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Krishna

THE MAN AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 1

 

 

Energy Enhancement           Enlightened Texts            Krishna            Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy

 

 

Question 1

QUESTIONER: WHAT IS THE TIME OF KRISHNA'S BIRTH? WHAT INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE UP TO NOW? AND WHAT IS YOUR OWN VIEW ON THIS MATTER? DO YOU THINK AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON CANNOT RIGHTLY ANSWER SUCH A QUESTION?

No record has been kept about the time of Krishna's birth and death. and there is a good reason for it.

We did not think it wise to keep a chronological record of those who, in our view, are not subject to birth and death, who are beyond both. A record is kept in the case of people who are born and who die, who are subject to the law of birth and death. There is no sense in writing the biography of those who transcend the limits of birth and death, of arrival and departure. Not that we were not capable of writing their biography -- there was no difficulty to it -- but such an attempt would go against the very spirit of Krishna's life. That is why we did not do it.

Countries in the East did not write the stories of their great men and women as is done in the West. The West has been very particular about writing them, and there is a reason for this too. However, in this matter, the East has now been imitating the West, ever since it came under the latter's influence. And that, too, is not without reason,

Religions of the Judaic tradition, both Christianity and Mohammedanism, believe there is only one life, one incarnation given to us on this earth. All of life is confined to one birth and one death; it begins with birth and totally ends with death. There is no other life either before or after this one. It is therefore not accidental that people who think that life completes its entire tenure in the brief interval between one birth and death should insist on keeping a record of it all. It is simply natural,

But those who have known that life recurs again and again, that one is born and then dies count less numbers of times, that the chain of arrivals and departures is almost endless, see no point in writing its history. It is rather impossible to write about an event which extends from eternity to eternity, And moreover it would deny our own understanding of it. For this reason history was never written in the East. And it was a very deliberate omission, an omission that came with our understanding of reality. It is not that we lacked the ability to write history or that we did not possess a calendar. The oldest calendar of the world was produced here. So it is obvious we refrained from writing history knowingly.

You also want to know why an enlightened person cannot rightly say when Krishna was born.

An unenlightened person may tell you when Krishna was born, but an enlightened person cannot, because there is no connection whatsoever between enlightenment and time. Enlightenment begins where time ends. Enlightenment is non temporal; it has nothing to do with time. It is timeless. Enlightenment means going beyond time to where the count of hours and minutes comes to an end, to where the world of changes ceases to be, to where only that is which is eternal, to where there is no past and no future, to where an eternal present abides.

Samadhi or enlightenment does not happen in the moment, it happens when the moment ceases to be.

Let alone telling Krishna's story, an enlightened person cannot even tell his own. He cannot say when he was born and when he is going to die, he can only say, "What is this question of birth and death? I was never born and I will never die." If you ask an awakened one what it is we call the river of time that comes and goes, that constantly moves from the past to the future, making a brief present, he will say, "Really, nothing comes and goes. What is, is. It is immovable and unchanging."

Time is a concept of an unenlightened mind.

Time as such is a product of the mind, and time ceases with the cessation of the mind.

Let us understand it from a few different angles. For various reasons we say time is the handiwork of the mind. Firstly, when you are happy time moves fast for you, and when you are unhappy it slows down. When you are with someone you love time seems to be on wings, and when you are with your enemy the clock seems to move at a snail's pace. So far as the clock is concerned it goes its own way whether you are happy or miserable, but the mind takes it differently in different situations. If someone in your family is on his deathbed the night seems to be too long, almost unending, as if another morning is not going to come. But the same night, in the company of a loved one, would pass so quickly, as if it were running a race. The clock remains the same in both situations. Chronological time is always the same, but psychological time is very different, and its measure depends on the changing states of the mind. But the movement of the clock indicating chronological time is unconcerned with you.

When someone asks Einstein to explain his theory of relativity, he is reported to have said, "It is very difficult to explain. There are hardly a dozen persons on this earth at the moment with whom I can discuss this theory, yet I will try to explain it to you through an illustration." By way of illustration Einstein always explained that time is a concept of the mind. He said if someone were made to sit by the side of a burning stove, time would pass for him in a different way than it would if he were sitting by the side of his beloved. Our pleasure and pain determine the measure of time.

Samadhi is beyond pleasure and pain. It is a state of bliss, and there is no time in bliss, neither long nor short. So no one who has achieved samadhi can say when Krishna was born and when he departed. All that one in the state of samadhi can say is that Krishna is, that his being is everlasting, eternal.

Not only Krishna's being, everybody's being is everlasting, eternal. All being is eternal.

Asleep in the night, you all dream, but you may not have observed that the state of time in a dream undergoes a radical change from what it is in your waking hours. A person dozes for only a minute and in that brief minute he dreams about something that would ordinarily take years to happen in the waking world. He dreams he has married a woman, that his wife has borne him children, that he is now busy with the marriages of his sons and daughters. Events that would take years are compressed into a tiny minute. When he tells us his whole dream after waking up, we refuse to believe how it could happen. But he says it is a hard fact. The mind undergoes a change in the dreaming state, and with it the concept of time changes.

And time stops altogether in the state of deep sleep, which is called the state of sushupti in Sanskrit. When you wake up in the morning and report you had a deep sleep last night, this knowledge is not derived from the state of sleep itself, but from your awareness of the time of your going to bed in the night and of leaving it in the morning. But in case you are not aware of it, you cannot say how long you slept.

Recently I visited a woman who has been in a coma for the last nine months, and her physicians say that she will remain in the coma for three years and will also die in the coma. There is hardly any possibility of her regaining consciousness. But if by some chance she regains her consciousness after three long years, will she be able to say how long she has been in the coma? She will never know it on her own.

In deep sleep the mind goes to sleep, and so it has no awareness of time. And in samadhi the mind ceases to be. Samadhi is a state of no-mind.

So one cannot know through samadhi when Krishna was born and when he died.

Rinzai was a famous Zen monk. One fine morning, in the course of his lecture, he said that Buddha never happened. His listeners were stunned. They thought perhaps Rinzai had gone out of his mind, because he had been living in a Buddhist temple where he worshipped Buddha's idol and was a lover of Buddha. Sometimes he was even seen dancing before the statue of the Sakyamuni, and now the same person was saying, "Who says Buddha ever happened?"

His audience said, "Have you gone mad?"

Then Rinzai said, "Yes, I was mad for so long, because I believed that Buddha happened." One who happens in time will someday cease to happen. So there is no sense in saying about the eternal that it happens. That is why I say Buddha never happened, and all stories about him are lies."

But the listeners said, "How can you say that when the scriptures say that Buddha happened, that he walked on this earth, and that there are eyewitnesses to this event?"

But Rinzai insisted that Buddha never happened. "Maybe his shadow arose and walked. But Buddha? Never."

That which is now born and then dies, which now appears and then disappears, is nothing more than our shadow; we are not it. So, deliberately, no chronological records of Krishna's life were maintained.

Religion has no history. That which appears and disappears, comes and goes, begins and ends, has history; religion is eternal, without beginning and without end. Eternal means that which is everlasting, timeless. So religion cannot have a history, a record of events and dates. And no enlightened person can say when Krishna happened or did not happen It is not at all necessary, nor has it any relevance. If someone says it has, he only betrays his ignorance.

We were never born, nor are we ever going to die. We have been here since eternity. Only eternity is.

But we all keep track of time continuously, from morning to morning And we measure everything with the yardstick of time, which is natural and yet not true. It is an index of our poor understanding, and we cannot do better than our understanding. In this context I am reminded of a fable.

A frog from the ocean visited his friend living in a small well. The well-frog wanted to know what the ocean was like. The visiting frog said it was much too big to be known from such a small space as a well. The well frog jumped halfway across the well and said, "Is your ocean this big?"

The other frog said, "Excuse me, it is impossible to measure the vastness of the ocean by the tiny yardstick of a well."

Then the well-frog took a bigger jump, jumping from one end of the well to the other, and said, "This large?" But when the visiting frog shook his head his friend grew angry and said, "You seem to be crazy. No place on the whole earth can be bigger than my well. Yet I will try another way to know how large your ocean is." And then he made a round of the whole well and said, "It cannot be more than this."

But he still failed to convince the visitor who said again, "In comparison with the ocean this well is nowhere; it is too small to be a measure of the ocean."

The well-frog lost his temper and said to his visitor, "Get out of here! I cannot stand this nonsense. Have you ever seen anything bigger than this well? Even the sky, which is said to be the largest space, is only as big as this well, no bigger. I have always watched it from here; it is no more than the well."

We all live in the well of time. Here everything appears and disappears, comes and goes. Here everything is fragmented something has become the past, something is future, and in between the past and future there is a tiny movement known as the present, which goes as soon as it comes. And we want to know who happened in what moment. In some moment we experience ourselves imprisoned in some well and we want to know that moment and that well.

No, Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna cannot be imprisoned in a moment. We do try to imprison them so, because we are attached to our limitations, to our fragments. The day people in the West grow in understanding, they will forget all about the time of Christ's birth and death. In this matter the understanding of the people of the East is much deeper. And it has given rise to a lot of misunderstanding in the West in regard to us. The way we look at things, the way we think and say things is such that the world cannot understand. When someone from the West wants to know about the lives of the tirthankaras he is astounded to hear that some of them lived for millions of years. How can he accept it? It seems to be impossible. How can he believe that some of the tirthankaras were as high as the skies? It cannot be so.

It is not a matter of believing, it is a matter of understanding. If a well-frog wants to be bold enough to describe the measurement of an ocean, what will it say? It will say it is equal to hundreds of millions of wells combined. The well has to be its yardstick and there has to be a figure. So we represent the age of the eternal with a figure of a thousand million years. And to describe the magnitude of the infinite we say that while its feet are firmly rooted in the earth its head reaches the sky -- even the sky is not the limit.

That is why those who knew decided to drop all measurements and did not write the history of religion.

Krishna is immeasurable, eternal. And he is inexpressible, beyond words.

 

Next: Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 2

 

Energy Enhancement           Enlightened Texts            Krishna            Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy

 

 

Chapter 5

 

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 1
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 1, WHAT IS THE TIME OF KRISHNA'S BIRTH? WHAT INVESTIGATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE UP TO NOW? AND WHAT IS YOUR OWN VIEW ON THIS MATTER? DO YOU THINK AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON CANNOT RIGHTLY ANSWER SUCH A QUESTION? at energyenhancement.org

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 2
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 2, IF A RECORD OF CHRIST'S LIFE COULD BE MAINTAINED, WE KNOW HE WAS BORN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY YEARS AGO. HOW IS IT THAT A SIMILAR RECORD OF KRISHNA IS NOT AVAILABLE? at energyenhancement.org

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 3
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 3, IT IS TRUE THAT THE INNER MOST SPIRIT OF MEN LIKE KRISHNA AND CHRIST IS ETERNAL, BUT THEIR TEMPORAL BODIES ALSO COME AND GO, AND WE HERE ARE INTERESTED IN THE TIME-SEQUENCE OF THEIR TEMPORAL BODIES. GROSS EVENTS LIKE KRISHNA-LEELA AND MAHABHARAT ARE WORTH KNOWING AND WE WANT TO BE ENLIGHTENED ABOUT THEM at energyenhancement.org

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 4
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 4, WE FULLY AGREE WITH YOU THAT WE NEED NOT CONCERN OURSELVES WITH THE RECORDS OF KRISHNA'S GROSS LIFE, LIKE THE DATES OF HIS BIRTH AND DEATH. BUT WE SHOULD CERTAINLY WANT TO KNOW THE WAY KRISHNA LIVED HIS LIFE, THE MESSAGE HE HAD FOR US, THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HIS LIFE'S STORY. YOU SAID A LITTLE WHILE AGO THAT RELIGION CANNOT HAVE A HISTORY BECAUSE IT IS ETERNAL. BUT WHAT DOES KRISHNA MEAN BY DHARMA OR RELIGION WHEN HE SAYS IN THE GEETA THAT ONE'S OWN DHARMA, EVEN IF IT IS QUALITATIVELY INFERIOR, IS PREFERABLE TO AN ALIEN DHARMA, THAT IT IS BETTER TO DIE IN ONE'S OWN DHARMA THAN TO LIVE WITH AN ALIEN DHARMA? HE SAYS THAT EVERY ALIEN DHARMA IS PERILOUS, AND SHOULD BE SHUNNED AT ALL COSTS. IF DHARMA IS ONE AND ETERNAL, WHY SHOULD KRISHNA THINK IT NECESSARY TO DIVIDE IT INTO GOOD AND BAD, INTO PERSONAL AND ALIEN? at energyenhancement.org

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 5
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 5, IT SEEMS THAT KRISHNA IS TRYING TO SUPPRESS ARJUNA WHEN HE SAYS, 'IT IS BETTER TO DIE IN ONE'S OWN NATURE THAN TO LIVE IN AN ALIEN ONE. ' PERHAPS ARJUNA IS TRYING TO TRANSCEND HIS WARRIOR'S NATURE AND BECOME A BRAHMIN. WHEN HE IS OVERWHELMED WITH GRIEF AND COMPASSION, HE IS JUST TRYING TO ACHIEVE HIS SELF-NATURE, HIS TRUE NATURE, BUT KRISHNA PULLS HIM BACK. SECONDLY, YOU SAY THAT KRISHNA DOES NOT DOMINATE ARJUNA; ON THE CONTRARY, HE FREES HIM. BUT AS THE GEETA BEGINS ARJUNA TELLS KRISHNA, 'I AM YOUR DISCIPLE AND I SURRENDER TO YOU, ' AND WHEN IT ENDS ARJUNA SAYS AGAIN, 'I WILL DO YOUR BIDDING.' DOES IT NOT SUGGEST THAT KRISHNA HAS BEEN TRYING TO IMPOSE HIMSELF ON ARJUNA AS HIS MASTER? at energyenhancement.org

  • Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 6
    Krishna, Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy Chapter 4: Religion has no History, It is Eternal, Question 6, YOU SAID THAT KRISHNA HAPPENS TO BE ARJUNA'S FRIEND, NOT HIS MASTER, AND THEREFORE HE BEARS WITH HIM SO PATIENTLY AND CLEARS HIS NUMEROUS DOUBTS. BUT IN THE SAME GEETA KRISHNA SAYS, 'SANSHAYATMA VINASHYATI -- A DOUBTING MIND PERISHES. ' HE SAYS SO LOOKING AT THE DOUBTING MIND OF ARJUNA HIMSELF. BUT THE IRONY IS THAT ARJUNA DOES NOT PERISH, THE KAURAVAS PERISH INSTEAD. PLEASE EXPLAIN at energyenhancement.org

 

 

 
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