420
Aptavani-2
The 5000 year old story about the cobra named Kaliya
is really a metaphor. It is said that the child Krishna came and
conquered the huge terrifying cobra that used to torment
everyone. There was no such act performed by the child
Krishna. When you get upset and angry, that verily is the cobra.
The other cobra needs a snake charmer to bring it under
control. Why would Lord Krishna need to extract the venom
from the cobra? What need does he have to do something like
this? Could they not find any snake charmers? Really, people do
not understand the real meaning and yet this metaphor of the
cobra and the misconception continues even today. Krishna is to
be found wherever anger has been conquered (kaliyadaman).
Krishna (the Self) is to be found wherever kaliyadaman takes
place. The cobra in kaliyadaman is anger and when one gains
supreme control over anger, he becomes Krishna. The one who
can crush his karma is Krishna.
One person asked ‘us’, “Lord Krishna was not born out
of his mother’s womb, was he?” ‘We’ asked him, “So then, did
Lord Krishna drop from the sky? All embodied souls have to
take birth from a mother’s womb. Lord Krishna was born from
Devkiji’s womb.”
Lord Krishna had bound a niyanu. What is a niyanu? It
is a wish in exchange for what you have. It means to spend all
your earned punyas (merit karmas) towards the fulfillment of that
wish. Lord Krishna was a Vanik (trader class) in his past life,
and as a Vanik he had suffered rejection and abuse everywhere
he went, and then he became a sadhu. As a sadhu, he did
tremendous penance and renunciation. What did he wish for in
exchange for all his austerities? Did he wish for liberation or any
such thing? His wish was that he should be worshipped by the
whole world. Therefore, his punya was spent in the niyanu of
wanting to be worshipped. Today his niyanu is five thousand
years old.