Radha the Intriguing Mystery : 3. Swami Krishnananda

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29/09/2018
Radha the Intriguing Mystery : 3.  Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on Radha Ashtami on September 14, 1983)

God's law differs totally from man's law because it transcends man's law and, to the human mind, transcendence always looks like a violation. All laws or norms that we see in the dream world are violated in the waking world, as we know very well. Waking is a total negation of every principle that we considered as valid in dream, but we cannot consider waking life as a violation of law. It is a fulfilment rather than a violation. All the laws of dream are fulfilled in a higher comprehension and a greater profundity in that so-called violation, the negation of the rules of dream. So is God's behaviour in the world. It is a negative stroke that is dealt at all behaviour in the human world and, as such, there is a marked difference between the manifestations or the Avataras of Bhagavan Sri Narayana in other contexts and in the life of Sri Krishna.

Now we come to the context of the relationship between Sri Krishna and Radha. As I mentioned, it is not like the relationship between Narayana and Lakshmi or Siva and Parvati. It is the relationship between God and His creation, or in a more philosophical jargon we may say it is the relationship between consciousness and matter, the seer and the seen. Nobody can say what that relationship is. In a psychological sense we may say it is the relationship between understanding and emotion; in a logical sense we may say it is the relationship between subject and object; in a cosmical sense we may say it is the relationship between God and creation; and in a more precise, analytic sense we may say it is the relationship between reason and instinct. They are integrally connected so that they cannot be set apart as two different things. One continues in the other, one is inseparable from the other, one is necessary for the other, one is absorbed in the other.

There are two stages of spiritual sadhana, the lower and the higher. All the Incarnations depict behaviour which is normal, and it is only in Sri Krishna's life we have a behaviour which is super normal—not abnormal, but super normal—and, therefore, to apply the norms of human life as a yardstick to measure the measureless immensity of Sri Krishna's manifestation would be to carry hot embers on a dry straw. It would not be possible. Sri Krishna's coming and the various lilas that he played, as described in the Srimad Bhagavata and in the other epics and the Puranas, are expected to act as a kind of hint or an indication as to the existence of something which is totally different from what man considers as valuable and meaningful.

To be continued ..


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