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Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue, Harper Perennial, 2005

Beauty does not linger, it only visits.

Yet beauty’s visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm,

it calls us to feel, think, and act beautifully in the world:

to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful.

Beauty is a gentle but urgent call to awaken. Bestselling author John O’Donohue opens our eyes, hearts, and minds to the wonder of our own relationship with beauty by exposing the infinity and mystery of its breadth. His words return us to the dignity of silence, profundity of stillness, power of thought and perception, and the eternal grace and generosity of beauty’s presence. In this masterful and revelatory work, O’Donohue encourages our greater intimacy with beauty and celebrates it for what it really is: a homecoming of the human spirit. As he focuses on the classical, medieval, and Celtic traditions of art, music, literature, nature, and language, O’Donohue reveals how beauty’s invisible embrace invites us toward new heights of passion and creativity even in these uncertain times of global conflict and crisis.

All the frailty and uncertainty was seen to be ultimately sheltered by the eternal beauty which presides over all the journeys between awakening and surrender, the visible and the invisible, the light and the darkness. (2)

At first, it sounds completely naive to suggest that now might be the time to invoke and awaken beauty. Yet this is exactly the claim that this book explores. Why? Because there is nowhere else to turn and we are desperate; furthermore, it is because we have so disastrously neglected the Beautiful that we now find ourselves in such terrible crisis. (3)

As Frederick Turner puts it, ‘Beauty … is the highest integrative level of understanding and the most comprehensive capacity for effective action. It enables us to go with, rather than against, the deepest tendency or theme of the universe.’ (7)

In contrast, beauty offers us refreshment, elevation and remembrance of our true origin and real destination. In this sense, the Beautiful is the true priestess of individuation, inviting us to engage the infinite design that shapes our days and dreams. She does not force on us any manufactured coherence towards which we must falsely strain; this is the diametrical opposite of all forms of fundamentalism. She invites us to surrender so that we can participate in the forming of a new and vital coherence that is native to our desire. In such unsheltered and uncertain times we yearn for this order and coherence, which brings the emerging forms of our own growth into rhythm with the concealed order of creation. (8)

The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of an eternal embrace. It unites us again with the neglected and forgotten grandeur of life. (13)

It is the realm of gods and goddesses, heros and heroines, the archetypes, ideals, paradigmatic individuals, Braj. However, it also has its dark side where the monsters, demons, nightmares, repressed contents of the conscious mind, etc. live. It’s amazing to me how much of what is considered good literature, art, or film dwells in these dark realms as does much of what we read in the daily news. Things evolve from subtle to gross.

While, the processes may be similar, the subject matter is different. As I recreate and experience Radha-Krishna’s pastimes in my heart, I reject all dross, negative emotions and experiences. I don’t need any more drama or horror in my life. I seek beauty and love in their purest forms. That’s what it means to be a paramhansa, we learn to separate the pure essence from the dross and live in that essential nature which is Braj, the eternal idealized reality my heart longs for most intensely.

Just as the Orissa devotees moved from loud kirtans to more personal, inner manjari bhav after the disappearance of Chaitanya and the overthrow of Maharaj Pratap-rudra, I think a more private inner cultivation of love for Radha-Krishna is more appropriate under my current situation. There is no need to try forcing our views on others through public sankirtan demonstrations and aggressive evangelism as many Western devotees engage in.

Rather cultivating the inner aesthetic sense to appreciate Radha-Krishna’s sports and the desire to enter into them is more effective.

What do you think?

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.

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.