Question 4

QUESTIONER: THE LAST PART OF THE FIRST QUESTION REMAINS UNANSWERED BY YOU. ACCORDING TO YOU, WHEN KRISHNA SAYS HE IS HERE TO DESTROY THE WICKED, HE REALLY MEANS TO CHANGE THEM, TO TRANSFORM THEM. BUT THE MANY STORIES OF HIS LIFE CLEARLY SAY HE ACTUALLY DESTROYED THE WICKED.

It would be good to understand this matter.

What seems to us as killing is not really killing in the eyes of Krishna. Those who understand the GEETA will understand. What we think of as killing is not actually killing. To Krishna nobody is ever killed; nobody can ever be killed. But then, what is it that Krishna does We find him killing any number of demons and monsters in the stories of his life.

To understand it you will have to go with me into the very depths of the matter; to understand it we will have to go into a few things, a few sutras that will even go beyond your understanding.

If you understand it rightly, in terms of the science of religion, then it means only this much: Krishna uprooted the physical organization of a particular demon or wicked person, destroyed the whole system of his conditioning, his body and mind together, and released his inner soul from bondage. In terms of religion it means only this much. If Krishna sees that a particular person cannot be transformed with his existing body-mind, then it is better to release him from its clutches and send him in search of a new body which will be helpful in his future growth. If the physical frame of a person is so dulled and deadened that it rejects all change, then it is necessary to help him find a new form for himself.

Let us try to understand it with the help of an example. If we want to educate an old person who is illiterate, from the beginning, from the very abe, we will find it an impossible task. It is really a hard job to educate a grownup. He is so heavily conditioned, his sensibilities are so dull and dead, his old habits are so entrenched and strong that it possible to free him from his age-old conditioning and habits. Even if the person concerned is willing to learn, he cannot. But now science is going to create conditions in which it will be possible to provide an old person with the body of a child, so that he can learn everything from the beginning. And it will be great. This is what Krishna is doing in the case of some hardened wicked people. He releases them from their old bodies so they can begin their life's journey anew.

It is strange but significant that Ravana feels grateful to Rama after being killed at his hands on the battlefield, and he thanks him profusely from his deathbed. Similarly, all those who were killed by Krishna felt grateful to him. This feeling of gratitude arose from the very depth of their souls, because they felt free of a prison whose walls were as strong as granite, and they also felt they could begin their journey afresh, from abe. But to us it appears that they are simply finished. If you want to know my view about it, I will say that Krishna gave them a fresh opportunity to begin their life anew, and live it in a right way. He gave them a clean slate to write on.

In Krishna's view, in my view, nobody dies; there is no way to die. Death is a lie. It does not mean that you should go on a killing spree and kill people with abandon. Of course, the day you come to know that no one dies, you will acquire the right to kill, because then killing will have altogether a different meaning. But then you, on your part, should have the readiness to die, because this readiness alone will prove that you really know that death is a misnomer and that nobody really dies.

Krishna has this readiness in full measure. Every now and then he enters the den of death with a smile on his face. That is the only test. He is yet a child, and he fights and wrestles with a terrible snake known as Kalia. As a child he fights with the most powerful demons. What does it all mean? It means that no one dies and that death is a lie, an illusion. It means that although death has an appearance, it has no reality. And if we know that death is a lie then we can realize the need to change our bodies.

Try to understand it in another way. If somebody's kidney fails to function, the surgeon transplants another kidney in its place, and we don't object to it. But in a way your body has been changed. Your lungs go out of order and are replaced by lungs of plastic; that too amounts to a partial change of the body. At the moment we change the body in parts, but very soon we will be able to change the whole of the body. There will be no difficulty. Up to now it has been the job of nature to change our bodies, but now science is taking over from nature. Science had not developed so much in the times of Krishna, so he had to kill a wicked person and ask nature to provide him with a new body so that he could begin his life afresh. In the future, however, it will be quite possible to change the whole body of a seasoned criminal who refuses to change his ways in any other way. We will not punish him, we will simply change his whole physical frame. It will be done in a laboratory for human beings. And then we will understand Krishna fully. At the moment we don't have the full facts in our hands.

Therefore, I do not accept the allegation that Krishna destroyed the wicked; he just transformed them. In other words, Krishna started them on a new journey of transformation. He sent them back to the workshop of nature with a request to remake them with new bodies, new eyes and new minds, so that they could begin life once again from the beginning.