Radha-Krishna, the Divine Couple (Part 4)

The asso­ciates please God-dess accord­ing to their par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship, like ser­vant, friend, par­ent, or lover. This rela­tion­ship does not derive from birth or an exter­nal cer­e­mony like adop­tion or mar­riage, but it derives from the spe­cific emo­tion or devo­tional love an asso­ciate man­i­fests. Nat­ural devo­tional prac­tice includes cul­ti­vat­ing an emo­tional, lov­ing rela­tion­ship with God-dess.

God-dess is per­fect, with­out wants, and all his-her acts are with­out motive or con­scious effort. They arise from over­flow­ing intrin­sic bliss. Called sport, play, or pas­times, they man­i­fest in the hearts, minds, and lives of devotees.

God-dess’ names, forms, abodes, asso­ciates, and sports exist within us, along with every­thing else we can imag­ine. There are dif­fer­ent planes of exis­tence, and con­scious­ness per­vades every­thing. Devo­tional prac­tices help us attain the plane of con­scious­ness where God-dess lives and enacts eter­nal pas­times with his-her dear friends.

Radha-Krishna embody the high­est, most con­cen­trated bliss known to us, and it is quite dif­fer­ent from ordi­nary hap­pi­ness. Ordi­nary hap­pi­ness is mate­r­ial, while bliss is spir­i­tual. Ordi­nary hap­pi­ness is tran­sient and lim­ited, while bliss is eter­nal and unlim­ited. Spir­i­tual bliss is quan­ti­ta­tively and qual­i­ta­tively vastly supe­rior to our every­day hap­pi­ness. Tran­scen­den­tal bliss is unique and indescribable.

Radha-Krishna embody bliss and enjoy­ment as the object enjoyed and the enjoyer. Their tran­scen­den­tal enjoy­ment is aston­ish­ingly won­der­ful, and it totally absorbs the mind and senses. God-dess entails infi­nite vari­ety and new­ness along with embody­ing all enjoyment.

Chaitanya’s phi­los­o­phy says God-dess’ bliss­ful energy increases a thousand-fold when implanted in the heart of a devo­tee. Devo­tees develop a pas­sion­ate desire to serve God-dess accord­ing to their dif­fer­ent moods. The love of devo­tees aware of God-dess’ power and majesty is enjoy­able, but divine love remains shy before opu­lent majesty. The more aware­ness of majesty, the less intense the spon­ta­neous love.

Devo­tees who, unaware of God-dess’ power and majesty, serve Radha-Krishna as a sweet, lov­ing cou­ple with ordi­nary human wants and weak­nesses, give them the high­est enjoy­ment. Radha-Krishna enjoy such divine love more than any­thing else. This high­est devel­op­ment of divine love occurs only when nei­ther God-dess nor devo­tee is con­scious of divinity.

Rupa Goswami was a learned play­wright and poet, well versed in clas­si­cal Indian aes­thet­ics. He used the Tenth Canto of the Bha­ga­vat to elab­o­rate the play of Radha-Krishna, and he hier­ar­chi­cally sys­tem­atized the var­i­ous forms of God-dess, moods of devo­tion, devo­tional symp­toms of love, forms of sport, and how to enter into those sports. His brother, Sanatan, and nephew, Jiva, philo­soph­i­cally sys­tem­atized those concepts.

Thus, we arrive at a point where the high­est human con­cep­tion of God-dess and the high­est ser­vice one can ren­der them is for them to be a lov­ing young cou­ple, with us as their friends and lovers, totally unaware of their divin­ity. Deep, intense love remains the key ele­ment. If we apply the prin­ci­ple “as above, so below,” see our­selves cre­ated in the image of God-dess, and under­stand this world as a tem­po­rary, imper­fect reflec­tion of the spir­i­tual world, then we under­stand God-dess and the tran­scen­den­tal abode must bear some resem­blance to the high­est, most enjoy­able aspects of human life.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 11:18 and is filed under Jungle dispatch and tagged with aesthetics, bliss, Radha-Krishna. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.