Krishna

Krishna is a divine being, an incarnation of the Godhead, an avatar, and he is one of the most celebrated Indian heroes of all time. He has captured the imagination and devotion of Hindus everywhere in his many forms—whether as a frolicking, mischievous child, as the lover of shepherdesses, or as the friend and wise counsellor of the mighty warrior Arjuna.

The Bhagavad Gita

Krishna is known as the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, the Second Person of the Hindu Triad. His story is told in the Bhagavad Gita, the most popular religious work of India, composed between the fifth and second centuries B.C. and part of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata.

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 (Spring in Kulu), Nicholas Roerich (1930)

Krishna as the archetype of Christ

We can see Arjuna as the archetype of the soul of each of us and Krishna as the charioteer of our soul, one with our Higher Self, our Holy Christ Self. We can see him occupying the position of the Holy Christ Self on the Chart of Your Divine Self, as the Mediator between the soul and the I AM Presence. He is universal Christ consciousness.

When we send devotion to Krishna through mantra and sacred song, we open a highway of our love to the heart of Krishna, and he opens the other half of the highway. He sends back our devotion multiplied by his manyfold.

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.”