Sri Aurobindo on Krishna, with the Mother’s Comments

1. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   If Krishna be alone on one side and the armed and organized world with its hosts and its shrapnel and its maxims on the other, yet prefer thy divine solitude. Care not if the world passes over thy body and its shrapnel tear thee to pieces and its cavalry trample thy limbs into shapeless mire by the wayside; for the mind was always a simulacrum and the body a carcass. The spirit liberated from its casings ranges and triumphs.

   The Mother’s comment

   This is to tell us that the only choice to be made is to unite with the Divine in spite of everything, even the opposition of the whole world, because the world only has an apparent strength in the mental and physical, whereas the Divine possesses the eternal power of Truth.

2. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.

   The Mother’s comment

   Strive exclusively to hear the command of the Supreme Lord, and if you are perfectly sincere, He will find a way to make you hear and recognize this command with certainty. Such is the assurance given to all those who want to live according to the supreme Truth.

3. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   1. When I first met Krishna, I loved Him as a friend and playmate till He deceived me; then I was indignant and could not forgive Him. Afterwards I loved Him as a lover and He still deceived me; I was again and much more indignant, but this time I had to pardon.
   2. After offending, He forced me to pardon Him not by reparation, but by committing fresh offences.
   3. So long as God tried to repair His offences against me, we went on periodically quarrelling; but when He found out His mistake, the quarrelling stopped, for I had to submit to Him entirely.
   4. When I saw others than Krishna and myself in the world, I kept secret God’s doings with me; but since I began to see Him and myself everywhere, I have become shameless and garrulous.

   The Mother’s comment

   In his writings, Sri Aurobindo had a genius for expressing the most extraordinary experiences in the most ordinary words, thus giving the impression that his experiences are simple and obvious.

4. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   Tangled is the way of works in the world. When Rama the Avatar murdered Vali (King of monkeys), or Krishna, who was God Himself, assassinated, to liberate his nation, his tyrant uncle Kansa, who shall say whether they did good or did evil? But this we can feel, that they acted divinely.

   The Mother’s comment

   This is a supremely elegant way of saying that all notions of good and evil are exclusively human and are worthless in the eves of the Divine.

5. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   I hated the devil and was sick with his temptations and tortures; and I could not tell why the voice in his departing words was so sweet that when he returned often and offered himself to me, it was with sorrow I refused him. Then I discovered it was Krishna at His tricks and my hate was changed into laughter.

   The Mother’s comment

   In the Supreme, opposites are reconciled and complement each other. It is a division in the manifestation which has made them into opposites; but once one’s consciousness is united to the Divine Consciousness, opposition disappears.

6. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   Who can hear Kali rushing into the system in her fierce force and burning godhead? Only the man whom Krishna already possesses.

   The Mother’s comment

   This is a charming and most expressive way of saving that only the conscious Divine Presence is capable of mastering and conquering all violence.

7. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   Canst thou see God in thy torturer and slayer even in thy moment of death or thy hours of torture? Canst thou see Him in that which thou art slaying, see and love even while thou slayest? Thou hast thy hand on the supreme knowledge. How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?

   The Mother’s comment

   All is the Divine and the Divine alone exists.

8. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   The Law is for the bound and those whose eyes are sealed; if they walk not by it, they will stumble; but thou who art free in Krishna or hast seen his living light, walk holding the hand of thy Friend and by the lamp of eternal Veda.

   The Mother’s comment

   Strive exclusiverty to hear the command of the Supreme Lord, and if you are perfectly sincere. He will find a way to make you hear and recognize this command with certainty. Such is the assurance given to all those who want to live according to the supreme Truth.

9. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

   When I live in Krishna, then ego and self-interest vanish and only God himself can qualify my love bottomless and illimitahle.

10. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

    Beyond Personality the Mayavadin sees indefinable Existence; I followed him there and found my Krishna beyond the indefinable Personality.

    The Mother’s comment

    As always. this is Sri Aurobindo’s wonderful wav of making clear to us the inanity of human assertions by which each one arrogantly denies anything that is not his own discovery or his own personal experience. Wisdom begins with the capacity to admit all theories, even the most contradictory.

11. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

    God has so arranged life that the world is the soul’s husband; Krishna its divine paramour. We owe a debt of service to the world and are bound to it by a law, a compelling opinion, and a common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart’s worship and our free and secret joy are for our lover.

    The Mother’s comment

    For the moment. the world still seems to be in a contradiction with the pure and luminous divine joy; but a day will come when the world too will manifest this joy. This is what we must prepare it for.

12. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

    Sin is a trick and a disguise of Krishna to conceal Himself from the gaze of the virtuous. Behold, O Pharisee, God in the sinner, sin in thy self purifying thy heart; clasp thy brother.

    The Mother’s comment

    As always. in his striking and humorous wav, Sri Aurobindo tells us that the Divine truth is above both virtue and sin.

13. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

    God is a great and cruel Torturer because He loves. You do not understand this, because you have not seen and played with Krishna.

    The Mother’s comment

    Krishna is the immanent Divine, the Divine Presence in everyone and in all things. He is also, sovereignly, the aspect of Delight and Love of the Supreme; he is the smiling tenderness and the playful gaiety; he is at once the player, the play and all his playmates. And as both the game and its results are wholly known, conceived, willed, organized and played consciously in their entirety, there can be no room for nothing but the delight of the play. Thus to see Krishna means to find the inner Godhead, to play with Krishna means to be identified with the inner Godhead and to share in his consciousness. When you achieve this state, you enter immediately into the bliss of the divine play; and the more complete the identification, the more perfect the state.

    But if some corner of the consciousness keeps the ordinary perception, the ordinary understanding, the ordinary sensation, then you see the suffering of others. you find the play that causes so much suffering very cruel and you conclude that the God who takes pleasure in such a play must be a terrible Torturer: but on the other hand, when you have had the experience of identification with the Divine, you cannot forget the immense, the wonderful love which he puts into his play, and you understand that it is the limitation of our vision that makes us judge in this way, and that far from being a voluntary Torturer. he is the great beneficient love that guides the world and men. by the quickest routes. in their progressive march towards perfection, a perfection which, moreover, is always relative and is always being surpassed.

    But a day will come when this apparent suffering will no longer be required to stimulate the advance and when progress can he made more and more in harmony and delight.

14. Sri Aurobindo on Krishna

    Some say Krishna never lived, he is a myth. They mean on earth; for if Brindavan existed nowhere, the Bhagavad could not have been written.

    The Mother’s comment

    Does Brindavan exist anywhere else than on earth?

    The whole earth and everything it contains is a kind of concentration, a condensation of something which exists in other worlds invisible to the material eye. Each thing manifested here has its principle, idea and essence somewhere in the subtler regions. This is an indispensable condition for the manifestation. And the importance of the manifestation will always depend on the origin of the thing manifested.

    In the world of gods there is an ideal and harmonious Brindavan of which the earthly Brindavan is but a deformation and a caricature.

    Those who have developed inwardly, either in their senses or in their minds. perceive these realities which are invisible (to the ordinary man) and receive inspiration from them.

    So the writer of writers of the Bhagavad were certainly in contact with a whole inner world that is well and truly real and existent, where they saw and experienced everything they have described or revealed.

    Whether Krishna existed or not in a human form, living on earth, is only of very secondary importance (except perhaps from an exclusively historical point of view), for Krishna is a real. living and active being; and his influence has been one of the great factors in the progress and transformation of the earth.

॥