Page 11 - Sri Aurobindo on Sri Krishna

Sri Krishna in Brindavan

The story of Brindavan is another matter; it does not enter into the main

story of the Mahabharata and has a Puranic origin and it could be maintained

that it was intended all along to have a symbolic character. At one time I

accepted that explanation, but I had to abandon it afterwards; there is

nothing in the Puranas that betrays any such intention. It seems to me that it

is related as something that actually occurred or occurs somewhere; the Gopis

are to them realities and not symbols. It was for them at the least an occult

truth, and occult and symbolic are not the same thing; the symbol may be only

a significant mental construction or only a fanciful invention, but the occult is

a reality which is actual somewhere, behind the material scene as it were and

can have its truth for the terrestrial life and its influence upon it, may even

embody itself there.

(CWSA, 28: 483)