Devi Purana: Krishna’s Death and Sati by the Pandavas

The Mahabharata stories of the death of Krishna and the end of the Pandavas are well known. Krishna dies when he is shot by a hunter while he was lying in yoga in the jungle wishing to end his life. Some while after this, the Pandavas undertake a long pilgrimage which eventually leads them to the Himalayas and beyond, where they meet with their ends – Draupadi and the four younger Pandavas fall down on the way and die, and Yudhishthira is taken to heaven while he is still in his body after he passes a test by Dharma to encounter yet another test in the other world.

The end of Krishna, the Pandava brothers and Draupadi in the Devi Purana is very different from this.

Before we go into how the Devi Purana tells this story, a few words about the Purana itself. Devi Purana, also known as Mahabhagavata Purana, occupies a place of importance among the eighteen Upapuranas. It is called Devi Purana because its central theme is the glory of the Goddess. The Purana describes the transformation of the Primal Goddess into all the other gods and goddesses and explains the whole universe as her sport – śaktikrīdā jagat sarvam. Everything comes into being from her, everything exists in her and everything goes back unto her. The Taittiriya Upanishad speaks of Brahman as that from which everything comes into being, in which everything exists and unto which everything goes back – yato vā imāni bhutāni jāyante, yena jātāni jivanti, yat prayantyabhisamviśanti. The Goddess puts this in the Devi Purana as: “All this is me Me alone and nothing exists other than Me.” It is with the grace of the Goddess that Brahma creates the universe, Vishnu protects it and Shiva annihilates it in each circle of creation.

The comparatively small Purana consists of around four thousand five hundred verses divided into eighty-one chapters.

To the Devi Purana, Krishna is Kali incarnated as a male; and Radha, Shiva incarnated as a woman.

The Purana tells us that one day Shiva was sporting with his wife Parvati in the solitude of the Himalayas. The Lord of Lords was drinking in the amazing beauty of Parvati’s body with his eyes when a curious idea enters his mind. Birth as a woman is indeed wonderful, he thinks: nārījanma atiśobhanam.

With great tenderness he touches the face of his beloved. Then, addressing her with great love and reverence, he tells her: “Supreme Goddess, with your kindness, all my desires have been fulfilled. There are no more desires in my heart – except this one desire. Please fulfil this desire of mine too, Parameshani, if you are really pleased with me.”

Devi asks Shiva to tell her what his desire is and promises she will fulfil it. And Shiva tells her that she should take birth as a male somewhere on earth and he shall be born in a female body. She should become his husband and he, her wife; and they would love each other as they love now.

The Goddess promises to do so. She will take birth as a man in the house of Vasudeva in order to please him – she will be born as Krishna, she tells him.

Shiva is pleased. He tells Devi that he will take birth as Radha, the daughter of Vrishabhanu, and becoming as dear to her as her very life, he shall sport with her. He also tells her that his eight murtis shall be born as eight other women – Rukmini, Satyabhama and so on – and become his wives.

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Unlike in the Mahabharata, Krishna is not killed by Jara in the Devi Purana. Instead when he completes his missions on earth, one of which is to reduce the burden of wicked men on Earth, Brahma appears before him and asks him to reassume his original form and protect the gods. Krishna tells him that is precisely what he intends to do.

Krishna is the king of Dwaraka in the Devi Purana, unlike in the Mahabharata where he never becomes king. Following his conversation with Brahma, King Krishna tells his ministers that he does not intend to live on earth any more but will soon go to heaven. He asks them to send messengers to Hastinapura. They should go there and inform the Pandavas about his decision to ascend to heaven as suggested by Brahma.

When the Pandavas receive the message, they grieve over the news and decide to end their lives too to accompany Krishna to heaven through anumarana. Anumarana is a common Sanskrit word, which means wilful self-killing following another’s death. It is the ritual death we now call sati. Having made up their minds to follow Krishna in death, the Pandavas and Draupadi, and several other women, reach Dwaraka. Large quantities of other people too reach Krishna’s capital with the desire to do anumarana hearing of his decision to ascend to heaven.

When Krishna sees the Pandavas, his eyes fill up with tears. He entrusts the people of Dwaraka to them, telling them that since he is going to heaven, they should look after his people. Tears well up in the eyes of the Pandavas too at these words of Krishna. One after the other, beginning with Yudhishthira, they all inform Krishna that they too are going to give up their bodies and do his anugamana – follow him on his path.

In the Devi Purana, Draupadi is born of a part of Krishna-Kali – she is his/her amśaja. When the Pandava brothers express their desire to leave the earth and go with Krishna into the other world, Krishna turns to Draupadi and smilingly asks her if she would stay back on earth or would prefer to go to heaven with him.

“I am born of a part of you,” Draupadi tells Krishna, “and you are the supreme Kalika, the Primal One. I’ll follow you [merging back into you] as water merges back into water.”

aham tavāmśa-sambutā tvamādyā kālikā parā
aham tvām anuyāsyāmi jale jalamiva kṣaṇāt. – Devi Purana 58.28

A weeping Balarama tells Krishna to take all the Vrishni kings too with him since none of them would live on the earth without Krishna.

Krishna distributes his wealth among Brahmins and goes out of Dwaraka. The entire Vrishni clan follows him and as do the Pandavas along with their women and ministers. By the time they reach the sea, people from numerous other kingdoms too reach there. Nandi appears before them in a bejewelled chariot driven by lions. Brahma too appears in the skies along with the gods, bringing along thousands of chariots. At the sight of Krishna, the gods sing and dance in the skies, playing celestial drums and other musical instruments, creating a spirit of festivity and celebration all around.

In the middle of this great celebration, right before the eyes of Brahma and the gods, as the Pandavas and other people watch, Krishna changes into Kali. Kali boards the chariot drawn by lions and the next instant the chariot starts to move in the direction of Kailasa.

Draupadi touches the water of the sea before her and the next instant she merges back into Kali.

Yudhishthira boards a chariot which takes him to heaven.

Arjuna is an incarnation of Vishnu in the Devi Purana. Like Draupadi, he touches the seawater before him and abandons his body. Balarama too does the same. They are transformed back into the four-armed Vishnu bearing a conch, the discus, a mace and a lotus in his hands – for, like Arjuna, Balarama too is the incarnation of a part of Vishnu. Vishnu mounts his vehicle Garuda and is taken to Vaikuntha. Bhima and the other men there too abandon their bodies and are taken to heaven. Following this, Rukmini and the other seven queens of Krishna change themselves into Bhairava Shiva.

The Purana does not say anything special about Radha, so we will have to assume that she too changes back to Shiva as Krishna’s other wives do.

There is an interesting verse at the end of the chapter that narrates these incidents, a verse that is like a footnote. The verse says that in a later kalpa, Vishnu, with the blessings of Shiva, will be born as Krishna in his poornamsha [completeness] and he will reduce the burden of the earth like this through his sports [lila]. Which suggests that this is the story of an earlier kalpa.

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The most interesting change in the Devi Purana rendering of the Mahabharata and Bhagavata story is that both Krishna and Draupadi are incarnations of Kali and that Radha and Krishna’s eight other wives are incarnations of Shiva and the gender switch this involves.

The tantric tradition too tells the same story about the birth of Radha and Krishna, the central difference being that the idea of gender switch and incarnation occurs to both Kali and Shiva simultaneously. Here it is in the moments of sexual climax that the thought occurs to them. United with Kali, Shiva wonders what the orgasmic experience he is undergoing is like for Kali, the feminine; and Kali wonders what the experience she is undergoing at the moment is like for Shiva, the masculine. Each one desires to know through personal experience what an orgasm is like to the other gender. It is this curiosity that suggests to both of them the idea of transgender incarnations.

Among the numerous other changes the Devi Purana telling of the story introduces is in the nature of Krishna’s end. In the Mahabharata, Krishna dies a lonely death. The epic tells us how disappointed he became with the Yadavas and their infights. At one stage, Krishna is so frustrated that he seeks the advice of Narada in dealing with the Yadavas. He tells the celestial sage that their cruel speech torments his heart every day. It is as though he is like an arani which is rubbed against another to produce fire. Speaking of Ahuka and Akrura and their inability to get along with each other, for instance, Krishna rhetorically asks Narada, “What can be more painful than having both Ahuka and Akrura on your side? And what can be more painful than not having both Ahuka and Ajrura on your side.”

syātām yasyāhukākrurau kim nu duhkhataram tatah
yasya chāpi na tau syātām kim nu duhkhataram tatah.

Calling himself totally helpless, Krishna compares himself to the mother of two brothers who are gambling against each other. She cannot pray for the victory of either one of them, because that would be the loss of the other, so she prays for both. When Gandhari curses Krishna and says that his people would soon come to an end, Krishna accepts the curse and says that he in fact is endeavouring to bring about their end – meaning, they deserve to be finished off, so evil have they become. And that is precisely what he does. The Mausala Parva paints graphically Krishna’s dejection with the Yadavas and his loneliness in the last moments of his life. For a long time he wanders about in the jungle all alone before he enters yoga and is killed by Jara the hunter who mistakes him for a deer.

In contrast, Krishna’s death in the Devi Purana is a glorious affair. When the time comes, Brahma, the Creator, comes to him to tell him that he has completed his missions on earth and time has come for him to get back to his world and assume his original form, as Kali. He announces his decision to end his life to his ministers and has them send ministers to Hastinapura. All the Pandavas decide to do anumarana with him, as do an endless mass of other men and women from his own kingdom and from other kingdoms. When the time is ready, he goes to the seacoast and there a celestial chariot drawn by lions – Kali’s chariot – arrives to take him to his world. Right before the eyes of the hordes of celestials and humans, he transforms himself into Kali and boards the chariot that speeds away towards Kailasa. And the mass of people assembled there accompany him into the other world – including Draupadi, his wives and the five Pandavas.

The Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana tells us of the death of Rama, which too is a very public affair, attended to by masses of people from Ayodhya who all enter the waters of the Sarayu following Rama and accompany him in his final journey into the other world. The story that Devi Purana tells us about Krishna’s death is akin to this.

Yet another major change the Devi Purana makes is in the death of the Pandavas. Yudhishthira’s ascend to heaven is not sasharira – with his earthly body – nor is it a lonely affair in a desert beyond the Himalayas, but a glorious one in the sight of a huge assembly of men and women, including his brothers and all the gods in heaven, on the banks of the sea in Dwaraka. Nor do the other Pandavas die lonely deaths. Arjuna is transformed into Vishnu and ascends to heaven on the back of Garuda. Draupadi merges back into Kali, whose partial incarnation she is.

Part of the differences could be explained by the devotional nature of the Devi Purana compared to the dialectical nature of the Mahabharata. Devi Purana is about bhakti and salvation through the grace of the Goddess. Whereas the Mahabharata is about living life in tune with dharma, as Vyasa himself states in his Bharata Savitri. The only life worth living, according the Mahabharata, is life lived in harmony with dharma. The only society that is worth living in is the one in which dharma reigns supreme. The purpose of Krishna’s birth in the Mahabharata is establishment of dharma and teaching the world the path of dharma which they can follow. As the Gita verses put it beautifully, he creates himself whenever dharma declines and adharma prospers and his mission is the destruction of adharma and reestablishment of dharma:

yadā yadā hi dharmasya glānirbhavati bhārata
abhyutthānam adharmasya tadātmānam sṛjāmyaham
paritrāṇāya sādhunām vināśāya ca dushkṛtām
dharmasamsthāpanārthāya sambhavāmi yuge yuge.

Whenever dharma declines and adharma prospers, Oh Bharata, then I create myself. In order to protect the good and destroy the evil, and to establish dharma, I am born age after age.

In the Devi Bhagavata too, that definitely is one of the missions of the Goddess who incarnates as Krishna. But there are also other missions to her Krishna incarnation. One of them is showing the world her glory so that man turns to her – salvation comes not exactly through dharmic living, though that too is essential, but through devotion. Yet another purpose of the incarnation is pure sport – lila, krida – sport for the sake of sporting, for the sake of pleasure. The best word to describe that is rāsa. The model of life set before man is not struggling to achieve goals, or even virtuous living, but the celebration of life, life in tune with the divine, which, when lived rightly becomes a long rāsa. In lila, in krida, there are no goals to be achieved – there is only one thing to be done: celebrating life, living life as a sport, which is achieved when man gives up his individual will and individual goals, and surrenders to the will and goals of the divine. Kali takes birth as Krishna and Shiva as Radha and eight other women to sport and celebrate life in yet another form.

The Pandavas end their life at the ascent of Krishna-Kali because it is his/her presence in their lives that makes their lives meaningful and without him/her, their lives are empty.

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Arjuna Becomes a Woman: A Transgender Tale from Padma Purana

The story of Arjuna cursed to spend time as a hermaphrodite is well known. That happens when the apsara Urvashi approaches him desiring sex and Arjuna politely refuses, telling her she is like a mother to him because in one of her lifetimes on earth she was the wife of Pururava, his ancestor. He sticks to his stand even when she tells him those are human rules and they are not applicable to apsaras. A furious Urvashi curses him that he will spend time as a eunuch among women. It is using this curse that Arjuna lives one year in the antahpura of Virata during his life incognito following the dice game.

This story however is different. Here it is not a hermaphoridite that Arjuna becomes, but a beautiful woman called Arjunī and Arjuniyā. The fascinating tale, pregnant with profound mystic teachings, is told by the Padma Purana in its Patala Khanda.

I would like to tell the story with a warning at the beginning: it is a mystic tale told at the mystic level and trying to understand it at the human level will lead to all kinds of misinterpretations – particularly the kind that readers with some knowledge of Freudian psychology are prone to make about eastern wisdom clothed in mystical veils.

Before we go into the story, a few words about the Padma Purana that tells us this story. The Padma Purana is an amazing treasure house of traditional Indian lore and spiritual wisdom. It is the third largest book in Sanskrit literature – after the Mahabharata with its one hundred thousand verses and the Skanda Purana with eighty-four thousand verses. The Padma Purana has fifty-five thousand verses. Traditional Indian scholarship has held that this is a work by Veda Vyasa, as are all other Puranas. Modern scholarship, however, sees this as a much later work. This latter view is probably closer to the truth than the traditional view.

The story we are about to hear begins with Arjuna, seated under a tree on the bank of the Yamuna, expressing a desire to his friend Krishna. He wants to know secrets even Shiva and Brahma do not know. How many gopis are there? What categories do they belong to? What are their names? Where do they live? What do they do? What is their age? How do they dress? And where does Krishna revel with them in seclusion? These are some of the things that Arjuna wants to know.

As usual, Krishna responds more to the real problem that Arjuna’s questions reveal than to the questions themselves. Krishna tells him that place, those women dear to him and his sports with them are impossible to be seen by men even if they are dear to him as his very life [api prāṅasamānānām satyam pumsām agocarah [Padma 5.74.13]. And if he tells them to him, he will be restless to see them. It is not possible even for Brahma to see them. “So give up your keenness to know these things,” Krishna tells Arjuna.

These words pain Arjuna and he falls at Krishna’s feet. Krishna smiles and lifts him up lovingly with both hands. “What is the point in my telling you of those things that you shall see directly?” Krishna asks him with great love. He then instructs Partha to worship with great devotion Goddess Tripurasundari, from whom the entire universe has sprung, in whom the universe remains and unto whom it will merge back. He should surrender to her and make his request to her. Krishna tells Arjuna he cannot give him those experiences except through her.

Arjuna then goes to Mother Tripurasundari. The tantric Goddess is seated on her divine seat in a grove where trees bearing the most wonderful fruits and flowers abound. He hears birds constantly singing the sweetest songs in weather that is always wonderful. The incredibly beautiful Goddess is in her eternal early youth and is surrounded by other Goddesses such as Anima and Mahima. Arjuna pays obeisance to her and introduces himself.

The Goddess sends Arjuna along with another Goddess to her lake called Kulakunda and asks him to take a ritual bath there and come back fast.

The name Kulakunda is rich in tantric significance. Goddess Tripurasundari herself is sometimes called Kulasundari. The tantric word kaula [Kaul] comes from kula. Throughout the rest of the story, there are references to tantric yoga. The Yamuna is, for instance, explained by the Purana as the sushumna nadi [kālindīyam suṣumnākhyā paramāmrtavāhinī – Padma 5.75.11]. A bath in the kulakunda could be understood as performing powerful sadhanas in the tradition of tantric yoga.

Partha does what Tripurasundari asks. When he comes back the Goddess gives him detailed instructions about performing the bālā vidyā that gives immediate results. The vidyā involves, among other things, performing certain poojas, homas and chanting a mantra a hundred thousand times. Arjuna does all this and a pleased Mother Goddess appears before him with a smile on her face. She points out a mansion to him and asks him to enter that mansion. Arjuna prostrates before her repeatedly, his whole being filled with great ecstasy. Following her instruction and guided by a sakhi of the Goddess, Arjuna enters the mansion and finds himself in Vrindavana, the world beyond Goloka, where everything is perfect and the eternal rāsa of the gopis and Krishna goes on.

Such is the ecstasy of love that overpowers Arjuna at the sight of the supreme, secret abode of the essence of perfect love [paramam guhyam pūrṅa-prema-rasātmakam] that he falls down in a faint. The sakhi of Goddess Tripurasundari who is still with him raises him up with her hands and speaks to him. With great difficulty, Arjuna manages to regain mastery over himself.

Arjuna now finds it difficult to hold himself back – such is his eagerness to see the vision he is seeking. He asks the sakhi what more tapas he has to do now and she leads him by hand towards the south and asks him to enter the large body of water they find before themselves, it is very auspicious to bathe there. This is the Southern Lake. After bathing there, the sakhi tells him, he should go to the Eastern Lake, where his desire will be fulfilled.

The sakhi of the goddess disappears while Arjuna takes a dip in the Southern Lake. When he comes out of the water, he is no more Arjuna, but very young woman of indescribable beauty. Her slender limbs shine as though they are made of rays of pure gold, her face is like the winter moon, her curly hair is golden and her eyes dark. Each part of hers is breathtaking in its beauty, the perfection of every one of which the purana describes here at length. She is sarva-lakṣaṅa-sampannā and sarva-alankara-bhūṣitā [endowed with every auspicious sign and wearing all ornaments and articles of makeup]. When Arjuna emerges from the lake and looks at himself, it is this amazing young woman he sees. And he has no memories of the past – they have all been wiped clean from his mind.

As the young woman stands there not knowing what to do, a voice speaking softly from the skies asks her to proceed to the Eastern Lake along the path she sees before her and assures her there she will meet her sakhis and her desire will be fulfilled. This is the Eastern Lake Goddess Tripurasundari;s sakhi had spoken of earlier.

As the young woman who was until recently Arjuna stands on the bank of the Eastern Lake, she hears the sound of anklets approaching her.

Before proceeding further with the narration, I want to observe that the poetry here is superb and the inspired poet climbs to great heights of creativity in giving words to his imagination. The sounds we hear as he narrates the story send raptures through us, so amazing are they. Here are two lines describing the sound of the anklets Arjuna, transformed into a young woman, hears, which I will make no attempt to render into English, for that would be impossible.

tatrāntare kvaṇat-kānci-manju-manjīra-ranjitam
kiṇkiṇīnām jhaṇatkāram śuśrāvotkarṇasampute

The beauty of language here reminds us of Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda.

Arjuna now finds himself in a world bathed in boundless beauty.

Also, it is possible that along with becoming a woman, in his new advanced spiritual state, Arjuna’s sensitivity too has become intensified a hundred times and the smallest thing for him now is endowed with indescribable beauty.

This is a common occurrence in the course of spiritual journey. Spirituality awakens the senses and the mind and we see even ordinary things endowed with incredible beauty. It is as though our doors of perception, to use Huxley’s term, have for the first time been opened. A small touch sends ecstasies through us, a small sound makes raptures course within us. In Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, the boy Siddhartha passes through an experience of awakening and this is how Hesse describes the world he sees around him:

“He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes.”

He is looking at the same river and the same forest, the same river and the same mountains that he has seen so many times in the past, but they are no more the same because his doors of perception are clean and fresh now.

Tibetans call this drala, the great beauty of ordinary things. The most ordinary things are endowed with incredible beauty; all we need are eyes to see. When the mind is awakened, when the senses are cleansed, then we see breathtaking beauty in a pebble, in a broken twig, in a drop of water, in everything.

Arjuna is now passing through the stages that great meditators pass through. Meditation fills you with overflowing love, along with awakening sensitivity. As a great master puts it, “If you meditate, sooner or later you will come upon love. If you meditate deeply, sooner or later you will start feeling a tremendous love arising in you that you have never known before – a new quality to your being, a new door opening.” [Osho: The Psychology of the Esoteric]

What the young woman hears is the sound of a bunch of beautiful women approaching and there is only one word to describe them – āścarya, wonderful, amazing. Their youth is āścarya, their makeup and ornaments are āścarya, their shapes are āścarya a, their speech is āścarya... I counted: the poet uses the word āścarya ten times here within a short space, and when he needs a change, he uses adbhuta and citra, which too mean more or less the same.

The awakening of wonder has taken place in Arjuna.

The woman Arjuna has been transformed into is standing coyly, her head bent, scratching the earth at her feet with her toes. The girls approach her, amazed at the sight of her there, and one of them, Priyamudā, asks her who she is and where she has come from.

When Arjunī – the female Arjuna – speaks, her voice is intoxicating. She tells the young women she has no idea who she is, whose daughter she is, whose wife she is, why she has come there – no idea of anything. All she remembers is coming for a bath in the lake to the south of this place and standing there having bathed. And then of an amazing voice from the skies speaking to her and guiding her to this place. “I was told not to worry, my sakhis would be here and they would fulfil my desire. I know nothing more than this,” she tells them.

When Arjuni asks Priyamudā who they are, she introduces them as gopis and the beloveds of Krishna. They are the Śrutis, the great sages and cowherd girls, all born as women, to enjoy the bliss that is Krishna. They have interesting names: Rasālayā, Rasavallarī, Rasavāpikā, Anangasenā, Anangamālinī, Anangakusumā, Madayantī, Lalitā, Lalitayauvanā, Madanamanjarī, Ratikalā, Ratilolā, Ratotsukā, Ratisarvasvā, Kāmakalā, Kāmadāyinī, to mention just a few – names that remind us of the names in works like the Kathasaritsagara. Priyamudā tells Arjunī they will be all friends now and sport together. They give her a ritual bath in the Eastern Lake and initiating her into more rituals and meditations, give her a mantra of Radha along with the bijamantras of Varuna and Vahni and their vidhis [ways of practicing these].

Arjuni performs the rituals and meditations and Goddess Radha appears before him in all her brilliant glory making the whole universe shine with her effulgence. The goddess tells her:

matsakhīnām vacah satyam tena tvam me priyā sakhī
samuttiṣtha samāgaccha kāmam te sādhayāmyaham

The words of my sakhis are true,
You are now a sakhi dear to me.
Get up, come near,
I shall fulfil the desire in your heart.

Goosebumps appear all over Arjunī’s body at these words of Radha. Her entire body grows tender and tears of bliss start coursing down from her eyes. Intoxicated by love, shaken by it, she falls at the feet of the Goddess. Ordered by Radha, Goddess Priyamvadā, one of Radha’s sakhis, herself flushed by the order of the Goddess, picks up Arjunī and leads her by hand to the Goddess.

Arjunī is given another ritual bath in the Northern Lake and Goddess Radha now gives her a Krishna mantra with the vidhis and meditations. Radha also asks Priyamvadā and her friends to look after Arjunī until her rituals and meditations are over. Giving these instructions, Radha goes back to Krishna.

Arjunī now worships Krishna following the detailed instructions given to her, at the end of which Krishna is pleased and asks Radha to quickly bring Arjunī to him. Radha sends one of her sakhis, Śāradā, to fetch Arjunī to Krishna. Arjunī comes before Krishna and such is her ecstasy, perspiration breaks out all over her body, and she is overpowered by powerful waves of bliss.

In the yogic parlance, this breaking out of perspiration and being overpowered by bliss are occurrences immediately preceding the highest spiritual experience.

Arjunī looks around the amazing world she sees herself in now. There are kamadhenus wandering about everywhere, all trees are full of flowers, there is a beautiful breeze blowing all the time, the bumble bees are intoxicated with honey, birds sing on shrubs and trees and everything is perfect beyond the wildest imagination. Under a kalpataru standing in all its glory is the jewelled throne of Krishna.

She looks at Krishna and sees the very embodiment of beauty, love and bliss, his intoxicating smile inflaming hearts, his dark body glowing, a peacock feather in his hair. He is wearing a floral garland around which humming bees hover, the Kaustubha and the Śrīvatsa add to his boundless glory. He wins easily over a hundred million Kamadeva’s in beauty and is surrounded by every object that adds to the headiness of the rāsa. A smiling Radha is on his left, worshipping him.

As the beautiful Arjunī looks at Krishna, she is overcome with powerful longing for him. Krishna, the glorious lord, the great master of yoga, the mahāyogeśwara who indwells every heart and knows everything, the lord of Vaikunṭha, the world where nothing but bliss exists, takes Arjunī by her hand and leads her to the solitude of the forest of revelry. There Arjunī discovers the joy that passeth all understanding, the bliss that is easily available to every gopi of Vrindavan but evades great ascetics, the bliss seeking which they long for birth as cowherd girls, the ecstasy thirsting for which the shrutis themselves take birth on the banks of the Yamuna as daughters of cowherds – the joy of union with Krishna, the self of the universe, whose nature is sat-chid-ananda, existence-consciousness-bliss.

Arjunī understands through her personal experience the bliss that Krishna is, a knowledge that is denied, according to the Padma Purana, to the great Gods themselves.

A smile lingers on Arjunī ’s face as she comes back from the pleasure forest with Krishna’s arm on her shoulder. She is exhausted by the experience. Preparatory to the experience, she had done powerful mystical sadhanas after taking baths in the Southern, Eastern and Northern Lakes. Krishna now calls Sharada and asks the Goddess to take Arjunī for a bath in the Western Lake. Arjuni takes a dip in the mystic waters and emerges from it as Arjuna.

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This is clearly no ordinary story of gender transformation, but a mystic tale, told in the highest mystic language. Arjuna’s desire to know the bliss that the cowherd girls experience is the longing of a man who has come to the doors of the highest experience but has been denied entrance into its sacred portals. Arjuna, lifelong friend of Krishna, for whom Krishna says he would tear out his flesh and give it if necessary, is yet not one with Krishna. Nara, born of the blood from Narayana’s right arm, is yet different from Narayana and not one with him. Whereas the gopis of Vrindavan have lost themselves in Krishna, are one with him, do not exist as different from him. They have become Krishna’s atma, Krishna has become their atma.

The Upanishads repeatedly tell us there is only one thing that separates us from God, from the bliss that God is, from the boundless ecstasy that we are – our mind, our ego, our will, all of which are, in the final analysis, the same. So long as we have an ego, we have a will as different from the universal will. So long as we have a will, we have an ego that separates us from the universal being. And so long as we have a will and an ego, we have a mind too, and conversely, so long as we have a mind, we have an ego and a will. When we achieve the state Zen calls the no-mind, then there is no ego and no will. Then the universal self becomes our self and the universal will becomes our will. This is the state of self-transcendence, the goal of all spirituality.

And the easiest way to achieve it is through bhakti, devotion, which Narada discusses as parama-prema-rūpā – of the nature of supreme love – in his Bhakti Sutras and Shandilya explains as parānuraktir-īshware in his Bhakti Sutras.

Arjuna’s ego stands in the way of attaining that bhakti. So long as the ego is there, the long as his individual will is there, so long as surrender is not total and complete, that bhakti is not possible.

And what stands blocking such surrender is Arjuna’s masculinity. The masculine cannot surrender. The masculine has a need to be in control. The masculine has the need to assert its will, its individuality, its ego. To surrender, one needs the qualities that are traditionally described as feminine in spiritual literature.

Several traditions hold that the highest spiritual experience is possible only for the female and not for the male. That is to say, so long as we have the male qualities of territoriality, aggression and power seeking, we cannot have the highest spiritual experience. For that experience to be available to us, we need to have the feminine qualities: surrender, acceptance, emptiness, receptivity.

Arjuna, the great archer, can be a friend of Krishna, but he cannot lose himself in Krishna. He will always be there as a separate individual. But the gopis can effortlessly lose themselves in Krishna, be completely empty of themselves and have the highest bliss that losing makes possible. It is for this reason that Arjuna has to transform himself into a woman to experience the true nature of Krishna, to become one with him.

There is a very significant sentence that Krishna tells Arjuna at the beginning of the story. When Arjuna seeks to know what even Brahma and Shiva have not known, Krishna says:

tat sthānam vallabhās tā me
vihāras tādrśo mama
api prāṇasamānānām
satyam pumsām agocarah
[Padma 5.70.7]

I would like to translate this statement as: “That dimension of mine, those darlings and those revelries of mine are truly beyond the perceptions of men, even if they are as dear to me as my life’s breath.”

Pumsām agocarah – men cannot see it. Men just cannot see those, even if those men are as dear to Krishna as his life.

To be able to see them, you have to become a woman. To become a woman, in the spiritual sense, is to be receptive, to be empty, to be open, not to resist, not to have an individual will and, instead, surrender to the universal will, float with it. All the sadhanas Arjuna does, beginning with the first ones under the guidance of Goddess Tripurasundari, are for his transformation into the receptive, the empty, the open being – transformation from the male into the female, gender transformation in the truest sense, in the deepest sense, in the spiritual sense. Once we achieve that receptivity, that emptiness, that openness of being, there is nothing standing between that experience and us. Then that is the only experience possible. Then we are that experience.

Arjuna has never had the kind of bhakti the gopis had for Krishna. What we see through this story is Arjuna’s journey into the world of such bhakti. Into Vrindavana, which is the land of such bhakti. Into Vrindavana, where only one male exists during the rāsalīlā – Krishna – and all others are female – the gopis. Into Vrindavana where, as the Padma Purana says at the beginning of this story, the rāsalīlā goes on eternally.

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Spiritual bliss is frequently expressed in terms of erotic love, in the language of sexual union. Tantra does it all the time, as does Taoism which speaks of the union of the yin and the yang. Bhakti does it frequently, as in the case of Jayadeva and innumerable other Indian poets. The Sufis do that all the time. Christian mystics have done it. And so have mystics from numerous other traditions. And that is precisely what the Padma Purana is doing here. To read the story as anything else would be a great error and the sign of the sickness much of humanity is suffering from today.

Which does not mean mystic stories should not be told. They should be told, and sometimes the only language open to mystics to tell those stories is the language of erotic love. After all, they are trying to communicate the incommunicable, about which the Upanishads say ‘yato vāco nivartante, aprāpya manasā saha’ – that from which words return, unattained, along with the mind. Even the erotic language fails, but it can at times give us a glimpse of the beyond. It is what Indian culture calls the śākhācandra nyāya – like pointing out the moon as what we see beyond the branch of a tree. It has nothing to do with the tree or its branch, but it helps.


The sakhi sampradaya that existed in India for a long time was an attempt to put what thid story says into practice at a large scale. Sri Ramakrishna, the greatest mystic the world has seen in recent times, practiced it for a while and had powerful experiences from the practice.

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Immediately following the tale of Arjuna, the Padma Purana tells another tale of gender transformation leading to the highest spiritual experience, using Narada as the central character. In this story, Muni Narada has a desire to understand the mystery of Vrindavana, the eternal abode of Krishna that cannot be seen by the fleshy eyes, which is beyond the understanding of even the great Gods. He approaches his father Brahma and expresses his desire and Brahma takes him to Vishnu. Vishnu asks Brahma to take Muni Narada to Lake Amrita for a bath in its waters. When Narada comes out of the water, he finds he is an amazingly beautiful young woman, the very embodiment of every female perfection [sarvalakṣaṇa-sampannā].

Looking up, he finds other equally beautiful women in front of him. When they see her, they approach her and ask her who she is and where she has come from. The young woman expresses her ignorance of it all – she has no idea. It all appears like a dream to her. The leader of the group of damsels then introduces the place to her as Vrindavana, the place dear to Krishna. She introduces herself as Goddess Lalita, who is beyond the turīya state [turīyātītā] and is without parts [niṣkalā].

Turīya is the state behind and beyond all other states of consciousness.

Lalita asks the young woman to follow her, along with the other women. Lalita now gives her the fourteen-syllable mantra of Krishna, a mantra that qualifies her entry into Krishna’s presence.

The woman Narada has become is now taken to the presence of Krishna, who is described here as pure existence-conscience-bliss [kevalam saccidānandah]. Narada’s desire is fulfilled now – the woman experiences union with pure existence-conscience-bliss. Later, after she has spent a whole year in Vrindavana, the land that is beyond ordinary perception, Krishna asks Radha to take her to Lake Amrita again for a bath. After a bath there, Narada regains his original gender.

Once again what we find in the story is the need to be spiritually female in order to experience the highest. Narada with all his love and devotion is not able to experience the highest truth, sat-chid-ananda, which is his own true nature, until he is transformed into a woman.

In Krishna’s world, there are no men. In the language of devotional mysticism, men stand for beings with ego and will, and women stand for surrender and openness. It is in that surrender and openness that the highest flowers.

We have to be empty of ourselves for the highest to take over us. The feminine represents that emptiness. When we achieve it, our true self takes over us.

Krishna is described by the Padma Purana as our true self and our eternal beloved.

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Note: All translations from Sanskrit are by the author.

Radha and the Flow of Consciousness

The Upanishads are incredible, unsurpassed. In wisdom, in beauty and in clarity. When it comes to understanding the nature of the human being, they have never been surpassed. Speaking of them, C Rajagopalachari said, “The spacious imagination, the majestic sweep of thought, and the almost reckless spirit of exploration with which, urged by the compelling thirst for truth, the Upanishad teachers and pupils dig into the ‘open secret’ of the universe, make this most ancient of the world’s holy books still the most modern and the most satisfying.”

Kathopanishad is one of the most poetic of Upanishads. It is the Upanishad on which so much of the Bhagavad Gita is based, including its frame image of Krishna and Arjuna in the chariot. Several verses of the Gita have been borrowed from the Katha Upanishad, or adapted. Speaking of human consciousness, the teacher of the Katha Upanishad says:

parānchi khāni vyatrnat svayambhūh
tasmād parāng paśyati nāntarātman.
kaścid dhīrah pratyagātmānam aikshad
āvrttacakshur amrtatvam icchan. Kathopanishad 2.1

“The self-born one created the senses turned outward. For that reason, man looks outward, and sees not the self that is within. Rare is the brave one who, longing for immortality, shuts his eyes to what is without and sees the self within.”

We see only what is without, because that is how we are made. Seeing what is without is fine, because the world created by that same self-born one is so enchantingly beautiful. The sounds, the touches, the colours, the shapes, the tastes, they are all so beautiful, as are love, passion, ambition, the thrill of achieving, sharing and the million other things that form what we call life. And yet in the process of seeing what is without, we should not forget what is within. When we forget the within in our fascination with the without, we get entrapped in the without. And this the Upanishads call maya – delusion. Maya is not the world outside, but being trapped in it.

It is like, say the ancient masters in their exquisite language, the bee getting trapped in the lotus flower at sunset. It is fine to enjoy the honey within the lotus, and it is the bee’s enjoyment of the honey within it that makes the life of the lotus meaningful, but the bee does not belong to the lotus. Its world is not the small world defined by the petals of the lotus that close at sunset, but the vast, boundless world outside.

We do not belong to the small world we live in, but to the bhooma, the vast. The world of the sun and the moon, of thunder and lightning, of winds and rains, of mountains and rivers, of birth and death and what is beyond all this. When we surrender to this world, and limit ourselves, that’s maya.

For the Upanishad says, we are not the limited self we take ourselves to be, the power that runs the universe.

As the Taittiriya Upanishad puts it:

bhīshāsmād vātah pavate
bhīshodeti sūryah
bhīshāsmād agniścendraśca
mrtyur dhāvati pancama iti.

“I am the power fearing which the wind blows, the power fearing which the sun rises in the east, fire burns, and Indra rules over the gods. I am that power fearing which death, as the fifth, stalks the world.”

We have been trapped within the lotus, and, tragically, forgotten the vastness outside.

And the way to reclaim our real heritage, the vast, the boundless, is to turn our attention to the within. Turn our consciousness inward. Make our awareness flow not outward, but inward.

Radha is the name for consciousness that flows inward, for the river that flows towards its own source.

The word radha is the word dhara turned around. Dhara means a current, like a stream, like a brook, or a river. Radha means the consciousness that flows outward has now begun to flow inward.

Parānchi khāni vyatrnat svayambhūh – the self-born created the senses turned outward and our consciousness flows out into the world through them. But now it flows inward: toward the self within, toward the pratyagātmā, towards its own source.

Radha is the longing for Krishna, Krishna standing for consciousness, our inner self. Radha is the name for the most intense meditation which makes samadhi possible. Samadhi means merger with the inner self, merger with Krishna. Which is also what we mean when we use the word yoga in its original sense.

Yoga is not asanas. Asanas are practically the first step in yoga, the lowest, and samadhi its culmination, the highest stage.

In India we worship rivers. It is not because rivers are useful. India has never worshipped what is useful. Worshipping what is useful is the commercial attitude and that has nothing to do with religion. To us religion has never been a commercial thing. We worship what inspires awe, what helps us open our eyes and wake up into light.

The first river India worshipped was the Saraswati. The Saraswati was the river on the banks of which the Vedas were born, the Upanishads were born. When we worshipped the Saraswati, we were worshipping knowledge – knowledge of the highest kind, which in Sanskrit is called prajñā. Prajñā means consciousness. We called her Goddess Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, of learning, of arts, of music, of the thousand forms of light.

And when the Saraswati dried up, the Ganga became the river on the banks of which the culture of light, the Vedic civilization, continued. To India, the Ganga then became the most sacred of rivers. Goddess Ganga. A dip in the Ganga washes away all our sins, said our culture. That is because the Ganga stood for knowledge and as the seers said, na hi jñānena sadrsham pavitram iha vidyate: there is nothing as sacred as knowledge in this world.

All the most sacred teerthas on the Ganga are where the Ganga takes a turn and flows northward. North is the direction from which the Ganga comes down. When she flows northward, she is flowing towards her own source.

Then Ganga becomes Radha, consciousness flowing towards its own source.

Those who study consciousness in the west, particularly those who study altered states of consciousness, say that man’s oldest adventure is this search. This search for his source. They say all religion is that search for the original consciousness, consciousness turned inward.

And they say that there is no culture in the world that does not seek consciousness turned inward. When the tribal dancers dance around the night fire to the beat of drums, they say they are seeking this altered state of consciousness – consciousness turned inward. When they use drugs and cacti and mushrooms that alter consciousness, they say they are seeking this inward turned consciousness. When people climb mountains and face death, they say they are seeking the same altered states of consciousness through danger and fear. And when man engages in sex, they say, they are seeking to turn their consciousness inward. The moment of orgasm provides to man the most easily accessible state in which his consciousness is no more flowing outward through his senses.

Every culture in the world has been worshipping Radha, though it may not know it. Worshipping her through drumbeats, through dance and music, through prayer, through fasting, through meditation, through fire-walking, through danger, through fear, through wonder, through drugs, through sex, through pain and self-torture.

Radha as a Goddess is new even to India. There is no Radha associated with Krishna in the Mahabharata, for instance. She is a later goddess.

But we have been worshipping her from the beginning of time.

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Nandanam: Malayalam Movie

It is at meal times that the TV is usually switched on. When I did that during lunch today, they were just starting the Malayalam movie Nandanam on Asianet. I had seen the later part of the movie earlier, on some similar occasion. Today the movie had just begun and since I had liked what I saw of it earlier, I decided to watch it.

The movie has the beauty of a naadan penkidaav and the female lead looked every bit a naaadan pendikaav. [The word Naadan Penkidaav brings to mind memories of a book I had read as a schoolboy – Oru Naadan Penkidaavinte London Yaatra.] I really loved the movie, as much for its lyrical beauty as for several other things. I loved its realism as well its romanticism. And the two aspects go so well, it is difficult to separate the two. Like everyone else who watches the movie, I was touched by the ending.

Faith can be a powerful source of strength. And that was the only strength of the little girl Balamani there. Faith in human goodness and faith of the other kind – the religious kind, which fills life with magic and mystery. I loved the intimacy Balamani felt with her God. I felt that is exactly how God should be. A friend you can complain to, be angry with, play with, dance with. Jo tumhen manane ayega jab tum roothoge. I do not like the God you have to fear. Never liked him.

Sometime back I was invited to give a series of talks on the Gita. This was in a Krishna temple. While the organizers and I were sitting and talking just before the inaugural talk, one of them told me I must talk about bhayabhakti – devotion based on fear. I told him I did not know what it was. I told him so far I knew there was nothing called bhayabhakti. If there is something like that, that will be the devotion of a slave. Of a slave who has accepted his slavery and does not protest, does not revolt against it, not even in his heart. A slave who has been broken forever, the way you break a wild horse. [Disney’s wild horse Spirit refuses to be broken.] Fear can create only one thing – gulami, slavery. And I don’t believe that we were meant to be slaves. Slavery is an insult to God. And I mean this as much from the standpoint of the slave as from the standpoint of the slaveholder. I believe God would want us to fight every form of slavery others try to impose on us. I believe God would detest the love of a person who has surrendered his pride. God loves proud love – love that holds its head high.

I like the relation between Draupadi and Krishna in the Mahabharata. She can become a manini and reject Krishna when necessary because of her pride. She is not afraid of Krishna. There is no fear.

And I like the relation between Radha and Krishna in the Gita Govindam. There is no fear there either. Gita Govindam’s Radha can get furious with Krishna. She too can reject him for his betrayals, for his inconstancies. Out of her pride. And she can ask him to do anything for her because he is hers and she is his.

I love the scene in the Gita Govindam where Radha asks Krishna to do again her make up that has been spoiled by their lovemaking. kuru yadu-nandana chandana-ziziratareNa kareNa payodhare… ghaTaya jaghane kA~nchiM mugdha-srajA kabarI-bhAraM.kalaya valaya-shreNIM pANau pade maNi-nUpurAu.

[Please get hold of a good translation of the Gita Govindam for meaning.]

I love the scene in the Mahabharata where Draupadi comes before Krishna just as he is getting ready to go to Hastinapura on his peace mission. Weeping, after speaking of her pain at length, she asks him:

katham nu bhAryA pArthAnAm tava krshna sakhI vibho
dhrshtadyumnasya bhaginI sabhAm krshyeta madrzee

“How can I –– wife of the sons of Kunti; your friend, O Krishna, O lord; and Dhrishtadyumna’s sister –– how can I be dragged into a court?”

And a little later she denounces Krishna:

naiva me patayah santi na putrAh na ca bAndhavAh
na bhrAtaro na ca pitA naiva tvam madhusUdana.

“I have no husbands, nor sons, or friends or relatives. I have no brothers, no father, nor you either, Krishna.”

It is not Draupadi’s despair I see here. It is her faith that I see here. Faith that he is bound to protect her. Faith and unshakeable conviction. And she makes it clear next, when she says:

caturbhih kAranaih krshna tvayA rakshyAsmi nityazah
sambandhAt gauravAt sakhyAt prabhutyenaiva kezava.

“For four reasons, Krishna, you owe it to me to protect me: because you are related to me, because of my standing [i.e., eminence, dignity], because we are friends and because you are capable of protecting.”

She does not cringe before him. She does not beg protection from Krishna. She claims it. She demands it. And in claiming and demanding, she never treats herself any less than him.

It is not because she weeps before him that Krishna gives her the assurance he gives. No. It is because she claims it as her right. She asks from him no more than what is hers by right. And that is enough for her.

Narada in the Bhakti Sutras defines bhakti as parama-prema-rūpa – as the highest love. Where there is fear, there can be no love. You cannot love him before whom you cower. Or her before whom you cower.

Bhayabhakti, devotion based on fear, is a carry over from feudalism. Feudalism is not only a social reality, but also a psychological one. Though the first kind of feudalism has mostly ended, feudalism of the mind continues to be alive. Some of us love to be fiefs.

I loved the final song Balamani sings. I do not think there was anyone who watched that scene and heard that song whose eyes were not wet.

Later this evening I happened to see Navya in another programme – Idea Star Singer. I switched on the TV and there she was, as was Chitra, who had sung the song for the movie. Chitra was asked to sing the song again and she complied, happily. And even before she began, I could see the change in the atmosphere. Everybody had become solemn. And as Chitra finished the song, I saw several people present there wiping their eyes. Among the first ones to do so was Navya, who had become possessed by the song right from the beginning. I watched her shivering with emotions. I had a feeling Chitra too lost herself for a few moments in the middle of the song – as she sang out Krishna, Krishna…

The compere commented when the song ended: the power of music! Yes, the power of music. But also the power of love. Love for a God who can be your friend – sakha. Who can be your lover. Who can your son. And your brother. And sister. And mother. And daughter. And beloved. And whom you do not have to fear.

Yes, the power of music. But also the power of bhakti which is parama-prema, boundless love.

Boundless love that melts boundaries and makes mergers possible. The word yoga means merger. Union.

What the yogi achieves through lifetimes of practice the bhakta achieves in a trice through bhāva.

Watching the movie today was like taking a sacred bath in a tirtha. In the Ganga. In Gauri Kund. And so was listening to Chitra singing that song this evening, with Navya standing beside her and struggling not to lose herself in bhāva.

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