Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy - Osho - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 6. NUDITY AND CLOTHING SHOULD GO TOGETHER
There is a simple, natural and innocent acceptance of sex in the life of Krishna. The spontaneous,
immaculate and easy nature of man has found its full expression in his life. Nothing is denied,
nothing is suppressed, nothing whatsoever is repressed. Life as it is, is accepted and lived in its
utter simplicity, naturalness. And it is lived with a sense of deep gratefulness to it, to existence.
So those who try to suppress, change and distort the events of Krishna’s life only betray their own
guilty minds, their repressed sex and mental sickness. Efforts are made to suggest that it is the
child Krishna who steals the clothes of the gopis and plays pranks with their nude bodies. We feel
relieved to think of them as the pranks of a child, because kids of both sexes are interested in seeing
one another’s nudity.
This curiosity of boys and girls is simply natural. As soon as a child, whether he is a boy or a girl,
becomes aware of his body, he or she also becomes aware that there is someone around whose
body is somewhat different from his or hers. A boy comes to notice that the body of his sister is
different from his and similarly a girl comes to know that the body of her brother is different from
hers. This awareness would not be a problem if the boys and girls were allowed to live naked for a
length of time. But the elders of the family are so obsessed with sex that they force the kids to wear
clothes at a very early age, which prevents the boys and girls from becoming naturally familiar with
each other’s bodies. So it fs suggested that there is nothing unusual about Krishna in his childhood
running away with the clothes of the gopis and prying into their nudity. Every boy is anxious to see
a girl in the nude.
Now that civilization has deprived us of the company of trees and lakes and rivers, kids have to find
new ways to pry into one another’s bodies. Freud has mentioned a children’s game in which a boy
plays the doctor, puts the girl on the bed as a patient and examines her in her nudity. This is a very
natural curiosity and there is nothing wrong in it. Boys and girls would like to be familiar with each
other’s bodies; this familiarity will prepare them for deeper familiarity with each other in adulthood.
It is possible that Krishna did all this when he was a child. But it is not impossible for a grown-up
Krishna too. It may be impossible for us, but not for Krishna, because Krishna accepts life as it is
and lives it naturally, without any affectations, without any pretentions. And the culture in which he
was born must have been as natural and spontaneous and as life affirmative as Krishna is. Had he
been born in our society we would never have mentioned these events at all, we would simply have
suppressed them, deleted them from our records of him, from our literature. But the BHAGWAD
and other kindred books mention them with an innocence and naturalness that shows that they did
not see them as anything wrong and improper. These books have been in existence for thousands
of years, and for these thousands of years nobody raised the question, ”What kind of a man is this
Krishna?” It is only now that this question has been raised; it is we who are raising it.
The culture in which these episodes of Krishna’s life took place accepted them as nothing unnatural.
This shows they were not exclusively Krishna’s pastimes, but were common games of his times in
which many other Krishnas, many other gopis participated. The times of Krishna must have been
utterly different from ours. It was a highly life-affirmative, alive, natural and understanding culture. It
was great.
And I cannot accept that the gopis mentioned in the BHAGWAD were just kids. They must have
been of the age when girls begin to be aware that they are girls, a different sex altogether, when
Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy 107 Osho