If Krishna Appeared, What Would You Become?
A reflection on forgetting, fighting, and remembering, through Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism
Imagine it happens not in a story, but to you.
The chariot has stopped in the middle of everything. On one side is everything you must do. On the other side is everyone you love. And you cannot move. That is where Arjuna was.
He did not ask Krishna for victory. He asked to be allowed to quit. He put down his bow and said, I will not fight.
If Krishna appeared before you in that moment, what would you become? Would all your questions suddenly fall silent? Would your miseries and sufferings simply be forgotten? Or would you become Arjuna after the Gita, the one who picks up the bow again and stands ready?
The Gita does not give us a simple answer. At the end, Arjuna does not say, “Now all my questions are answered.” He says something stranger and deeper:
Nashto mohah smritir labdha
My delusion is gone, memory has returned.
He remembers. Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism both try to explain what that remembering means, but they walk there by two very different roads.
The Moment Arjuna Broke
Arjuna’s crisis was not cowardice. It was clarity of a painful kind. He saw the cost of action. He saw that to do his duty, he would have to hurt people he had grown up with, learned from, loved.
Most of us know this Kurukshetra. It is not a field with chariots. It is the hospital room, the failing business, the marriage that is breaking, the choice between what is right and what is kind. We sit in the chariot and we cannot move, because every direction seems to lead to pain.
Krishna does not remove the battlefield. He stays in the chariot with Arjuna and talks for eighteen chapters. And still, the armies remain.
So what actually changes?
Vedanta: When the Questioner Disappears
Advaita Vedanta says the problem was never the battlefield. The problem was mistaken identity.
You have superimposed the body, the mind, the past, the fear, the name and the story onto the Atman, the Self that is pure awareness. This is called adhyasa. It is like mistaking a rope for a snake in dim light. The fear is real. The snake is not.
In this view, Krishna appears first as Saguna Brahman, God with form, as friend, teacher, charioteer. He speaks, he shows, he guides. But his purpose is to lead you beyond form to Nirguna Brahman, the formless truth that was never separate from you.
Your questions, your miseries, your sufferings belong to the mind, not to the Atman. They belong to the one who thought he was the doer, the sufferer, the questioner.
When ignorance, avidya, lifts, the questioner lifts with it. You do not get a perfect answer to “Why am I suffering?” You realize the suffering never touched who you truly are. Like waking from a dream, you do not solve the dream problem. You see you were never trapped in it in the way you believed.
So yes, in Vedanta, you forget. Not like amnesia. Like waking.
And yet, you still become Arjuna ready to fight. Liberation does not mean leaving Kurukshetra. It means acting without doership.
Arjuna picks up his bow again, but without kartabhava, the heavy sense of “I am doing this,” and without phala, the craving for a particular result. He acts because action is dharma, not because he needs the world to reward him for it.
Krishna does not even order him at the end. He says, yathecchasi tatha kuru, do as you wish. True freedom is restored. The fighter remains. The burden is gone.
Kashmir Shaivism: When the Questioner Is Recognised
Kashmir Shaivism, the Trika and Pratyabhijna tradition of Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, would look at the same scene and say something different and thrilling.
Do not throw the world away. The world is not a snake that never existed. It is a mirror.
There is only one reality, Parama Shiva. He is both light, Prakasha, and the awareness of that light, Vimarsha. The world is His own reflection, His abhasa, His play. It is real because He is real, and it is He.
Abhinavagupta, in his commentary on the Gita called the Gitartha Sangraha, reads Krishna not as a separate god coming down to help a separate soul. Krishna is Parama Shiva appearing as your own inner Self. Arjuna is the soul who has contracted and forgotten himself.
Your misery, in this view, is not a mistake. It is Shiva tasting contraction.
He limits Himself through three veils, the malas:
Anava mala: the sense of smallness, “I am just this little person”
Mayiya mala: the sense of separation, “I am apart from the world and from God”
Karma mala: the sense of being a doer, “I must carry all this alone”
Suffering is Shiva asking, “What does it feel like to forget that I am Shiva?”
When Krishna appears, that is anugraha, grace. In Kashmir Shaivism, grace is not something added from outside. It is Shaktipata, the descent of Shiva’s own power, waking you up to yourself. Liberation is Pratyabhijna, recognition.
You do not leave the mirror. You recognize the face in it is yours.
So you do not forget your questions. You recognize who was asking them. The question was Shiva asking Himself, “Who am I?” The misery was Shiva asking, “What does separation feel like?”
You become Arjuna, but in a different way than in Vedanta. You do not fight because duty demands it even though the world is unreal. You fight because the fight itself is Shiva’s spanda, His throb, His pulse, His absolute freedom, His svatantrya. The bow, the arrow, the fear, the courage, the enemy, the friend, all of it is Shiva.
Jivanmukti here is not freedom from the world. It is freedom in the world. You stay and you play, knowing you are both the player and the play.
Two Maps of the Same Remembering
Both traditions are describing the same moment of remembering, but they draw the map differently, and that difference changes how you live after.
They begin with a different view of the world. Vedanta calls the world mithya, not ultimately real, like a dream that feels true while you are in it but dissolves when you wake. Kashmir Shaivism calls the world abhasa, real as Shiva’s reflection in the mirror of consciousness. The reflection is not separate from the mirror, and it is not false. It is how Shiva sees Himself.
Because of this, they see suffering differently too. For Vedanta, suffering belongs to ignorance, to the false self that has mistaken itself for the body and mind. It is a case of mistaken identity, and once the identity is corrected, the suffering loses its owner. For Kashmir Shaivism, suffering belongs to contraction. It is Shiva Himself choosing to become small, separate and burdened, so that He can taste what separation feels like. Suffering is not an error to be erased. It is a veil to be recognised through.
They also see Krishna differently. For Vedanta, Krishna is Saguna Brahman, the teacher with form who gently leads you toward the formless. He appears so that you can eventually go beyond all forms, including His. For Kashmir Shaivism, Krishna is Parama Shiva Himself, the inner Self appearing as friend and guide. He does not lead you away from form. He shows you that form was never separate from Him.
Liberation, then, takes two shapes. In Vedanta, it is waking up from the dream. The questioner dissolves, because there was never a separate questioner to begin with, only the Self dreaming it was bound. In Kashmir Shaivism, it is recognising yourself in the mirror. The questioner is not dissolved, he is seen clearly at last as Shiva. The question was never a problem. It was Shiva calling Himself home.
And the battlefield, which is where all of this matters, remains in both views. In Vedanta, it remains, but you act without doership, without clinging to the fruit. In Kashmir Shaivism, it remains, and you see it as Shiva’s play, as His own freedom moving through you. One path says, neti neti, not this, not this, until only the Self remains. The other says, iti iti, this too, this too, until everything is seen as the Self. One renounces the world to find truth. The other embraces the world as truth.
Your Kurukshetra Today
So, if Krishna appeared before you, would you forget everything or would you fight?
Both traditions whisper the same secret: the choice is false.
You would forget in the Vedantic sense. The ego that was keeping a long list of wounds, questions and unpaid debts would dissolve. You would not carry your miseries into liberation to get them compensated.
You would fight in the Shaiva sense. You would not use that peace as an excuse to run away. Your Kurukshetra would still be there in the morning. The email, the diagnosis, the difficult conversation, the duty you have been avoiding. What would be gone is the Arjuna who wanted to quit because he thought the battle was his burden alone.
The Arjuna after the Gita is not a man with no questions. He is a man who no longer needs his questions to be answered by someone else, because he has remembered the one who was asking all along.
If Krishna appeared, you would not become someone else. You would become you, finally, without the contraction, without the fear, ready to stand in the middle of your life and say, my delusion is gone, memory has returned. Now let me do what must be done.