Sri Krishna – The Purna Avatara
Divine Life
Society Publication: Chapter 10: Spiritual Import of
Religious Festivals by Swami Krishnananda
(Sri Krishna
Janmashtami message given on the 29th of August, 1974)
Bhagavan Sri Krishna is regarded as Purna-Avatara, which means the full Incarnation. He is considered to be a complete manifestation of God, not a partial expression of the power and the glory of God. The Jayanti of Bhagavan Sri Krishna, also known as Sri Krishna Janmashtami, falls on the eighth day in the dark fortnight of the month of Bhadrapada (August-September). The observance of this holy day and the performance of this sacred worship to the great Incarnation is a symbol of an intensification of our soul's yearning to come nearer to God as much as possible.
The power of God is never
fully manifest anywhere in the world. We only express a little of our thought,
a little fraction of our understanding and a partial form of our energy as
would be necessitated by the nature of the particular context. Likewise, God
never manifests Himself wholly unless the occasion is of such an intensified
character as to call for such a manifestation.
Bhagavan Sri Krishna, the full
Avatara, the complete manifestation of God, is the object of our worship,
prayer and meditation on this day. We have heard from narrations recorded in
the scriptures like the Srimad Bhagavata, that Bhagavan Sri Krishna was born at
midnight, as it was also the case with the birth of Jesus the Christ. God did
not reveal Himself in daylight, but in the dead of night.
The spiritual connotation of
this, from the point of view of the relationship of the soul to God, is that
the daylight or activity of the senses is the midnight or slumber of the Atman,
and the daylight or birth of the Atman is the midnight or slumber of the
senses. When the senses cease from their activity, conditions become favorable
for the manifestation of God. The Atman does not manifest Itself when the
senses are rejoicing in the daylight of their contact with objects. On the
other hand, the birth of the Atman is a deathblow to the senses, and the
slumbering of the prison guards at the time of the advent of the Lord may be,
in a way, compared to the death of the senses at the time of the birth of
Divinity.
Kamsa represents the ego and
all his menials represent the senses. All these were put to rest at the time of
birth of Lord Krishna. Hence, the Bhagavadgita says, "Ya nisa sarvabhutanam tasyam jagarti
samyami, yasyam jagrati bhutani sa nisa pasyato muneh": The
night of the ignorant is day for the sage, and vice versa, the night of the
sage is day for the ignorant.
The infinite is the Fullness,
the Purna; and the finite is the Apurna. We individuals, the Jivatmans and
everything in this world are Apurna, finites, but we enshrine the Infinite in
our bosom. And the manifestation of the Infinite in the finite, the birth of
God in man is possible, practicable and inevitable when the obstructions to Its
manifestation are obviated totally.
Bhagavan Sri Krishna’s life
was full and complete right from childhood up to the maturity of life. He was a
fullness of bodily perfection, understanding, social relationship and political
statesmanship, and a fullness in His own Being. This has been revealed even in
His outward physical personality – a beauty and a charm that mankind has never
seen.
Our meditations and our
worships are really silent invocations of the characteristics of the Object of
our worship and meditation. Every worship is an invocation, and every form of
meditation is an invocation; and invocation means the calling of the force into
our own being and the planting of the power of the Divine in our own
personality. During the time of the worship and meditation, you are in
communion with the Divine Being.
If meditation is difficult,
worship is also difficult. Any kind of inward communion is a difficult task for
the mind, because of its outgoing tendency. The mind never comes in communion
with anything in this world at any time. It always longs for contact rather
than communion. The senses and the mind are habituated to contact with their
objects. The religious invocation of worship and meditation is not an attempt
at coming in contact even with a Divinity or a Godhead, but an endeavor to
commune oneself with the Supreme Being. What is the difference between contact
and communion? In contact you really do not imbibe the characteristics of the
object, and you are not really in possession of the object. In contact, again,
you do not receive into yourself the power of the object, and, therefore, you
can neither enjoy that object nor have control over it.
The Gita says, "Ye hi samsparsaja bhogah duhkhayonaya eva
te": The pleasures born of sense-contact are wombs of pain.
Every contact brings pain and suffering and ultimate ruin of oneself. But the
religious aspiration of the soul does not long for contact with God, but a
communion with Him. In that communion which we try to establish in our
spiritual moments of worship and meditation, we simultaneously commune
ourselves with the whole of creation, because creation is the cosmic body of
God. Thus to worship God is to worship the whole world and to serve God is to
serve humanity, and vice versa. Thus our communion with God is simultaneously a
communion with everything in the world.
Hence, this is an occasion for
us to strengthen ourselves spiritually. Spiritual strength, of course, is the
real strength and real power that we are seeking. And in this particularly specialized
form of worship and communion with the ideal of Bhagavan Sri Krishna on this
holy day, we have no doubt made a very vast and comprehensive achievement which
will ensure prosperity in every walk of life.
The peculiarity and the
speciality of the life of Bhagavan Sri Krishna was that, He was an
all-comprehensive personality. He was a householder and not a Sannyasin. He had
wife and children. He was a politician and a statesman. He was a soldier and
also a servant when the time demanded that kind of attitude from Him. And at
the same time, He was a person with a comprehensive understanding of the
various shades of the difference which relationships put on among things.
Therefore, it is difficult to understand, ordinarily, the significance behind
many of the things that He did and also many of the things He said, especially
in the Bhagavadgita.
The Mahabharata and the Srimad
Bhagavata are the monumental records of His life, His activities and His
achievements. The Bhagavadgita may be regarded as the great gospel that He gave
to mankind. It is as difficult to understand His teaching as it is to
understand His own life, because He did not think as we are thinking. A total
transformation, a transfiguration of all values is brought about in His
activity and life, and also in His teachings, such that His life and teachings
are a sort of a superhuman presentation before us.
The Bhagavadgita, the cream of
His teaching, also conveys to us that things are not what they seem to our
senses. There is something quite different from what we sense, feel, think and
understand as valuable from His life also. This is the Truth behind things for
which His life and teachings stood and which He Himself embodied in His own
life. This is the message for us today, which we should try to imbibe into our
lives by invoking His grace and putting forth honest efforts. As the Gita
concludes, where Krishna and Arjuna are together, i.e., where Divine Grace and
human effort go together, there is prosperity, victory, happiness and firm
polity.
Excerpts from:
Sri Krishna-The Purna Avatara - Chapter 10: Spiritual Import of
Religious Festivals by Swami Krishnananda
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