Is it true, Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world? A-Z Details!
ACTUAL Qns from two devotees:
(1) “Hare Krsna prabhu! Pranam ! Prabhu I want to know about how Krsna left this material world? one of my non devotee friend told me that Krsna was cursed.. and was killed.. sir can you please clarify this ? Thank you! Haribol!”
(2) “Hare Krishna Prabhu g. Could u plz tell me, how old Krishna was when he left the earth. N how he was dead or departured. Looking forward to hear from UR side.”
REPLY:
In one angle, Krishna accepted the curse of Gandhari that all his countrymen will die and His entire kula will be wiped out. Because, He does not wish to make the curse of His devotee ineffective and hence He happily accepted and made it happen.
However, getting attacked by the hunter is just indicative and planned by the Lord Himself since He wanted to honour the system of earth though He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
(Was Krishna the cause for castes as said by my friend? READ HERE!)
Krishna left the earth with His Spritual body, ie, in His original form, but , as we are screened by maya, He made us to believe that He left a body as we are conditioned souls and we can not understand the Transcendental activities of Lord nd we usually think that Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world. To establish this, Srila Visvanatha Chakravarthy Thakura gives a story.
According to Srila Jiva Gosvami, the so-called fight among the members of the Yadu dynasty was actually a display of the pastime potency of the Lord, since Lord Krishna’s personal associates are never subject to ordinary birth and death like conditioned souls.
This being the case, certainly the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself is transcendental to material birth and death, as clearly stated in this verse.
Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura tells the following story of a certain magician who exhibits the trick of dying:
“In front of a great king, a magician approaches! He asked a stack of valuable garments, jewels, coins. All were placed there by the king.
Taking a jeweled necklace, the magician tells the king, ‘Now I am taking this necklace, and you can’t have it,’
and he makes the necklace disappear.
(16 KALAS OF KRISHNA/ VISHNU! KALAS OF OTHER GODS & LIVING BEINGS! READ HERE!)
‘Now I’m taking this gold coin, and you can’t have it,’ he says, and makes the gold coin disappear.
Next, challenging the king in the same way, the magician makes seven thousand the horses of that king disappear.
Then the magician creates the illusion that the king’s children, grandchildren, brothers and other family members die by attacking each other! The king could see all those fightings and the eath of his children and others in front of him like real!
The king hears the magician speaking and at the same time could observe all these things taking place before him in the great assembly hall itself.
“Then the magician says, ‘O King, I no longer wish to live. Just as I have studied magic, so also, by the mercy of the lotus feet of my guru, I have learned the mystic meditation of yoga. One is supposed to give up one’s body while meditating in a holy place, and since you have performed so many pious activities, you are a holy place yourself. Therefore I shall now give up my body.’
(SIX OPULENCE OF KRISHNA PROVING HIS SUPREMACY! READ HERE!)
Thus speaking, the magician sits down in the proper yoga posture, fixes himself in pranayama, pratyahara, dhararana, dhyana and samadhi and becomes silent.
A moment later, a fire generated from his trance blazes forth out of his body and burns it to ashes. Then all the wives of the magician, distraught with lamentation, enter into that fire.
The stunned king went back with distress that all his children and the kith and kin of that magician had died!
Three or four days later, after the magician has returned to his own province, the magician sends one of his daughters to the king. The daughter tells him, ‘O King, I have just come to your palace, bringing along with me, invisibly, all your sons, grandsons and brothers in good health—along with all the jewels and other items given by you. Now, I will make them visible to you!
After telling this, the girl made all the kith and kins appear again in front of the king!
(Why Krishna helped Arjuna to elope with Subhadra? READ HERE!)
She told the king: “Please, therefore, give me whatever you consider fitting remuneration for the wisdom of the magic that has been exhibited before you.”
In this way, even by ordinary magic, one can simulate birth and death.
Now, let us read the other side of whether Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world, in detail:
It is not difficult to understand, therefore, that the Supreme Personality of Godhead, although transcendental to the laws of nature, exhibits His illusory potency so that ordinary ignorant people will think the Lord has left His body like a human being.
Actually, Lord Krishna returned to His abode in His own eternal body, as confirmed throughout the Vedic literature.
It seems to the conditioned souls like us that Krishna left His body as we are bound by maya! Like the king was made conditioned by maya by the magician! Because of that maya, the king thought that his family members had died! But, they came back alive!
Thus, though Krishna left with His spritual body, He made us to believe that He left His body, as we are still conditioned souls!
(WHY KRISHNA DOES NOT COME AGAIN? HOW KRISHNA IS EXISTING IN THE FORM OF PEOPLE? READ HERE!)
Liberated souls will understand that Krishna left with His body and it is not true that Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world!
A learnt devotee will never say that Supreme Personality of Godhead who is the creator and the source of entire creations was killed. One should not speak about such matters without reading bonafied scriptures. I think that your friend has considered Krishna also as one of the celestials who die like all of us after a certain life time (ie, leaving bodies).
But, Krishna comes to earth on His own will and leaves similarly. Krishna’s body is not material. Krishna went to His abode Goloka with His divine body as He is.
Srimad Bhagavatham is the bonafied scripture to know everything about Krishna. So, let us take these two slokas of Srimad Bhagavatham and the purports of Srila Prabhupada to understand how Krishna left this world.
(Why Krishna keeps Himself Superior and others inferior to only serve Him? READ HERE!)
SRIMAD BHAGAVATHAM (1-15-35) says:
The Supreme Lord relinquished the body which He manifested to diminish the burden of the earth. Just like a magician, He relinquishes one body to accept different ones, like the fish incarnation and others.
Srila Prabhupada says in his purport for this sloka about whether Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world:
The Supreme Lord Personality of Godhead is neither impersonal nor formless, but His body is non-different from Him, and therefore He is known as the embodiment of eternity, knowledge and bliss. In the Brhadvaisnava Tantra it is clearly mentioned that anyone who considers the form of Lord Krsna to be made of material energy must be ostracized by all means. And if by chance the face of such an infidel is seen, one must clean himself by jumping in the river with his clothing. The Lord is described as amrta, or deathless, because He has no material body. Under the circumstances, the Lord’s dying or quitting His body is like the jugglery of a magician. The magician shows by his tricks that he is cut to pieces, burnt to ashes or made unconscious by hypnotic influences, but all are false shows only. Factually the magician himself is neither burnt to ashes nor cut to pieces, nor is he dead or unconscious at any stage of his magical demonstration. Similarly, the Lord has His eternal forms of unlimited variety, of which the fish incarnation, as was exhibited within this universe, is also one. Because there are innumerable universes, somewhere or other the fish incarnation must be manifesting His pastimes without cessation. In this verse, the particular word dhatte (“eternally accepted,” and not the word dhitva, “accepted for the occasion”) is used.
(Why evil spirits or ghosts are not connected with the Lord and also disturb others? READ HERE!)
The idea is that the Lord does not create the fish incarnation; He eternally has such a form, and the appearance and disappearance of such an incarnation serves particular purposes. In the Bhagavad-gita (7.24-25) the Lord says, “The impersonalists think that I have no form, that I am formless, but that at present I have accepted a form to serve a purpose, and now I am manifested. But such speculators are factually without sharp intelligence. Though they may be good scholars in the Vedic literatures, they are practically ignorant of My inconceivable energies and My eternal forms of personality. The reason is that I reserve the power of not being exposed to the nondevotees by My mystic curtain. The less intelligent fools are therefore unaware of My eternal form, which is never to be vanquished and is unborn.”
In the Padma Purana it is said that those who are envious and always angry at the Lord are unfit to know the actual and eternal form of the Lord. In the Bhagavatam also it is said that the Lord appeared like a thunderbolt to those who were wrestlers. Sisupala, at the time of being killed by the Lord, could not see Him as Krsna, being dazzled by the glare of the brahmajyoti. Therefore, the temporary manifestation of the Lord as a thunderbolt to the wrestlers appointed by Kamsa, or the glaring appearance of the Lord before Sisupala, was relinquished by the Lord, but the Lord as a magician is eternally existent and is never vanquished in any circumstance. Such forms are temporarily shown to the asuras only, and when such exhibitions are withdrawn, the asuras think that the Lord is no more existent, just as the foolish audience thinks the magician to be burnt to ashes or cut to pieces. The conclusion is that the Lord has no material body, and therefore He is never to be killed or changed by His transcendental body.
(WHY KRISHNA SUPPORTED ANIMAL SACRIFICE IN YAGAS AND YAJNAS? READ HERE!)
SRIMAD BHAGAVATHAM (1-15-36):
When the Personality of Godhead, Lord Krsna, left this earthly planet in His selfsame form, from that very day Kali, who had already partially appeared, became fully manifest to create inauspicious conditions for those who are endowed with a poor fund of knowledge.
Srila Prabhupada says in his purport for this sloka about whether Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world:
The influence of Kali can be enforced only upon those who are not fully developed in God consciousness. One can neutralize the effects of Kali by keeping oneself fully under the supreme care of the Personality of Godhead. The age of Kali ensued just after the Battle of Kuruksetra, but it could not exert its influence because of the presence of the Lord. The Lord, however, left this earthly planet in His own transcendental body, and as soon as He left, the symptoms of the Kali-yuga, as were envisioned by Maharaja Yudhisthira prior to Arjuna’s arrival from Dvaraka, began to manifest, and Maharaja Yudhisthira rightly conjectured on the departure of the Lord from the earth. As we have already explained, the Lord left our sight just as when the sun sets it is out of our sight.
These are the bonafied details about Krishna leaving this material world. Everything happens as planned by Krishna. So, please do not see Krishna’s actions like that of men or celestials. We can’t understand them with our defective senses.
Krishna has no origin and death. He is ever-existing. In my view, I feel that He mercifully follows the system followed in every planet though He is not about to follow them.
So, thinking that Krishna was cursed, killed, died and left this world is foolishness.
(Krishna Vs Vishnu – Who is Supreme and Who is avatar? What are the three types of Vishnus? READ HERE!)