Infinite Sky – In Gita Verse 10.25 Of the great sages I am Bhṛgu; of vibrations I am the transcendental oṁ. Of sacrifices I am the chanting of the holy names [japa], and of immovable things I am the Himālayas.
Krishna is expressing his vastness through language. Which is limited and through the language he is giving hints regarding who he is. So he picks up a certain example who is so vast for us. His vastness has no limit but our mind and understanding has. He has to use the language and examples so that we can get a hint regarding his vastness.
In Indian mythology we have painted Krishna as blue: ‘Neel’ means blue – that is the symbol of depth. And vastness is always deep – the vastness cannot be shallow; only the limited, is shallow. How can the unlimited be shallow? When the river is deep it becomes blue. That’s why the sky looks blue. In fact it is not: there is no colour in it; it is colourless.
But anything deep gives an appearance of blueness.
Because of this idea in Indian mythology we have painted Krishna as blue, which is very rare because blue human beings don’t exist! Black human beings are there and white human beings are there and yellow and pink and many shades of colour, but blue human beings don’t exist, have never existed.
And Krishna we paint as blue. If you have seen some pictures of Krishna, that looks very absurd.
Why blue? – Just to indicate depth, just to indicate the skyness of his being… that he was as deep as the sky. The blue is just symbolic, it doesn’t show reality; it is just a metaphor.
And once there is depth and there is infinity there is divinity. Divinity comes into existence only when there is depth and infinity – then everything is holy, everything is godly.
In the East we don’t bother about god as a person – our interest is really very different from the western interest in god. In the West god has just become almost a replica of man? The bible says God created man in his own image. The truth seems to be just the reverse: man has created god in his own image.
In the East we don’t bother about God as a being, as a person, not at all as a human being. Our idea of god is more of godliness rather than of god. The idea is more of quality rather than of an ego.
So the eastern god is not the western idea of god; it is godliness. We can all become gods because we can all become godly.
In the West it is very difficult. – Even to say that one is god is very heretical. Christians will never forgive you; they cannot tolerate that. Even Jesus is not god, just the son of god, mm? Only that much they have relaxed their rules for Jesus… not much. But in the East it is not in any way sacrilegious because everything is divine, you are divine, but with the christian idea of God as the creator of the world you are certainly not the creator of the world.
But that is not our idea of god at all. Nobody has created the world; god is not a creator standing aloof. God is not like a painter; god is like a dancer. The world is divine – he is herenow.
In the East we don’t use the pronoun ‘he’ for him, we use ‘it’, ‘that’; we take all personality out of him. Then what is left? – Infinity and depth.
Krishna says – become as infinite as the sky and become as deep as the sky. This is the message…. And meditate on the sky as much as you can? It will come closer – just befriend it.
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