[Disclaimer: The author, Eternal Muser does not qualify as a devotee of ISKCON (although he aspires to be fortunate enough to become one during one of his many billion forthcoming lives). Hence the views and realizations expressed by the author in the following article are entirely his own, and may not be indicative of the true philosophy of ISKCON and Vaishnavism. It is only with the kind permission of www.krishna.com that he has posted this article. Readers are invited to visit www.krishna.com or contact the branch of ISKCON (list available at www.krishna.com) in their local city/ town for information on Krishna Consciousness Philosophy. Vaishnava Devotees are kindly requested to comment upon, criticize and correct the ideas and opinions presented in the article, for the benefit of the author; each input would help in removing his ignorance. The author would be greatly indebted to them for the same.]

Lord Krishna’s actions cannot be studied and understood. Indeed, even the greatest Rishis and Munis of yore haven’t been able to comprehend His activities. It would be sacrilege for me to weigh myself on the same scale as those Mahatmas.

And yet, I humbly submit an observation that my miniscule intelligence has made regarding Krishna’s actions. It is my ignorant opinion that one of the most outstanding features of His activities is Subtlety.

I admit that Lord Krishna performed His Lilas with intense and fabulous drama, to inspire love and fear in the hearts of his Devotees and demons respectively.
But I’m talking about daily events; events that occur in the daily lives of each and every one of us. I’m sure every one of us at sometime in our lives sat back in astonishment, run our hand through our hair and wonder at some event that had occurred, ‘How did this happen? When the situation strongly indicated that the contrary result should have occurred!’ And more importantly, ‘How did the change in the course of events take place without me even realizing it?’

For example, depending on the prominence of the mode of nature I’m enslaved by, on a particular day and time, I find my thinking, planning and action so smoothly and delicately guided, I’m left wondering at the end, ‘How come I behaved in that manner? I wouldn’t have normally behaved like that,’ or ‘It’s a good thing I acted in that manner, but wait a minute; how come I did so, considering that acting in that manner had never occurred to me in the first place?’

The subtlety of His actions is most prominent (I know, it sounds like a paradox!) when He bails us out of trouble. The selfish, motivated pseudo-devotee that I am, I often find myself in a bad situation (brought about my own bad karma!) where I beg, beg and beg Lord Krishna to solve my problem for me. And for some unknown reason, He listens to me and at the eleventh hour, things unbelievably fall into place! Everything works out so well that I am left gasping at how it all happened!

One more interesting feature of Lord Krishna’s Actions is that we always appreciate the subtlety of the evolution of the steps (and Krishna’s quiet role in guiding each step) in an event AFTER the completion of that event.
While participating in that event, we don’t realize that Lord Krishna’s silent hand is guiding the event according to His plan. It’s just like travelling in a small boat along a river and expecting to reach a particular destination that we see at a distance. And then without the slightest indication, our boat gently, unnoticeably, curves towards and enters a tributary (hitherto unseen by and unknown to us), heading for a new totally different destination. And we never realize while travelling in that boat, how or why we changed course! It’s only when we disembark at the new destination that we look back and scratch our heads, ‘Hey, I thought the boat was taking me over there! When and how did we change course?’

It’s only those, who are aware of the fact that Krishna is the Supreme Controller, then sit back and ruminate over what happened and may understand, ‘Oooh. This is what must have happened. This is what Krishna must have done. This is how He must have brought this about etc.’ Of course, on most occasions, we cannot comprehend Krishna influence in the course of an event, but that’s a different story!

If one examines ANY event and imagines it to be a movie, one realizes that the individual actors that play a role, the roles that they have to play, the sets that are needed, the different innumerable components that are required, come into being and interact with such smoothness, precision, timing and finesse so as to bring about that event, it would leave the best Hollywood director astounded! There are no glitches, no mistakes and no misunderstandings. Every event is co-ordinated to perfection!

And no wonder. To fulfil each and every Karmic reaction of EVERY living and non-living entity, in the ENTIRE Creation (and so many other events for purposes that we’d never understand) requires a sense of planning and co-ordination of a magnitude that we cannot even conceive.

But then, what less can you expect from One who can pass an elephant through the eye of a needle……… ;-)

Haribol!
Eternal Muser