Sadhguru narrates enchanting incidents from Krishna’s childhood, such as how Krishna and Radhe met, and why she became such an integral part of his life and legend.
Sadhguru: Krishna said very joyfully and proudly, “I stole butter. If I do not steal butter, there would be no excitement or zest in the village. When the villagers come home to complain to my mother, I hide behind her, make loving eyes at them, and they smile.”
As Krishna became five or six years of age, he got more organized in his efforts, and people who were losing their butter got more and more distressed. A lot of complaints began pouring in to his mother. It became a little too much. When his mother Yashodha scolded him, he knew how to play all his tricks. He would immediately start to cry, put his face down on the floor, and bawl, just waiting for her to attend to him.
One day, Krishna got a real scolding. He was sitting on a pounding wood. His mother came with a rope and said, “You are going too far. When will you change? This will teach you a lesson.” And she tied him to the pounding wood. Initially, he cried and tried to get her attention, but she did not relent. Then he got angry and used all his strength.
This was normally not possible for a child of his age, but he dragged the heavy pounding wood outside. It was the middle of the afternoon. All the village folk were busy with their work, and there was no one to see him. So he just dragged on and went toward the forest because all the cowherds, his friends, and the elders would be there. Above all, he wanted to teach his mother a lesson because he thought that she was being unreasonably angry.
As he was going toward the forest, he passed between two trees, but the pounding wood got stuck. He pulled it with such strength that these two trees got uprooted and crashed down. He was tired and bruised, so he just sat there and waited. His mother did not come. It looked like she was still angry, or she had not noticed he was gone, so he started crying.
Then he heard two female voices, and he did not want to be caught with tears in his eyes. He wanted to make it look like it was all fine with him and that it was his mother who was in trouble, not him. So he put on his best smile and sat there. A younger girl and an older girl came. Krishna recognized the younger girl was Lalitha, his playmate. He did not know the older girl, who was about twelve years of age, but he was drawn to her.
Both of them came and asked, “What happened to you? Who tied you up like this? How cruel.” The twelve-year-old girl was Radhe. From the moment Radhe set her eyes on Krishna, a seven-year-old boy, he lived in her eyes, whether he was physically there or not. So much so that after so many years, we still cannot think of them as two separate people. After Krishna was 16, he never saw Radhe again in his entire life.
Krishna met many people and did many things in his life, but the nine years that he spent with Radhe from the age of seven to sixteen made her such an integral part of his life. To put it in her own words, she said, “I live in him. He lives in me. And that is all. It does not matter where he is, with whom he is, he is only with me. He cannot be anywhere else.” From the moment she saw this little boy of seven years, they were inseparable. Even 3000 years later, you still cannot separate the two.
So, Radhe tried to untie him from the mortar wood. Krishna said, “Do not do that. I want my mother to untie it so that she can work out her anger. If you untie it, she may still remain angry. If she has to come in search of me and untie it, it will help her to go beyond her anger.” So the girls asked, “Is there anything else we can do for you?” He told Lalitha, the seven-year-old girl, “Go get me some water.” He wanted her out of the way.
Radhe and Krishna sat together; a seven-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old girl. And these two beings in many ways merged into one in that single meeting. No one could keep them apart after that. Life took them in different directions to the point that after sixteen, he never saw her again, but still, they remained one.
Krishna was very proud of his flute, which was absolutely mesmerizing. He was like a Pied Piper for adults. When he played his flute, people, cows, and animals gathered. But from the day he physically went away from Radhe, he never played his flute again in his whole life. He gave his flute to her, and she started playing it.
This childhood meeting of Radhe and Krishna was the beginning of a whole new spiritual path. Radhe panthis worship Radhe, not Krishna. Because in her love and sense of inclusion, she included him as part of herself, they say, “There is no Krishna without Radhe.” It is not the other way around. It is not that there is no Radhe without Krishna. There is no Krishna without Radhe.
This is an excerpt from the Sadhguru Exclusive series “Leela – Krishna’s Childhood.” To watch the whole series, subscribe to Sadhguru Exclusive.
