Question 8

QUESTIONER: A LEGEND SAYS THAT KALAYAVAN BELIEVES THAT KRISHNA IS RUNNING AWAY, WHILE IN FACT KRISHNA IS DRIVING KALAYAVAN INTO A CAVE WHERE MUCHKUND IS ASLEEP. THE LEGEND ALSO SAYS THAT AS MUCHKUND WAKES UP HE LOOKS AT KALAYAVAN AND KILLS HIM WITH HIS LOOK. PLEASE EXPLAIN THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LEGEND.

These names are symbolic and they are parts of Krishna's story. They are part metaphor, part events and part metaphysics. That Krishna is driving someone into a cave is how it seems to us. Even the person concerned can think so, but I understand it differently. A person like Krishna does not drive anyone, although someone can be driven to a point on his own. And it is possible that Krishna follows him. The situation is rather complex.

I have heard that a cowherd is taking his cow from one place to another. A rope is fastened around the neck of the cow and the cowherd has the other end of the rope in his hands. On his way, he meets with a group of traveling Sufis. The head of the group, the Master, halts the cowherd with his cow and asks his disciples to stand around them. This is how a Sufi Master teaches his disciples. He asks of the cowherd, "Is it you who is tied to the cow, or the cow who is tied to you?"

The man promptly says, "The cow is tied to me. Why should I be tied to the cow?" The Master then removes the rope from the cow's neck and leaves the cow free, and the cow immediately takes off. The cowherd is perplexed, but loses no time in running after the cow.

Then the Master says to his disciples, "Although the cowherd thinks the cow is in his hands, in reality he is in the hands of the cow."

In fact, every bondage is twofold: the driver is bound with the driven. Sometimes it is difficult to say what is what. Maybe Kalayavan is fleeing and Krishna is forced to run after him. This much is true, however, that a flight is taking place in which one is the driver and the other is the driven. Maybe both of them are being driven. As we know him, Krishna can accept any situation in life. If he has to struggle with something, his struggle too is a part of his great cooperation with existence. Here also he goes with the river.

The legend says that Kalayavan is reduced to ashes by the sight, the look of an awakened Muchkund. This is a metaphor to say that kaal, or time, ceases to exist for one who is awake. Time is perhaps the greatest tension and trouble of our life. Time is the conflict, anxiety, and anguish of man. To live in time means to live stretched between its two poles -- the past and the future -- and that is what tension is, what stress and anxiety are. Time is the only enemy which we have to fight constantly, and it is time that devours us. Only rarely does someone defeat time and is finished with it. Only rarely does someone transcend time and go beyond it. Only rarely time is burned and destroyed.

But who is it that burns time? You say that Krishna is running ahead of Kalayavan -- that is time. And he alone can destroy time who goes ahead of it, who transcends it. One who goes behind time cannot destroy it; he will live as time's camp-follower, its slave. But for one who goes ahead of time, time becomes his shadow, his slave. Here Muchkund's look after he wakes up, burns time.

As I said, this is a parable. Time exists for one who has his eyes closed, who is asleep. And it ceases the moment one opens his eyes and wakes up. Time always exists in exact proportion to our unconsciousness, to our psychological sleep. And when we are fully awake, aware, time ceases to be. The fire of awareness burns time altogether.

We are all like people sleeping in the caves of their unconsciousness. Krishna's presence can be instrumental in opening our eyes, in awakening us. And time trailing behind Krishna can be burned with his look. I believe time does not exist for Krishna, it exists for Muchkund, and Krishna can free Muchkund too from the grip of time.

If we apply these symbols to the realities of our lives and explore them, they can bring us astonishing experiences and rare insights. It is unfortunate that we take them as just stories and parables and repeat them meaninglessly over and over again. We treat them as historic episodes and relay them from generation to generation. They are really more psychological than historical; they are stories of our psychological potentialities. They are parts of the great psychological drama that man is. But we have never tried carefully to look at them with this perspective, and so a great treasure is being lost. It is for this reason that a rare person like Krishna is gradually reduced into a myth. There is so much in his life that it becomes difficult to know that it is real.

It is necessary to explore the lives of men like Krishna from the perspective of psychology; they are entitled to extensive psychological commentaries.

And lastly I want to say that in the past there was no other way except to express even the great psychological truths of life through symbols, metaphors and parables. They not only served as good vehicles of expression for these truths, they were also safe vaults for keeping treasures of such immense value. These stories have precious gems of wisdom hidden in them. The ancients had no other way than this to preserve them for posterity. But now we have to uncover them and interpret them rightly. Jesus has said somewhere that he speaks in a language which will be understood by those who can understand it, and those who cannot will not be harmed in any way. He spoke so that those who understood him could gain, and those who could not understand him had the joy of listening to a story.