In the 1970s, during one of my first visits to India, I found myself standing on the edge of the world. Or so it seemed. It was late one night, and I was walking on Juhu beach, on the outskirts of Bombay, gazing up. This was at a time when the city was still developing into the nation’s commercial hub, and there were as yet no nighttime lights behind me from 24-hour shops or factories, nothing to disturb the darkness. In that majestic canvas where the ocean met the sky, there was no telling where the world ended or the heavens began. The waves lapping the beach sounded like gentle breathing, whoosh, sigh, whoosh, sigh. The landscape before me was beautiful, hypnotic, and stretched on forever.
In that moment, something happened that I can only describe as mystical. I felt myself lifted off the sand and hurled through the blackness overhead. I wasn’t scared. It was exhilarating to be weightless, untethered from the earth, thrilling to leave troubles behind and soar outward, liberated from flesh and bones and all thought. I was no longer concerned about anything. I became someone else, someone free and infinite. I don’t know how long the experience lasted, but the memory has endured to this day.
Is Krishna real? Are we, as 16th century avatar and saint Chaitanya taught, sparks of Krishna’s fire, eternal beings, free and infinite, who shine on long after this life has crumbled to dust? If we consider the suffering and injustice that surrounds us, the sadness and broken lives, the idea that we are divine beings doesn’t make much sense. Human history is not uplifting. It’s tragic. And from a purely rational assessment, there isn’t much evidence of a benign, beneficent creator or a nonmaterial self that survives death. Still, after more than a half-century of chanting mantras, of self-reflection and study, I find myself holding to that conviction—not because of any solid, empiric evidence, but because I know how it makes me feel: energized, hopeful, a glass-half-full feeling. It is the kind of universe I choose to live in.
My children are extraordinarily bright, and they will come to their own conclusions, but they can only do that if they have a choice, if a world in which people love one another as sacred beings is an option. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe humanity is condemned to its physical, biological, evolutionary impulses. Maybe people who pigeonhole Krishna as nothing more than a metaphor have reason to think the way they do. For myself, he’s quite real, and even if judged as only a metaphor, he is no doubt the most beautiful metaphor, an irresistible metaphor, one that inspires us to be more than we have been.
If you ever find yourself someplace like that beach in Juhu, just you and the universe, take a moment to look up and fly away. It’s a helluva a ride.
