritin sanasta ghrita. Ja niinpä rakkaan Krishna-lapsen ja hänen ystäviensä välinen vuorovaikutus edustaa suhdetta Jumalan ja sielun välillä bhakti-joogan polulla, joka johtaa yhdistymiseen Jumalan kanssa rakkauden kautta. Kinsley selittää vertailua:

As an infant and a child, Krishna is approachable. Particularly as an infant (but also as an adolescent and lover) Krishna is to be doted upon and coddled. He is to be approached with intimacy with which a parent approaches a child.

God, revealing himself as an infant, invites man to dispense with formality and undue respect and come to him openly, delighting in him intimately. The adorable, beautiful babe, so beloved by the entire Hindu tradition, does not demand servitude, pomp and praise when he is approached. His simplicity, charm, and infant spontaneity invite an intimate, parental response.

Throughout Krishna’s infancy and youth the wicked Kamsa sends numerous demons to kill Krishna. But Krishna dispatches them all with playful aplomb. One of Krishna’s most famous encounters is his fight with the many-headed serpent Kaliya. Kinsley relates:

Kaliya lives in a nearby stream and has poisoned its waters, causing the death of many cattle. Krishna arrives on the scene, surveys the situation, climbs into a tree and leaps into the poisonous waters, where he begins to bait the monster by swimming and playing there. The enraged Kaliya emerges from his lair beneath the waters and the battle begins.

Kaliya seems to get the upper hand at first, gripping Krishna in his coils. But Krishna is only humoring him. Freeing himself from Kaliya’s coils, he begins circling the demon until the serpent’s head begin to droop with exhaustion. Seeing his chance, Krishna jumps onto the heads of the serpent and begins to dance. By rhythmically stamping his feet Krishna tramples his enemy into submission.

Battered and bloody from Krishna’s dancing, Kaliya finally admits defeat and seeks refuge in Krishna’s mercy. Krishna, at the pleading of Kaliya’s wives, grants him his life but banishes him to an island in the ocean.... The mighty child Krishna is invincible.

Krishna, playing his flute, with the gopis, ca. 1790—1800, Guler/Kangra region

Krishna and the gopis

As a youth, Krishna embodies joy, grace and the transcendent beauty that magnetizes all who behold him. He plays on his flute and the magic of its sound enchants the gopis. When the gopis hear the sound of his flute, they stop whatever they are doing and run to Krishna. The otherworldly sound of the flute even distracts the gods! Says Kinsley:

The whole creation can concentrate on nothing but the sound of the flute.... Its sound puts an abrupt end to man’s mechanical, habitual activity as well as to the predictable movements of nature.... The sound of Krishna’s flute is more than a melody. It is a summons. It calls souls back to their Lord.

The greatest love existed between Krishna and Radha, the most beautiful of the gopis. Radha is the embodiment of pure devotion and divine bliss. Krishna is everything to her. She is considered by some to be the incarnation of Lakshmi, the consort of Vishnu who vowed to be with him in all his incarnations.

Krishna’s love for the gopis and the gopis’ love for him are symbolic of the divine romance between God and the soul, the Guru and the chela. Just as the gopis pine for Krishna, so the soul pines for God.

Later years

When Krishna becomes a young man, he and his brother return to the city and kill the wicked king Kamsa. Krishna then goes to the western coast of India and establishes a fortress city at Dwarka. As is the custom of the time, he has a large harem and sires many children.

At the outset of a great war both warring factions request Krishna’s aid. He lends his army to one side and serves as charioteer on the other side. Krishna is the charioteer of the great warrior Arjuna, his friend and disciple. On the eve of the battle Krishna instructs Arjuna about the four paths of union with God. The Bhagavad Gita recounts their dialogue.

After the war Krishna returns to Dwarka. One day the people of the city take to drinking and fighting. A kind of madness overtakes them and they slaughter each other. Krishna retreats to the forest. A huntsman mistakes him for a deer and shoots him in the heel, his only vulnerable point. Krishna dies from this wound.

Krishna and Arjuna

Bhagavad Gita means “Song of God.” It is written as a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. Krishna describes himself as “the Lord of all that breathes” and “the Lord who abides within the heart of all beings,” meaning one who is in union with God, one who has attained that union that is God. He says: “When goodness grows weak, when evil increases, my Spirit arises on earth. In every age I come back to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner, to establish righteousness.”

Arjuna is Krishna’s friend and disciple. The setting is the eve of a great battle to determine who will rule the kingdom. Krishna is to be the charioteer for Arjuna. Just before the battle begins, Arjuna falters because he will have to fight and kill his own kinsmen. Krishna explains to Arjuna that he must enter the battle because it is his dharma—his duty or his reason for being. He is a member of the warrior caste, and come what may, he must fight.

The traditional Hindu interpretation of the battle is twofold. First, the battle represents the struggle Arjuna must engage in to fulfill his dharma and to reclaim the kingdom. Second, the battle represents the war he must wage within himself between good and evil forces—his higher and lower natures.

Krishna teaches Arjuna about the four yogas, or paths of union with God, and says that all the yogas should be practiced. The four yogas are knowledge (jnana yoga), meditation (raja yoga), work (karma yoga) and love and devotion (bhakti yoga). By self-knowledge, by meditation on the God within, by working the works of God to balance karma and increase good karma and by giving loving devotion, we fulfill the four paths of the four lower bodies—the memory body, the mental body, the desire body and the physical body.

Krishna showing his universal form to Arjuna, print from India from the 1940s

Christ and Krishna

In the Bhagavad Gita Arjuna says to Krishna, “If, O Lord, You think me able to behold it,... reveal to me your immutable Self.” When Krishna reveals his Divine Being to Arjuna, Arjuna beholds the whole universe inside of Krishna. Based on this passage many have concluded that Krishna is the supreme God and the supreme Lord. And of course he is. But just as Lord Jesus never declared himself to be the exclusive Son of God, so Lord Krishna never declared himself to be the exclusive supreme God or supreme Lord.

I believe that Lord Krishna unveiled himself to Arjuna as the incarnation of Vishnu, the Second Person of the Eastern and Western Trinity. Krishna revealed his Godhood so that all of us, as Arjunas, as disciples, could see the goal of our Divinity before us. Truly the one who has attained union with God is become that God. There is no separation.

I see Arjuna as the archetypal soul of each of us and Krishna as the charioteer of our soul. Krishna is one with your Higher Self right now, your Holy Christ Self. Visualize Lord Krishna in his incarnation as Vishnu (the Cosmic Christ) as your Higher Self. See him occupying the position of your Holy Christ Self on the Chart of Your Divine Self as the Mediator between your soul and your I AM Presence, your charioteer for life. He will drive that chariot with you there at his side all the way back to the Central Sun. Lord Krishna can be thought of as your “Holy Krishna Self,” if you will. He can place his presence over each person.

The idea is God-identification. We have identified ourselves as humans. God descends into incarnation as an avatar and so we see what was our original blueprint, what were we intended to be, how far have we strayed from this incarnation of God. What do we see in ourselves that is no longer acceptable when we see ourselves in the mirror and look in that mirror and see Krishna, see Jesus Christ, see Gautama Buddha? We begin to see very quickly there are things we can simply do away with.

Lord Krishna can place his Presence one with your Holy Christ Self, multiplying himself a billion times a billion. Yet there is only one Krishna, one Universal Krishna consciousness. This is something you come to understand as you move into the vibration of Krishna. He is Universal God consciousness as well as Universal Christ consciousness. Does that mean that Jesus is not? Of course not. Does that mean that Gautama is not? Of course not.

This is the great mystery of the breaking of the bread at the Last Supper, that each crumb and each morsel is the equivalent of the whole loaf. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ embodies the Universal Christ consciousness. So does Lord Maitreya, Lord Gautama, Lord Sanat Kumara, the Dhyani Buddhas. Lord Krishna and Lord Jesus teach us the way of Godhood and Sonship respectively. And they—with untold numbers of the heavenly hosts who have realized Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness and Krishna consciousness—are with us every hour to show us how we can become as they are: God-free beings fulfilling our respective roles as we are a part of the Mystical Body of God.

The ascended masters and all hosts who make up the heavenly hierarchy are surely not in competition with each other for “who is greatest in the kingdom.” They know that one drop in the ocean is as good as the whole ocean. And they know that God has broken the bread of Life so that each one in his own time may become the whole loaf—but never exclusively.

Krishna (Spring in Kulu), Nicholas Roerich (1930)

Healing the inner child

Lord Krishna has pledged to help heal the inner child as we sing mantras and bhajans to him. His request is to visualize his Presence over you at the age when you experienced any emotional trauma, physical pain, mental pain, from this or a previous lifetime. You can ask for these events in your life to pass before your third eye like slides moving across a screen or even a motion picture. Assess the age you were at the moment of the trauma. Then, visualize Lord Krishna at that age—six months old, six years old, twelve years old, fifty years old—and see him standing over you and over the entire situation.

If there are other figures in this scene through whom the pain has come, see the Presence of Lord Krishna around them also. Give the devotional mantra and song until you are pouring such love to Lord Krishna that he is taking your love, multiplying it through his heart, passing it back through you and transmuting that scene and that record. If you see Lord Krishna superimposed over every party to the problem, to the anger, to the burden, you can understand that you can affirm in your heart that there really is no Reality but God. Only God is Real, and God is placing his Presence over that situation through the personification of himself in Lord Krishna.

For more information

Elizabeth Clare Prophet has released an audio recording of devotional songs, Krishna: The Maha Mantra and Bhajans, that can be used in the exercise of healing painful memories. Available from www.AscendedMasterLibrary.org.

Sources

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Masters and Their Retreats, s.v. “Krishna.”

Lecture by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, “Krishna, the Divine Lover of Your Soul,” July 1, 1993. Available from www.AscendedMasterLibrary.org.