This blog is dedicated to my friend Freedom Unbound who truly loves me despite my idiosyncrasies, my sharp tongue and my derision of what I perceive to be his frailties. This, Free is not a criticism of you, so don’t come at me with hammer and tongs. This is perhaps an autobiographical account of some things that shaped me. And an interpretation of Chapter 2 by the inimitable Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudevji.

Years ago I began my teaching career at Chinmaya Vidyalaya and that was my first brush with Swamis and Gurus. Even in those days, I was a skeptic. When Swamiji came to the school there used to be a big hubhub of activity. The old man, by then he was very old and I suspect a bit senile, was arrogant to the hilt… with mine own ears I have heard him say… Mahatmas like me… lol.. I was aghast. His diabetic state also made him prone to annoyance at the smallest little discrepancies, it was funny.. and sad.. he was after all a fallible old man.

After all that talk on humility and patience,  he was unable to control the very krodha that he preached must be conquered. The other thing was when he came he would have this cavalcade of black attired youths from the Chinmaya youth wing or some such nonsense, on motorbikes with saffron flags go before his car. The vanity of it just cracked me up every time.

I remember how the teachers stood in line to touch his feet. Naturally, I refrained. I was not going to do that. My mum used to say to me.. he is an old man.. what is your problem in touching his feet? I would smile and say ‘That, ma, is my vanity. And yes it was – my arrogance, my frailty.

My next brush was with the swamis who came to preach every Saturday and they had these compulsory Gita classes. I never missed one. It was entertainment all the way. We used to question the young chaps about the Gita and they would fumble and stumble, the way people still do. So, my mischief goes a long way. Those were the days when my young mind began to despise this kind of sycophantic, obsequious, groveling  which I still find obnoxious in people and where I am  always proved right by their inability to make good their claims to wisdom.

People have a tendency to say things or quote Holy books or people or retell a parable, as if they have said it themselves. It is a common human fraility.  They think by doing so it becomes their own. It doesn’t. You have merely quoted it. This halo effect from those who have achieved greatness is also a clear manifestation of an intellectual laziness at best and a fraudulent con-game at worst. When you can’t explain or defend the wisdom, I say go back to the drawing board and reflect. Reflection is sorely lacking in a lot of us. A lot of people I know are voracious readers without any reflection.

The mullahs who have issued fatwas against a lot of writers or cartoonists have never read a word or even seen the offending pieces. They have taken up a cause celebre and gone on an unholy warpath. Similarly, most people who go pious or militant are often those with the least knowledge. Many don’t reflect on what they read, so they think reading is enough. The young swamis were quite well read, well-studied to coin a term, but oh their confusion when they resorted to platitudes on faith and God and tried to stop your flow of questions. One chap ran away from the mutt under our relentless badgering. He must have given up sanyaas. Lol.

To be fair there were a few awesome ones. One I particularly remember for what he said about never leaving the battleground if you wanted to fight injustice. But I suspect he would have been wise even without any religious clan.

Coming now to Chapter 2 - *grin*

Here is my  favourite interpretation. They are all interpretations no matter what the fools say. Considering that the human race of sapiens sapiens is just 10,000 years old  and the universe itself is 15 billion, no God in my view would have hung around to give his essence to these new fangled evolutionary accidents that we human beings are – blips, as I call us, on the face of Time. All holy books, dear friends, are about anthropomorphic Gods. They are all couched in Man and his aggrandized vision of his cosmically puny self.

The other thing is, like any subject that requires a certain weight of intellect and then needs to be written for the common man, the books carry on them the burden of a loftiness that can only be expressed in symbol. Only the fool would do a literary read and go around brandishing the physical and the concrete as the “word”  and eeks.. horror of horrors… given to him/her.  

I love Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. He is awesome. His humour, his irreverence, his clarity, I simply adore. No platitudes. No humbug.  I suspect he is atheist at heart. His words are so tongue-in-cheek, he can’t be anything else.

To me this has been the most logical and acceptable explanation I have ever read, and I’ve read a few. The only one that does not trip me up. The Krishna myth however has many lacunas. I need to find answers to all of those. Dig up more of Sadhguru.

Do have a read and comment too.

Excerpt from “Encounter the Enlightened”

Questioner: Guruji, I just have a doubt. In the battle of Kurukshetra, why did Lord Krishna compel Arjuna, who had laid down his arms? He did not want to fight his own kith and kin, why did he compel him to fight?

Sadhguru: Now you have brought Krishna in. First of all, before we bring in Krishna, we need to come to some understanding of who Krishna was. I want you to understand that Krishna does not fit into the logical dimensions of your life. You built temples for Krishna. That’s easy. You worship Krishna. That’s also easy. You sing songs in praise of Krishna. That’s always very easy. Now suppose there was a man like Krishna in your neighborhood, would you accept him? Would you be capable of accepting him? Can you?

Questioner: I don’t think I could, Guruji.

Sadhguru: Then how can you worship him? You worship him because your grandfather told you that Krishna is God, but if he walked into your neighborhood now, you would not accept him. So your worship is false. Whatever you think about Krishna is false, because if that kind of a man entered your society today, you would not accept him, you would want to persecute him. You would want to hound him out of the place because your wife may want to dance with him, your mother and children may want to go and dance with him, too and you wouldn’t know what was happening! This would be the reality and you are not mature enough to digest the situation, isn’t it?

When you cannot even accept a man, where is the question of worshipping him? It’s false worship. It’s only because he existed five thousand years ago that you are able to worship him now. If he were alive now, you wouldn’t worship him. So let us first look at the basics. Krishna comes from that dimension which is not logical. You cannot logically understand him. Now this question will open up too many things, so I will just be brief on this. IfArjuna had eschewed violence, if he had given up violence, Krishna would have touched his feet and said, “Go,” but Arjuna was a warrior. He was willing to slaughter anybody. He had slaughtered thousands of people in his life. He was like a sharp double-edged weapon. He didn’t know anything else except fighting. Even on the battlefield, he was willing to slaughter almost everyone.

It was only five or six people — his grandfather, his Guru, his brother, his friend — except for them, he was willing to slaughter everyone else. So Krishna was saying, “If you want to kill, kill those who are dearest to you. You will realize life. If you want to kill, kill your own child, hen you will realize what life is. But if you kill somebody who doesn’t mean anything to you, you will remain a fool forever.” So Arjuna was asking these questions, “How can I kill my Guru? How can I kill my brother? How can I kill my friend? How can I kill my grandfather?” Krishna says, “Only if you slaughter your grandfather will you go to heaven. Only if you kill your Guru will you attain enlightenment.” In truth Arjuna had not given up violence. He only wanted to save those few people; he was willing to kill the rest. So that’s why His teaching is like that. I want you to understand what importance Krishna gives to one man’s realization. If you realize, and in the process, ten thousand people die, ft is okay; it is of so much value to the world. It is that value that he is establishing. He is not propagating violence; he functions from a completely different dimension, which is not logical. Logically he will not fit into your mind at all. It is only because this happened five thousand years ago that you are able to worship him. If he was here today, you could not.

Isn’t he something else? J

For those who are wondering what Chapter 2 contains:

This is Krishna exhorting Arjuna to battle when Arjuna is unwilling to lift arms against his brothers, his guru and his elders……