Krishna:🔗

The Cosmic Window

Of all the chapters in Bhagavad Gita, this chapter, Vishwaroopa Darshana Yoga - Vision of the Cosmic Form - has a very

special significance. It is in this chapter that Krishna reveals his Divine Self, that of the Parabrahma Krishna. Elsewhere He speaks with the authority of Parabrahma Krishna, but He is still present as the mortal human Krishna form. Now, at Arjuna's request, He reveals His true Cosmic Self to Arjuna.

In this sense, this is the most important of all the chapters in the Bhagavad Gita, not for its philosophical or spiritual importance, but for the revelation of the Divine. When the Cosmic Form is revealed to Arjuna, if one is immersed in this chapter's content as he was, nothing more needs to be said, nothing more needs to be experienced.

In the previous chapter, along with Arjuna we too heard the glories of Krishna, the complete expression of the Divine. Krishna declares, 'Amongst the stars, I am the Moon, amongst the rishis, I am Narada; whatever is best, I shine in that.'

Krishna is not boasting that He is the best. All that He conveys is that whatever there is, is manifest in Himself. He is the very essence of Existence. As we saw earlier, the moon is not considered a star; even in the Hindu calendar the moon is not counted as a nakshatra, a star. Mythologically the stars are considered the wives of the Moon!

However, in terms of its influence upon our planet Earth, and upon humans, the influence of the moon is next only to the Sun. The gravitational pull of the moon creates and controls not only the tides of the oceans, but also the tides in the minds and hearts of humans. In this sense, Krishna declares Himself to be the Moon amongst stars.

Now, Krishna goes beyond all verbal expressions of His glories. Enough words have been said. It is now time to demonstrate. Krishna proves who He is by giving a solid experience to Arjuna.

The difference between an enlightened man and an egoistic man is that an egoistic man also declares what he perceives to be a fact, but only the enlightened man can give the experience itself. A mortal can talk, that is all he can do. He has no experience to back it up with.

Whenever you go on about yourself, it is based on a collection of your emotions and memories; it is an expression of what you think you are and what you think you have experienced. That sort of expression may be based on fact, but it doesn’t mean absolutely that it is a truth.

In the same way, we prime ourselves with all of our social conditionings, the value systems and beliefs. They become more and more real the more we think about them. Others, who want our attention or something that we possess, join in and repeat all these wonderfully untrue things about us. We become convinced we are superhuman.

Our entire existence as we know it is unreal. So therefore, what can be true about it? How can we boast and take credit for a life that we don’t have any control over? We have no control over the next breath we take. We have no control over how long our loved ones will live. We have no control over what will happen during the course of our lives. Yet, we believe we are in control of the whole of our lives.

Hiranyakasipu , the demon king, thought he was God and he made his subjects chant his name, 'Hiranyaaya Namaha'. Krishna also stated that He was God. The difference between the two was that Hiranyakasipu could not give the experience to his subjects. He told them, ‘Either believe that I am God or I will kill you.’ He threatened his subjects into this behavior, whether or not they actually believed he was God. Please understand that conversion by blood or bread does not help. While both declared they were gods, Krishna could actually prove it. He could give the experience of Universal Consciousness.

Many religions have attempted this method of Hiranyakasipu in the past and continue even today to forcibly convert non-believers into their fold. For our inner Self to be convinced of the truth of someone’s divinity there is no need for coercion; there is no need to use fear and greed. The Self knows. The Self cannot forget its origin. It cannot forget the divinity of which it is part. There is no need to cajole and coerce. If a religion and its propagators need to resort to violence or enticement to communicate the truth of their beliefs to others, one of two things is true - they do not believe it themselves or what they believe is not worth following.

This truth of the divine Self is what Jesus referred to when He said to repent. The words ‘to repent’ in the ancient Aramaic language mean ‘to go back to one’s origin.’ This is what the Sanskrit word samadhi means, ‘to go back to one’s original state.’ This original state can never be forgotten and cannot be untruthfully represented.

This is where all proselytizing religions go wrong. They try to convert others by cajoling them or coercing them, by fear and greed, by the carrot and the stick. Humans are not donkeys. Truth can never be experienced through fear and greed. Even if false truths are propagated through such conversion tactics of fear and greed for centuries, the truth will win out one day. There is no other way.

No great Master believed in spreading his words through fear and greed. All great Masters spread their words through unconditional love and compassion. That is the only way truth can spread.

Unfortunately, the disciples who followed these spiritual Masters were not always Masters themselves. They were there to establish business practices in the form of religions. They were organizers, not leaders. Fear and greed became handy tools of organization and propagation, since these followers did not have the experience of truth within themselves.

Please understand that spirituality is truth. Great Masters such as Buddha, Krishna, Jesus and such others stood for truth. But the religions that followed them only pretended to stand for them; they stood only for the Masters and not for the truth the Masters experienced and expressed.

These religions misrepresented facts that followers understood to be the truths that the Masters revealed. These followers had no experience of the truth themselves. What they expressed was their understanding of what they believed was the truth they heard. These

expressions were colored by their own ego and were transmuted to serve their personal interests.

On the other hand, the Sufis and Gnostics did not need religious interpretation to understand truth. Their hearts felt it. Their Self understood it. They scorned religious leaders who pretended to interpret the truth of their Masters for them. ‘Go away,’ they said. ‘We know the truth. We feel the truth. We do not need to hear from you. We don’t need to read what you have written on behalf of the Masters.’ So they were persecuted.

How to find out whether a person is a Master? How to establish whether a person is enlightened or just egoistic? This is the scale: if he can give the experience, whatever comes from him is truth. Here Krishna shows clearly that he is everything. He demonstrates His divinity to Arjuna. Krishna walks His talk in this chapter.

In the Bhagavatam there is a beautiful verse that the gopi (cowherdeses of Brindavan), sing to Krishna, who is everything to them:

‘O Krishna, tava kathaamritam...Your words and the words uttered about You are kathaamritam, words of immortality, words of nectar, words both on You and by You. Just by listening to these words, You create auspiciousness in us.

'These words are worshipped and expressed as the highest truth by the great rishis. We who have experienced You, feel the joy again and again by speaking about You. You rejuvenate our whole being. Just by listening to these words about You and by You, we are transported to a different plane.'

If you have fallen in love with Krishna, this is the chapter to know Him and enjoy Him. Here in this chapter He does not give any teachings. All intellectual teachings are over. Vidhi and nishedha, do's and don'ts, are all over. He gives the experience directly: 'I am Everything.' He gives the experience of the ultimate Universal Consciousness and the realization that He is present in everything. Arjuna experiences the Universal Consciousness. This whole chapter is pure experience.

The first thing we need to understand is whether it is possible to have the experience of the Universal Consciousness. Secondly, what is the basic qualification to experience it? Thirdly, what really happens inside our being during such an experience? These three things we shall understand from this chapter and explore the wonderful possibility of experiencing Krishna as the Cosmic Window.

In the previous chapter, Krishna gave the intellectual explanation that He is the Ultimate. More than an intellectual expression, I may say that this is an expression given to a person who is deeply in love. Krishna can be God only when a person achieves the maturity of Arjuna. The truth should be declared only when a person is qualified and mature. Only when you reach the maturity of Arjuna, can you experience the divinity of Krishna. When you feel deeply connected to a person, he looks divine even though he may be quite ordinary in reality.

Shiva says in Tantra that when one drops one's fantasies, he becomes Shiva and his wife becomes Uma. He reaches the state of Shivatva, the state of Shiva, and she reaches the state of Devi.

Truth can only be expressed when the listener is ready. Look at what happened to Jesus. The Jews of his day crucified Jesus, as they were not ready to listen to His truth. The Jews of that time were egoistic and unprepared to accept what Jesus said. They were afraid that his teachings would destroy their livelihood. They preferred to live in bondage to the Romans and their Pharisees rather than be liberated by the Master's words.

In the case of Buddha, he was more fortunate. He escaped being killed. Out of the many thousands who heard him, a few hundred understood and accepted what he said, and followed him. Buddha left behind ten thousand followers while Jesus left behind twelve.

Krishna ruled by love. Though He was the King of the Yadava clan, he ruled not by authority and power, but by personal example and compassion. Those who lived with Him identified with Him, and loved Him beyond their own selves.

When the female gopi bathed with Krishna in the river Yamuna, they had no sense of shame, since they had no body consciousness when they were around Krishna.

Their entire awareness was merged with Krishna. They were one with Him, one with His Cosmic Consciousness. It did not even occur to them that they were without clothes. They had no fantasies. They were in the true reality of the Divine.

How does one attain enlightenment living a normal life?

In the Shiva Sutra, Shiva says there is nothing wrong with a husband and wife living a normal conjugal life, but they need to drop their fantasies about one another. He tells Devi that when a couple is in bed, there are four of them in bed, not just two. It is an orgy, not a love coupling. It is the wife and the husband's fantasy about the wife, sharing the bed with the husband and the wife's fantasy about her husband. It is only when the two of them let go of their fantasies and see each other for who they really are, that a couple can be in love.

When we live without fantasies, the other person looks like God. Only then the other person is real. Please understand that everybody is God, including you. But each of us carries our own idea of God and tries to put everyone else into that frame. When they do not fit into the frame, we throw the person out instead of getting rid of the frame.

Shiva asks you to throw out the frame instead, so that then you can see everybody as God. What does not fit is your concept of the frame, your ideas of how others should behave. Because the frame does not fit, you wish to change the face! It is like cutting the foot to fit the

shoe! Alter the shoe, not the foot! You are intelligent if you do the latter, but what most of us do is the former.

We have our own imagination of how our wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, boss and friend should be. We try to fit them into that frame and suffocate them when they don't fit. That is why the other always suffocates us. That is why you need your space.

The space you require is the space for your fantasies. Over time this space becomes unlimited, because your fantasies grow. We cannot accept another person for what he or she is. The natural self of the other person threatens us. From childhood we have grown with ideas about what we should be and what everyone around us should be. We have clear ideas about how our would-be should be! Our template gets drawn up by listening to others and listening to the media. Then we piece it all together and frame it for our constant reference. Constantly we are comparing everyone to the fantasy we've built up in our minds.

These templates are so convoluted that no real person can match them. All our psychosomatic problems are built into these templates, and God's creatures have no chance of matching them at all . So we spend our lives chiseling those real people whom we meet, trying to get them to fit into our fantasy world. We create psychological wounds for them and for ourselves!

When you are deeply connected with the other person as they are, when you can accept anybody as he or she is, you establish a divine relationship. However, to do so, you must first learn to accept your own self as you are. When you are continuously engaged in chiseling, your job has no end. You can never be happy by chiseling the outer image. You can be happy only by dropping your image, your template, about the other person.

A small story:

A person gifts his friend with a puppy upon his marriage. After three months, he asks his friend how he enjoys his married life and if there is any change.

The friend replies, ‘Nothing much, only a small change. In the beginning the puppy used to bark at me and my wife used to bring me the newspaper. Now my wife barks at me and the puppy brings the newspaper!’

When you try to chisel, there will only be barking with nothing else happening. When you accept everyone as they are, the whole world appears as God.

This can be achieved in two ways. Firstly, by your own tapas, your spiritual penance, you acquire maturity by undergoing this experience repeatedly. You need to keep dropping your fantasies about other people. You need to stop creating fantasies about others, and accept them for what they are.

Secondly, a Master can also give you this experience by infusing tremendous energy in you, by bringing you to his same frequency. But even to retain the energy of the Master, you need a certain level of maturity. This is what happens here in this chapter. The frequency of Krishna's Vishwaroopa form is too much for Arjuna to bear and he cries out to Krishna to resume his normal form.

A small example: the other day I was watching the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in the USA on the TV when one of the ashramites asked me why such calamities were taking place.

I tried to explain to them that it is something like driving your car or SUV and it goes over a small anthill. As far as the ants are concerned this is a natural calamity for them. They may call it 'Hurricane SUV!' But as far as you are concerned you are not even aware of this disaster . You are just driving the SUV. Can you relate with the ants in this incident or say that driving over their anthill was pre-destined? Their logic and yours are completely different. Neither can they question you nor can you answer them.

Like us, there may be an ant who says that this is all God's will; the kind of explanation any organized religion gives!

No organized religion can ever give a reasonable answer to such happenings. No logical answer or explanation can ever be given for these experiences. No justification can be given that it is pre-destined and such. There is no logical answer as to why thousands of people

die for no reason. All organized religions, and I mean ALL of them, prove their own uselessness in such situations.

The frequency, logic, perception and concepts of the ants are completely different from ours, just as ours is again completely different from the Cosmic Consciousness. Just as how you do not even know that your vehicle has killed thousands of ants, the Cosmic Energy or Consciousness is not even aware of a happening like Hurricane Katrina. The frequency of this consciousness is in a completely different dimension. From the cosmic level, what happened in New Orleans is something like a mug of water having spilled onto an anthill, washing away the ants.

It is not possible to comprehend what that level or frequency is. What is possible is for us to raise the frequency of our will or consciousness to be one with It, to learn to live with It and experience It. Neither God nor your wife can be understood, just learn to live with them!

The ants cannot question you as to why you spilled the mug of water on them. If their level of frequency is 10, your level is 100, and the Universal Consciousness is infinity. Logically, nothing can be done. Please understand, anyone who is trying to give a logical explanation is simply cheating. Anyone who attempts to explain logically why there are so many natural calamities, why death, why the misfortunes in life, why someone is high or low, has simply created one more philosophy.

If the person is charismatic, has a way with words, he will have created a new philosophy and cheated a group of people. One does not need to be very intelligent to cheat people because people are not as intelligent as you think they are! This is probably why great philosophers convince others, but they themselves are not convinced.

I know a great atheist who chanted God's name when he lay dying! The very act of trying to convince and convert others testified to the fact that he was not convinced himself.

Please be aware that conversion is an intellectual and psychological crime. A converted person has one persona superficially and his internal unconscious being is not in tune with it. The two conflict with each other and he becomes a schizophrenic. And preachers who convert others without any deep, personal experience of the Divine, always fall into the worst kind of depression. They punish themselves by their own acts.

I am reminded of a humorous incident. One of our devotees from Oklahoma who was associated with us was a reverend of the clergy. He enjoyed our programs and eventually went on to become a teacher of our courses, an acharya. I had never asked him to convert himself to our religion. To begin with, I myself do not have any religion! There is no need because what I teach is pure satya, the truth.

The light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison. We cannot say that the light bulb belongs only to Christianity, since Edison happened to be a Christian. It belongs to humanity. Similarly the truth of the inner light given by Krishna, like the light bulb, belongs to humanity and not to any particular religion. It is not necessary to convert to any religion. It is enough if you understand the truth and live your life happily and intensely.

I met a preacher engaged in violent conversion of people in India. Not having had the experience of truth himself, this preacher who was engaged in converting others, had fallen into depression. He wanted to meet with me in private, and so I agreed.

He wanted healing from me and after a few days of healing, he felt much better. I asked him the reason why he was engaged in such a violent practice. He replied that when he spoke, so many people listened to him and this gave him a sense of power. He then felt convinced that what he was teaching was the truth! I share this incident to show that when a person preaches without experience, he is simply trying to solidify his own confidence. Don't be fooled.

One of my disciples had a conversation with a Born Again Christian who met him in the course of his business. My disciple mentioned that he taught meditation techniques that I had ordained him to teach. This person responded by saying that he was a Christian and therefore he could not practise meditation. My disciple asked him why not.

This person said that he only worshipped Christ. My disciple responded saying he too worshipped Christ and found no problem in meditating. That person said Christ is the Son of God and my disciple agreed that Christ indeed was God.

Stumped, this man said Christ was the only Son of God and one had to agree to this to be a true Christian. My disciple told him: ‘That is difficult for me to agree with. I believe that I too am God, and that you too are God. Christ is also God.’

People who are trying to convert others into their faiths by greed and fear have no faith in themselves. If they did, there would be no need to convert others. Their own faith would transform others and make them realize the truth of their experience. Instead, they believe they are sinners. So they are keen to prove to others that they too are sinners, whether they wish to believe this or not.

Please understand, every one of you is Divine! You are all cast in the mold of the Almighty. All you need is this awareness that you too are Divine.

But then, religions cannot benefit materially from such an attitude. They cannot control people by telling them they are Divine. They can only control them by saying they are sinners. Only then can they wield power over others and accumulate wealth.

Religious zealots use money and power to force people to see their point of view, simply because they do not have the conviction themselves. They entangle themselves in social, political and material machinations to convince others of what they themselves do not have faith in.

Spiritual truths should transform, not convert. Spiritual truths should make a Christian a better Christian, a Muslim a better Muslim and a Hindu a better Hindu. They cannot and should not make a Hindu into a Christian or a Christian into a Muslim. Those who try to coerce others into converting, by convincing them that they are sinners, are the biggest sinners themselves. They have no redemption.

That is the difference between Krishna, the incarnation, and Hiranyakasipu, the demon. Here the difference between Krishna and Hiranya, is that the latter tries to preach and convince others of his ideas and convert them to be his followers. He is just trying to play the game when he himself does not have the experience. Krishna gives the experience directly. When He declares that He is God, it is not for His ego but for you to experience the Truth, which is why He tells Arjuna that He was uttering the words for Arjuna’s sake.

Let us now go into the verses and examine three questions:

Can Universal Consciousness be experienced? What is the basic qualification for this experience? What happens when one experiences it?

These three questions are explained beautifully by Krishna in this chapter.

Q: Master, you mentioned somewhere that Christ is not a Christian and Buddha is not a Buddhist. Can you elaborate?

Every religion has been the expression of the intense personal experience of a Master. It is his unique way of expressing his own experience. The experience is the same but the expressions vary. The underlying truth in all these expressions is also the same.

Every Master, whether Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus or anyone else, preached the same message. We hear it differently. We attach the label of Christianity to the expressions of Jesus and Buddhism to the teachings of Buddha. We add our own labels to the same truth to make them different and even conflicting.

To give us something to do, we fight, maim and kill in the name of the Master. Has there been a Master who said to kill in the name of his experience? If he did, he can be no Master. He would be worse than you and I.

The expression of Jesus that became Christianity did not belong to Jesus alone. It was a universal truth propounded by Him, based on His experience. Similarly, Buddha expressed His experiences and they became the religion of Buddhism. Buddhism does not belong to Buddha alone. These spiritual truths expressed by the great Masters are universal truths, which belong to all of humanity. These Masters are expressions of energy that transcends form and labels.

Stop thinking you are a Christian and that you are a follower of Jesus. Read the Bible and assimilate the truth of the expressions of Jesus, as if these are the truths expressed by the Buddha. Follow the expressions of the Buddha as if they are the truths expressed in the Koran.

You will then realize that there is no difference between these universal truths. Jesus did not create the trademark of Christianity. His so-called followers did, many centuries after his death. Buddha condemned ritualistic worship. Yet his followers have turned him into a God and worship his idols!

In the name of their Masters, these followers fought with one another and killed one another. The spiritual expressions of the founding Masters have become profitable business for their followers.

I say that if Jesus and Krishna meet each other, they will hug each other and be blissful. However, the cows of Krishna and the sheep of Jesus will bicker with each other as to whose Master is greater!