Monday, August 26, 2013

(August 26,2013) Spiritual Message for the Day – Sri Krishna-The Purna Avatara

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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