Jesus and Mohammed also have only one predominant quality. But in Krishna you can find multidimensional qualities manifested. The three gunas at least are positively there, but as hundreds of intermixtures are possible among these three gunas, a variety of new intermixtures of them are manifested in Krishna. That is why Krishna has a multidimensional personality. No person can love Krishna as a whole. One will have to be selective. One will tend to exaggerate and emphasize whatsoever one likes in Krishna, and whatsoever is not liked will be deleted. Therefore, up to now all the definitions of Krishna have been made by people who have been selective. Neither Shankara nor Ramanuja nor Nimbark nor Vallabhacharya nor Tilak nor Gandhi nor Aurobindo have accepted Krishna as a whole. They have cut out those parts of Krishna’s life which have appeared inconsistent and contradictory to them.

For example, Gandhiji, who attaches a great value to nonviolence, would find it difficult to explain Krishna when he is encouraging and inciting Arjuna to violence. Also, Gandhiji considers truth as supreme while Krishna is even capable of telling a lie. This is beyond the understanding of Gandhiji. Gandhiji will never accept that a person like Krishna can deceive. If Krishna can do this, then Krishna will no longer remain worthy of worship for Gandhiji.

There is only one way out of this embarrassment, and that is to explain somehow that Krishna has not really done such things. It is only a story, just symbolic. The battle of the Mahabharat was never actually fought according to Gandhiji. For him, the Kauravas and Pandavas are not really human enemies who are battling, but they are only symbolic of the eternal fight between virtue and vice. The Mahabharat is only a story – a parable for him. Gandhiji is not afraid of fighting a vice, but he is afraid of hitting a villain. Vice alone can be cut and destroyed for him.

But if it was only a question of destroying or killing vice, Arjuna too would have had no problem. But Arjuna had to kill wicked villainous people. The question of whether it was right for him to kill or not arose only because the people who had arrayed themselves against Arjuna were his own relatives and elders. He had a feeling of attachment and “my-ness” in relation to them, and it seemed to him that the world would have been incomplete, absurd and unenjoyable for him without them.

Krishna’s personality is bound to be inconsistent, because all the three gunas are existing simultaneously in him. In me also there will be inconsistency, but not so much as is in Krishna. There is another possibility which I have utilized in my own experiments. All three gunas are present in every individual, and a personality can be complete and total only when all three are utilized. None of the gunas need be suppressed. Neither is Krishna in favor of suppression nor am I in favor of suppression. Whatsoever is there in an individual must be utilized creatively.