Bhagavagd Gita - Session 15- Track 1508

Therefore, if you want to reach a level of Sattwic consciousness and you do not want to come down from Sattwic consciousness, if this is a need of your being, then that path is shown by Sri Rama: He has established it. And therefore, whenever you turn to Sri Rama, this is the one gift you will get; you will get Sattwa consciousness established in you: if you want to be an ideal father, and ideal son, ideal husband, ideal king, full of Sattwic consciousness: then Sri Rama has already accomplished on this earth.

But to go beyond Sattwa, there was a need of another Avatar, and Sri Krishna represents that. That is why we make in India the distinction between mariyada puruṣottama and purṇa puruṣottama. Sri Rama is mariyada, is a limitation of human nature, the highest limitation: you go to the maximum of human nature, but if you want to go beyond it…because it is also the intention of the Divine in the ascending movement. The earth when it came to a point when there was a need of action, which cannot sustain the loka-saṁgraha, unless we go beyond mental consciousness, if such is the situation where the world could be upheld only by the manifestation of a consciousness that transcends human limitations, goes beyond Sattwa: that is why in Sri Krishna we find ‘Divine Nature’.

Parashurama also was an Avatar, but His nature was Rajasic. Sri Rama also was an Avatar but His nature was Sattwic. And below that, was Tamasic, and even the animal nature, even they were also Avatars; but each Avatar was maximum at that point of evolution, in which that particular Avatar manifested. But when you want to go farther, as it was necessary…

Mahabharata, if you read Mahabharata from this point of view, the war had come to such a climax that it could not be fought successfully without the presence and guidance of a consciousness that was not limited to Sattwic nature. Yudhishthira represented you might say, great qualities of Sri Rama already: but merely by those qualities of Yudhishthira that war could not have been fought. You required a consciousness much vaster than the mental consciousness.

And if you read the Mahabharata, the way Sri Krishna intervenes, first of all you must see that Sri Krishna must have got a full knowledge of all the leaders of the war. He knew the strength and weakness of each one of them. He knew the interrelationship of all of them. He himself had a relationship with each one of them. He knew the art of relationship so well that although He was a king or a chieftain of a small state in western India, He had relationship with all leaders of Mahabharata of the war.

And He knew how to weave the relationships: this is another great ability; it is like super-chess; not this chess on which you play in which there are so many combinations and permutations. But Mahabharata was a super-chess in which He knew exactly when Duryodhana was going to meet his mother, and before he could do so He is already present at the right moment; when Kunti should be sent to Karna at the right moment: why not earlier? Why not later? It is only a few illustrations to show how Sri Krishna was aware with a kind of a thousand eyes: not with two eyes of the human consciousness, but thousand eyes. And He knew how to interweave them, how to bring them together.

In fact Mahabharata should be studied from this point of view: to understand the consciousness of Sri Krishna. How a very critical stage had been reached, and if He was not present, you can see the consequence. The limitations in which the humanity had reached, they could not have been broken. Ultimately the balance between those and these was so narrow that ultimately only five of them survived and all the rest…such a balance, this is called ‘critical point’: a critical point is where the elbow room is the minimum, and yet in that minimum you work out, and dig the tunnel so that dharma-rajya was established; ultimately Yudhishthira could established dharma-rajya and humanity could move forward.

Once again this humanity has come to a critical point where even a greater consciousness, you might say, all the full manifestation, complete manifestation of Krishna, where Kalki is needed: that is where we are today. The manifestation has taken such a point! Imagine for example the criticality of this present humanity where a war greater than Mahabharata…Mahabharata war was one in which only the nations of India combated. But from 1914 to 1918, nations of the world combated together in one great field, and even a greater soon after that war was over 1939 to 1945, a stupendous war in which the fate of the world stood in a balance, and Hitler who represented like Duryodhana, the forces of Adharma, he was in a triumphant wave, and country after country he was conquering. And if the war came through as it were, sure it must have because of Kalki.

A consciousness was at work; otherwise you cannot imagine these two world wars being past, and humanity, and we also surviving today in the way in which we are. A great tunnel was dug as it were at that time, and humanity has been taken on a forward stride: that also means that there an Avatar. We have to find out that there must have been an Avatar on this earth at that time who acted. Avatar always acts in a different way according to the need of the hour. The way, in which Rama acted, it was quite different from the way in which Sri Krishna acted. Maybe in His own time Sri Krishna was not known as an Avatar at all, we now, with the insight, we can see that here was Sri Krishna, and without Him the whole world would not have been able to move forward.