Bhagavan Sri Krishna – The Divine Perfection : 7. Swami Krishnananda

19.04.2019
(Spoken on Sri Krishna Janmashtami, August 25, 1978)
7.

I was chatting with some friends the other day when I put a question whether anybody has written a biography of Bhagavan Sri Krishna. We came to the conclusion nobody has written it, and perhaps nobody will write it. The reason is that it is impossible to conceive the many-sidedness of this personality because anyone who tries to write a biography of such a person has to rise to that level of perfection of thinking, which is ordinarily not possible. And if one attempts to think in such a thoroughness and completeness and many-sidedness, the mind may get stunned and any kind of writing will be impossible. It is impossible to write the beauty of the ocean. We can only appreciate it by looking at it. We want to see it again and again, and we want to be there always. The thundering waves that dash upon the shores, ebbing and flowing, catching our spirits – we do not know how they work, but they do work. We enjoy the sunset, we enjoy the sunrise, we enjoy the magnificent brilliance of the orb of the sun at midday. We do not know how it happens, or why is it that we appreciate it. Art cannot be explained. It is an explanation by itself. Everything can be explained, but art cannot be explained because it is not science. That is why we call it art. Science can be explained, not art. So here we have the perfect art of presentation – the magnificence of the Bhagavadgita, the magnificence of the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, and the magnificence of the Mahabharata.

I am not here to drag on for hours together explaining to you all the implications of what is in my mind. My intention is merely to invoke before your minds a way of thinking which may set you pondering over possibilities which are other than merely human, intellectual and rational – call it divine if you like – thinking in terms of the yoga of the spirit, on account of which Bhagavan Sri Krishna is designated as Yogeshwara, the Lord of Yoga, a master in every field of life and every aspect of reality, a total being manifest in this temporal world, walking on this Earth with his feet planted on human values but with a spirit towering above the realms of human thought, reaching the apex of creation itself.

Perhaps in this great depiction of the personality of Bhagavan Sri Krishna we have the ideal of true life presented before us by the great author of the Mahabharata, how we also are to live in this world. We are not merely appreciating some great person, we are trying to emulate that ideal, to the extent possible, so that we may also tread that path and live that life within the ambit of our knowledge and capacity.

To be continued ....