KRṢNa, the PūrṆāvatār🔗

Among the Incarnations, Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa is considered pūrṇa, complete, a full Incarnation. Why is Śrī Kṛṣṇa considered the only perfect, complete Incarnation, a pūrṇāvatār? Why can't He be just one more Incarnation? Still He is the one being ruling the whole Hindu consciousness and the largest worshipped being! The most worshipped Incarnation on planet Earth is Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Only Kṛṣṇa can be called the most worshipped being.

First, let us understand why Incarnations come to planet Earth. Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahamsa recounts beautifully:

There was a beautiful paradise with many trees and varieties of flowers and fruits. Three friends were walking near this paradise that had a big wall around it. One of them climbed the wall and peeped inside. He cried out, ‘Oh, my God! Such a beautiful place!’ He jumped into the garden and started enjoying the fruits. The second man climbed the wall and saw the garden. He too felt it was beautiful, but he had a little bit of courtesy.

He turned and said to the third man who was below, ‘Dear friend, there is a beautiful paradise below. Come, I am going in.’ Saying this, he jumped over the wall and started enjoying the fruits.

The third man climbed the wall and saw paradise. He saw his two friends and understood the level of joy and bliss that they were enjoying. Then he said to himself, ‘Let me go down and tell all the people about this beautiful paradise. I will bring them all to enjoy this garden.’

An Incarnation is someone who descends to enrich the world about the blissful place that He experienced. The man who descends from Divine to express the bliss of that Divinity is an Incarnation. The person who returns to planet Earth to tell you and enrich you about Divinity and to also make you realise what He has experienced, is an Incarnation.

An enlightened spiritual Master is a person who creates a formula to reproduce his inner world experiences. Scientists create formulae for the outer world, whereas a Master creates a formula to recreate the experience of the inner world. Meditation techniques are these formulae.

An Incarnation is a person who can directly give the experience without even using the formula! All these great Incarnations come down to planet Earth to make people realise that—they too are Divine, that they too are God; to tell and enrich people that the other side is beautiful.

‘There’s a very big paradise. Come, let us go and enjoy. Come, join me,’ they say.

Why is Kṛṣṇa a perfect Incarnation? He has all the qualities needed to push human beings to divinity, to the space of completion. It is Śrī Kṛṣṇa who is responsible for all the good things we have in our lives. Please understand, it is Kṛṣṇa who is responsible for anything good, anything joyful, and anything auspicious in our lives. The science of living life out of completion and joy—living life out of completion will lead to enlightenment in whatever we are doing without renouncing— this science is introduced to the world for the first time by Śrī Kṛṣṇa.

Understand, till Śrī Kṛṣṇa all Incarnations were teaching only the science of leaving, renouncing the world if one wanted Enlightenment. But it is Śrī Kṛṣṇa who gave this science of living in the space of completion, pūrṇatva; that you don't need to renounce anything; wherever you are, you will be radiating life and enjoying life. The person who can push human beings to divinity, to the space completion is called Jagadguru—the Guru who awakens. He is the teacher, the Master of the whole Universe.

Jagadguru is a person who can enrich the whole world, all types of human beings at all levels. The Universe is a place with all types of human beings who are at all levels of experience and maturity. Kṛṣṇa can enrich and help people from all levels to experience divinity, to reach the ultimate, to realise the truth, to be complete.

The life of Śrī Kṛṣṇa, pūrṇāvatār is an example of living in the space of completion, pūrṇatva. He has not done anything out of incompletion.

He has done everything out of completion and He has done everything, which we think will be done only out of incompletion! This science of completion is the most sacred secret revealed by Śrī Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā, which is the most powerful rājavidyā rājaguhyaṁ, royal sacred knowledge and royal sacred secret. This royal sacred science of completion keeps us eternally in love with life, eternally experiencing life.

Śrī Kṛṣṇa can relate to people at all three levels. The way that He is born, the way He expresses all powers and completion from His birth, and the way He expresses such beautiful, sweet romance! If you are intellectual, He gives you the Gītā, He is Gītā Kṛṣṇa. If you are emotional, have Rādhā Kṛṣṇa, the beloved of Rādhā! He can sing and dance; He can play; He can give you the ultimate emotional fulfilment. Making each one feel that he belongs to them is the basic need for the romance to happen. Kṛṣṇa was able to do that! And He has the ability to handle all the anger and jealousy of people who were not able to raise themselves to His level. At the being level, you straightaway want the technology of enlightenment. Again, He offers the truth, Dhyāna Yoga, the path of meditation, in the Gītā.

When you see the way He radiates knowledge, love, romance, intelligence and strategy planning; only He can be called as pūrnāvatār. The word pūrnāvatār can be given only for Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Śrī Kṛṣṇa is the unimaginable expression of ultimate Consciousness. Kṛṣṇa is complete fulfilment. He is such an embodiment of completion. The very life of Kṛṣṇa is a technique that leads you to enlightenment. The body language of an enlightened person is a sūtra, a technique. Kṛṣṇa is the being whose body language straightaway leads you to enlightenment. Understand that Śrī Rāma will lead you to dharma, righteousness. If you follow what Śrī Rāma did, you will have dharma, but with Kṛṣṇa, you will straightaway have mokṣa, liberation!

The power of Kṛṣṇa's presence and the amount of opposition that He has to go through due to His pure love, His pure energy, His pure intelligence. Even after creating His own kingdom at Dvārikapuri, the sacrifice that He does to establish dharma, the way He lives dharma and protects dharma! And He is such a powerful strategy planner that when needed He even escapes from the war field as Raṇachoḍa. The space of completion that Kṛṣṇa holds and the space from which He operates!

Please understand that when you operate from the space of completion, whatever you do is Līlā—a divine play. It is not a boring life! Kṛṣṇa is the first Incarnation who demonstrates the concept of Līlā on planet Earth; the first Incarnation who demonstrates that life can be lived from the space of completion; life can be lived from the space of joy. Kṛṣṇa is the embodiment of joy, embodiment of bliss, embodiment of life!

When we experience the being of Kṛṣṇa, when we understand Kṛṣṇa, His very being is a technique; His very life is a technique! That is why there is a beautiful word in the Bhāgavatam (Hindu epic glorifying devotion) called Līlā Dhyāna. Just remembering the Līlā, the playful pranks of Kṛṣṇa, is dhyāna, meditation. No other Incarnation is given the word, Līlā Dhyāna. No other Incarnation is praised like this. Just remembering His acts is meditation! Just remembering His Līlā, divine acts, we are led to completion and liberation!

An Incarnation's Līlā or pastimes always leads you to completion. Your past always leads you to incompletion. If you constantly remember what you did when you were a child, you will be in more and more incompletion. If you constantly remember what Śrī Kṛṣṇa did when He was a child, you will be more and more in the space of completion. Remembering the Incarnation's pastimes, Līlā Dhyāna creates more and more completion and the higher space.

Kṛṣṇa is the Jagadguru. Kṛṣṇa appeals to every being. He has created keys to open all the locks. He has created methods to give the spiritual experience to the whole of humanity, to people who have come, people who are here, and those yet to come. He has created the technology even for the future generations. He is nitya-ānanda, eternal bliss. Gītā is the ultimate scripture—śāstra, stotra and sūtra.

Kṛṣṇa is beyond scriptures. We can't speak about any dimension of Kṛṣṇa. He is the Whole! I can say that whenever we try to describe any of His dimensions, the words look so futile. His is endowed with ananta-kalyāṇ-guṇa, His innumerable spiritual energies and infinite auspicious qualities.

When Kṛṣṇa says,

'Weapons do not cleave, nor fire burns the Ātman. Water does not wet It and wind does not dry It'

When He talks about the basic truths of life and spirituality, it is śāstra. He is giving intellectual knowledge of completion.

When Arjuna says,

'Oh Lord, I bow down to you from the front, from behind, from all sides; You are infinitely mighty, pervading everything, you are the Ultimate' Arjuna is expressing the stotra; he is praising the Lord with his devotion.

Kṛṣṇa says,

'Whatever your state of thought is when you leave this body, absorbed in that thought, that alone you attain, without fail, O Arjuna!'

Here Kṛṣṇa provides Arjuna the technique, the most powerful sūtra that helps anyone attain and create his reality as what he wants to. Bhagavad Gītā is the only complete scripture that combines the wisdom of śāstras, the depth of feeling connection of stotras and the practical reality of sūtras. It is a means to enlightenment for all, delivered by the Master of masters, by the Incarnation of incarnations, Bhagavān Śrī Kṛṣṇa.