Question 8

QUESTIONER: YOU TALKED ABOUT LIBIDO, SEX ENERGY AND SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE. IN THIS CONTEXT A DELICATE BUT CLEAR QUESTION ARISES IN REGARD TO KRISHNA'S RELATIONSHIP WITH RADHA.IT SEEMS AS IF THE FLUTE BELONGS TO KRISHNA, BUT THE MUSIC EMANATING FROM IT BELONGS TO RADHA. IF KRISHNA SINGS A SONG, ITS POETIC JUICE AND BEAUTY COME FROM RADHA AND WHEN KRISHNA DANCES, RADHA MAKES THE CLINKING SOUND AND ITS RHYTHM -- SO INEXTRICABLY ONE THEY ARE. THAT IS WHY RADHAKRISHNA HAS BECOME OUR WATCHWORD, OUR CHANT. NOBODY SAYS RUKMINI-KRISHNA, ALTHOUGH RUKMINI WAS MARRIED TO KRISHNA IF RADHA IS REMOVED FROM THE LIFE OF KRISHNA, HE WILL LOOK SO FRAGMENTARY AND PALE. BUT THE IRONY IS THAT RADHA IS NOT EVEN MENTIONED IN THE BHAGWAD, IN THE BASIC SCRIPTURE DEPICTING THE COUNTLESS EROTIC PLAYS OF KRISHNA. SINCE YOU ARE SO MUCH LIKE KRISHNA, YOU ARE THE RIGHT PERSON TO SHED LIGHT ON THIS QUESTION. WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN?

The people who delve into the scriptures are really amazed by the fact that the scriptures don't even mention Radha. It is because of it some people think no one like Radha ever existed. They say that she is an imaginary creation of the poets of later times. It is natural that people who rely on history and its facts should find themselves in great difficulty on this score. It is true that Radha does not find mention in the earliest scriptures on Krishna, it is only the later literature that talks about her.

My own standpoint on this issue is just the contrary. I believe that the reason for her not being mentioned is quite different. Radha dissolved herself so completely in the being of Krishna, she became so united and one with him, that a separate account of her in literature became unnecessary.

Those of her associates who maintained their separate identities have been mentioned very much, but the scriptures did not think it necessary to mention those who lost their separate identities, merged in Krishna and lived like Krishna's shadows. To mention someone it is necessary that he or she have an independent identity. Rukmini is separate; she has her identity intact, and she has been well recorded by the scriptures. She might have loved Krishna but she did not become one with him. She was related to Krishna, but she did not dissolve herself in him. To be related with someone means you are separate from him or her.

Radha is not in a kind of relationship with Krishna; she is Krishna himself. So in my view it is quite just that she has not been mentioned separately; it is as it should be.

So remember this first reason for Radha not being mentioned in the old scriptures: she is invisible, like a shadow of Krishna she is not even separate enough that we could know her and recognize her. She is so inseparably one with him that one could not identify her and assign a name and place to her.

It is true that Krishna would be incomplete without Radha. I have said more than once that Krishna is a complete man, a perfect male. This thing has to be understood in depth. There are very few men on this earth who are complete men. Every man has his feminine part and, similarly, every woman has her masculine part. Psychologists say that every human being is bisexual, that there is a woman in every man and a man in every woman. The difference between a man and a woman is one of degrees: a man is sixty percent man and forty percent woman, and similarly, a woman is sixty percent woman and forty percent man. But there are men who seem to be feminine because their female component is predominant. Similarly, there are manly women because of the preponderance of the male element in them. Krishna is an exception to this rule. I consider him to be a whole man; there is no feminine element whatsoever in him. In the same way I will call Meera a complete woman; she has no masculinity whatsoever in her.

There is another side to this matter of full manhood. If a person is a whole man, he will be incomplete in another sense, and he will need a whole woman to complete him. He cannot do without her. Of course, an incomplete man, who is partly man and partly woman, can do without a woman, because there is already an inbuilt woman in him. But for a whole man like Krishna, a Radha is a must, a whole woman like Radha is a must. He cannot do without a Radha.

Basically, aggressiveness is the way of a man, and surrender the way of a woman. But being incomplete men and women, as most of us are, no man is capable of being fully aggressive and no woman is capable of being fully surrendered. And that is why, when two incomplete men and women relate with each other, their relationship is plagued by constant conflict and strife. It has to be so. Since there is an element of aggressiveness in every woman, she some times becomes aggressive -- while the essential woman in her is ready to submit and surrender. So there are moments when she puts her head at the feet of her man and there are also moments when she would like to strangle him to death. These are the two sides of her personality. In the same way the man is so aggressive at times he would like to dominate his beloved wholly, to keep her under his thumb, and sometimes he is so submissive that he becomes the picture of a henpecked husband. He has his two sides too.

Rukmini cannot be in deep harmony with Krishna, because of the male component in her. Radha is a complete woman and therefore can dissolve herself in Krishna absolutely. Her surrender to him is total. Krishna cannot be in deep intimacy with a woman who has any measure of masculinity in her. To have intimacy with such a woman he needs to be partially feminine. But he is a whole man; there is not a trace of femininity in him. So he will demand complete surrender on the part of a woman if she wants to be intimate with him. Nothing short of total surrender will do; he will ask for the whole of her. This, however, does not mean that he will only take and not give of himself; he will give of himself totally in return.

For this reason Rukmini, who finds so much mention in the old scriptures, and who is the rightful claimant, goes out of the picture eventually, and Radha, an unknown entity, who cannot have any rightful claim on Krishna, comes to center stage. While Rukmini is his lawful wife, duly married to him, Ra&a is an outsider who is nobody to Krishna. While his relationship with Rukmini was institutional, socially recognized, his relationship with Radha was one of friendship, of love. Radha can have no legal claim on Krishna; no law court will ever decree that she has any lawful claim on Krishna. But the irony is that in the course of time Rukmini is forgotten, disappears from history, and this woman Radha becomes everything to Krishna -- so much so that her name is attached to his for ever and ever.

And what is more significant in this connection is that Radha, who sacrifices everything for Krishna's love, who loses her own individual identity, who lives as Krishna's mere shadow, becomes the first part of their joint name. We call them Radhakrishna and not Krishnaradha. It means that one who surrenders totally gains totally, gains everything, that one who stands last In the line eventually comes out at the head of it.

No, we cannot think of Krishna without Radha. Radha constitutes the whole of Krishna's tenderness and refinement; whatever is delicate and fine in him comes from Radha. She is his song, his dance and all that is feminine in him. Alone Krishna is out and out male, and therefore there is no meaning in mentioning his name alone. That is why they become united and one, they become Radhakrishna. Both the extremes of life meet and mingle in Radhakrishna. And this adds to Krishna's completeness.

You cannot think of Mahavira standing side by side with a woman; a woman has no relevance to him. He is very much himself without a woman. Mahavira was married to a woman and they gave birth to a child, but one of the sects of the Jainas, the Digambaras, do not accept this to be a fact. They say Mahavira had no wife and no child. But I think that while it is historically true that Mahavira was married, psychologically what the Digambaras say is right. Psychologically, there can be no connection between a man like Mahavira and a woman. It is utterly meaningless. Even if it were a fact we cannot accept it. How can Mahavira love a woman? Impossible. There is not even a trace of that love in the whole of Mahavira's life.

Buddha had a wife, but he left her when he renounced the world. Similarly, you cannot associate Christ with a woman; he is beautiful as a bachelor. And his bachelorhood is meaningful. And in this sense too, all of them, Mahavira, Buddha and Christ, are incomplete, fragmentary.

As in the great organization of the universe, the positive is incomplete without the negative, the positive electricity is incomplete without the negative, so in the makeup of human life, man is quite incomplete without the woman. Man and woman together, rather masculinity and femininity together, aggressiveness and surrender together, war and peace together, make for a perfect union, a complete life.

If we want an appropriate symbol to describe the union of Radhakrishna there is one, and only one, available in the Chinese language: it is called yin and yang. Chinese is a pictorial language with a picture for every thing and every word. It has a picture representing yin and yang, the Chinese symbol for the universe. This symbol is in the form of a circle whose circumference is made up of two fish, one white and the other dark. The tail of each fish is in the mouth of the other, and thus they make a complete circle, representing the universe. One half of the circle, made up of the white fish, is exhibited in dark ness, and the other half made up of the dark fish, is exhibited in light. The white fish represents yang, the masculine active principle in nature, and the dark fish represents yin, the feminine passive principle in nature -- and yang and yin combine with each other to produce all that comes to be.

Radha and Krishna make for a complete circle of life, whole and abundant. In this sense too, Krishna Is complete, total. We cannot think of him in fragments and separate from Radha. If you tear him away from Ra&, he will become lackluster, he will lose all his color. Radha serves as the most appropriate canvas for the portrait of Krishna to emerge and shine forth. We cannot think of bright stars without a dark night; the darker the night the brighter the stars. Stars are very much there even during the daytime don't think they disappear from the firmament. Even now, as we are sitting here on a clear morning, the sky is studded with stars, but we cannot see them in the sunshine. If you enter a deep well -- say three hundred feet deep -- you can see the stars from there right now, because there is a deep layer of darkness covering the well. They shine forth in the night because of the background of darkness.

With the background of Radha, who surrounds him from all sides, the life of Krishna shines bright. In her company Krishna achieves his absolute flowering. If Krishna is the flower, Radha serves as its root. They are completely together; we cannot separate them. They really represent the togetherness of life.