People have such a hard time understanding Vrindavana Krishna!
Even if they figure out that the specificity of paramātmā is more infinite than the indefinite abstraction of brahman, they still have to figure the mystery of bhagavan: that the specific personhood and form of divinity does not exist merely for our sake, but has it’s own intrinsic desire and purpose that we are meant to participate in.
Even if they sort all that out, and comprehend bhāgavan, they will still have to figure out why unabashed intimacy with pure beauty (madhurya) expresses spiritual bliss (ānanda) more fully than awestruck reverence for absolute majesty (aiśvarya).
Even if they comprehend madhurya-bhagavan Krishna, they will still have to figure out that the oneness of romantic intimacy (śṛṇgara-ujjvala-mādhurya – which causes God to be a boy and us to be girls), expresses more concentrated ānanda than mere friendship, or even the heart melting affection of motherhood (sakhya or vatsalya – which causes Krishna to be our peer, or even our baby).
Even if they sort all that out and comprehend the Romantic Divinity, Śrī Krishna, they still have not grasped Vrindavana Krishna. They still have to comprehend that romantic love expressed with the all devouring intensity of lust (kāmarūpa) expresses more intense ānanda than love which obeys norms, and stays within boundaries (dharmarūpa). To comprehend Vrindavana Krishna, they will not only have to be able to grasp this, but to take it to its ultimate extreme: realizing that the apex of Divine Bliss will manifest in forms which resemble what we conceive of as scandalous and adulturous affairs (parakīya) rather than lawfully wedded (or even mildly adventurous) nuptual bliss (svakīya).
Oh God… It’s a long way from brahman to braja, indeed!
The fullest perception of the Absolute Original Consciousness is a gorgeous heartbreaker engulfed in endless waves of coordinated multitutdes of mind-bendingly beautiful and mind-bogglingly talented mistresses of erotic bliss.
But, if we can put aside all our preconceptions and all our emotional and intellectual baggage, and just look at the above with fresh eyes, it does make perfect sense: the fullest perception of the Absolute Original Consciousness is a gorgeous heartbreaker engulfed in endless waves of coordinated multitutdes of mind-bendingly beautiful and mind-bogglingly talented mistresses of erotic bliss.
Ladies and (well… just ladies)… I introduce to you…. Śrī Krishna! The real one, behind all the closed doors and closed curtains. Vrindavana Bihari.
Objection!
Objection: Krishna says he doesn’t break the codes of dharma because whatever great people do, common people immitate!
Reply: Yes, but first of all he says that in Bhagavad-Gītā as a grown man, a kṣatrīya, and a king. When he was a kid living as a vaiṣya in a farmer’s villiage, he was not yet a “great man” of that sort, he was just a teenager. In Vraja, as a Kishor (teen), he has no need to set any example for common people to follow.
Vraja Vrindavana is where Krishna gets to be himself. Elsewhere he is doing things for our sake, dharma-samsthāpana and so on (establishing morality, etc). But God’s existence is not limited to how he guides and helps and serves us (in fact, that is closer to a paramātmā conception than a bhagavān conception). God has his own life! And we can participate in it! We can serve, and help, and even guide and protect and delight him! The venue for this existence manifests in Vaikuṇṭha, and most fully in Vraja Goloka Vrindavana. There, and especially in Vraja, he isn’t busy setting examples for John and Jane Doe – he is just being himself and sharing the feast of Supreme Bliss.
Śruti śāstra, with its oft-repeated and paraphrased “so kāmayata bahu syām prajāyata” phrase and several other key statements, describes the Absolute Consciousness as this Vraja Kishor Krishna, enjoying unabashed bliss in its most intense, “lusty” form.
We have a hard time understanding Vrindavana Krishna’s kāma-līlā because of our own experiences with lust. We experience it as something extremely selfish, and we assume that our experience of lust is accurate. However, we are avidya-baddha (bound by lack of knowledge) and our experiences are therefore more or less inaccurate. An accurate perception of Krishna’s “lust” is possible, but not easy. A) We have to be willing to have it. Not just willing, but wanting, really wanting. B) We have to find someone who has it and can explain to us how they obtained that from the ultimate source of accurate perception, śāstra. Only then can we too hope to directly see the indescribable beauty and dharma of Rādhā Krishna Parakīya Prema – the “lusty love” between Radha and Krishna.
What we will see is that, even in Vrindavana, Krishna is setting the right example.
The Bhāgavatam opens with “oṁ namo bhāgavate vāsudevāya” – explaining that Krishna is Vāsudeva, the Original Consciousness. It immediately follows this by, “janmādyasya yatā” – explaining śruti’s “kāmayata” point: that everything in existence manifests as a result of the perceptual hunger of this Original Consciousness; “unvayad itarataś cārtheṣu abhijñā” – explaining that everything comes from him and exists for the sake of manifesting his bliss. Everything is from him and for him.
Therefore there is no such thing as “parakīya” in a literal sense!
Rādhā and the Gopīs of Vrindavana are Krishna’s sva-māyā, svayaṁ prakṛti, svarūpa-śakti. They are inseparable components of Krishna himself! There is no literal truth to the concept of them being “unmarried.”
The parakīya-bhāva is a bhāva! A mood! A sense! The husbands of Radha and so on are abhiman (“big ideas”) only. Parakīya is the form that everything takes, to allow the Divine Bliss of the Original Consciousness to manifest its all-devouring, all-consuming, all-conquering nature to the fullest, most radical, wild, unrestrained extreme. It is the form of gopī-prema, but the tattva of gopī-prema is svakīya. More than any husband or wife we have ever experienced, they are eternally, constitutionally, inseparably married.
The example he sets, therefore, is that we should enjoy only what is constitutionally ours to enjoy. This is conformant with all dharma-śāstra.
If we are sincere, we will find that nothing is constitutionally ours to enjoy. We may experience a sense of proprietorship, but it is never more than conditional and relative. So it is our enjoyment, no matter how dharmic it may appear, which is adharmic. This is the first point Bhāgavatam makes: everything is consitutionally his; it is his dharma to enjoy everything and everyone. No one, therefore, is a more dharmic lover than Vrindavan Krishna!
And it is our dharma to participate in that infinite feast of enjoyment, as an integral part of it. The enjoyer and enjoyed both enjoy, but each from different perspectives.
So, even in Vraja, Krishna is setting an example for all to follow. What example?
The example of highest bliss!
Vraja-līlā exhibits the example of what everyone really wants: unrestrained, unmitigatedly thrilling bliss. And it also shows us how we can get it: not by trying to enjoy it as a proprietor (the key flaw in our approach to happiness), but instead by participating in it as a consitutant part of it, as a part belonging constitutionally to the whole: Krishna, who the root of our very existence.
As a gopī.
This is what Bhāgavatam and Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu want to show us: That Krishna is the fullest concept of brahman and that we too are meant to be one with that expression of exquisitely blissful love.
Vraja Kishor dās
The Enquirer 
Wow!!!!!! simply loved it loved it loved it.
Thanks so much for expressing and sharing the way you did!!!!
Amazing…
May Radharani keep empowering you more and more for many such inspiring soul stirring (big big crazy stirring) expression ..
Not sure if these emails get to you or one of your followers managing for you but I hope the appreciation gets passed on to you to let you know you have people far far far away reading them and rereading them!!!!
More love and prayers your way
Shyamapriya
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Thank you Shyamapriya!
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Awesome post! This is the best write-up on this subject that I’ve ever read!! I’d give it 5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 if I could. Dandavats
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Dear Vraja Kishore Prabhu.
Dandavat Pranams.
Reading your article is always like an ice cream…
Please forgive my neophytism, I am still struggling to understand the Lord and life; I have the following question:
God is omnipotent, He is an original male and He expresses His lust with His own energies. He has His life. He does not have any reactions. Why doesn’t He understand the Lust of man?
Forgive me for the not well constructed arguments below:
Spiritual discipline which calls for the restraint of sexual Lust is just cruel. Sadhakas are burning in a fire of lust yet out of fear of consequences due to being intelligent, they don’t act; a sort of suppression. It is all due to Unnatural imposition: We are not the body but soul then don’t given in and the story of regrets afterwards.
To get God’s attention or mercy, become a zombie voluntarily then after death you will get everything you desired…
Reality: We are very small yet unequal in terms of opulences due to Karma. We are allowed to suffer and be happy; yet it should be normal and we should patiently wait for a next better life.
We have a creation where God is eternal, although as sons we cannot become small Gods and have the same privilege as God. We are doomed inferiors, das, the enjoyed.
Why should man love God more than himself? Why would man not become envious of God as he cannot satisfy his lust as freely as God?
Is it that being God is a pain in itself that God does not want us to know and thus it is better not to want that? Does real happiness is only possible in being small and limited in terms of powers/opulences?
yrs
das rasbihari
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Reply
Dear Rasbihari, it seems you have picked up a great many misconceptions, so I think it is good that you openly ask these questions.
The first misconception is that a person who has strong sexual urges has to give these up in pursuit of spiritual progress. If there are strong sexual urges, yes, one cannot adopt certain lifestyles, but still one can make spiritual progress by other lifestyles. The Vedic system has a spiritually progressive lifestyle for every type of person at every stage of realization. Not everyone has to take the same exact medicine in the same exact doses.
Another misconception is that you can’t have sexual pleasure, and God tries to prevent you from it. This is wrong. In fact the external world is manifest by Viṣṇu specifically for the sake of your sexual pleasure. We want sexual pleasure, and Paramātmā facilitates it and makes it possible. Along the way if we take the opportunity to develop a higher conception of sex and lust, Krishna becomes interested in us, and begins to help us come to him. But you can have whatever you want, for as long as you want, this is Krishna’s arrangement. All you have to do is play by the rule of cooperation with other people like you who want their own pleasure too.
Another misconception regards what bhakti is, how it is practiced, and why. You have bhakti completely mixed up with tyāga (renunciation) and other forms of yajña (sacrifice). You think of bhakti as some sort of task, or chore, or duty which is a drudge and a sacrifice. You think bhakti is something dreadful done to achieve some goal. You think it involves a great deal of sacrifice, just to get something in the distant future. This is all completely wrong.
You also have a big misconception that the individual is entirely different than God and that there is therefore some type of contest or contention between them. This is completely, absolutely wrong, too.
You also seem to have the misconception that Krishna is a greedy miser like us, trying to horde pleasure (like us) because (like us) he doesn’t even understanding what pleasure really is. This, of course, is completely false.
So, you have so many misconceptions it is impossible to reply except to point out as many as I can. If I did not respect your honesty and sincerity I would not point all of these out, because I would think it would serve no purpose. So please do not be angry with me for being so corrective and saying you are wrong about everything. Please take it as a compliment that I think you can understand how you are wrong – which is a very good quality.
Vraja
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Dear Vraja Kishore Prabhu,
Dandavats Pranam.
You are a very sweet and gentlemanly person.
Prabhu, I am very thankful and appreciative of the great compassion you showed on me; Who have time to contribute their Knowledge like You are doing? It is selfless and I can only be in reverence to that. Where is the question of being angry? Arguments are presented for the scrutiny of others. It would be unethical to not respect this intellectual freedom. Everyone has their set of experiences and belief systems which always needs refinement.
One thing is there that some people ask question or present arguments to know but some people like the lusty me also do so to hear answers again and again.
I liked many words in your answer but i need more clarifications if I am not disturbing you in any ways.
You mentioned lifestyles which is a very well chosen word. You said: ” If there are strong sexual urges, yes, one cannot adopt certain lifestyles, but still one can make spiritual progress by other lifestyle.” Could You elaborate on “other lifestyle” and indicate whether the spiritual progress could reach the zenith of love of God?
You are saying: ” We want sexual pleasure, and Paramātmā facilitates it and makes it possible. Along the way if we take the opportunity to develop a higher conception of sex and lust, Krishna becomes interested in us, and begins to help us come to him”. Please direct me to the knowledge for having a higher conception of sex and lust. I have always been hearing of purity, of sublimation of sexual desire, of self control, of bondage etc. Is there not any price to pay for having sexual pleasure in terms future repercussions in the achievement of Love of God?
I deciphering that pleasure is a common principle to both the material and the spiritual but is pleasure synonymous of happiness? Is enjoyment same as happiness?
I would like to hear your grace on an article on love, What is it?
Thanking Your grace and praying that the Lord empowers you more and more.
Regards
das rasbihari
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Dear Rasbihari Jī,
What you wrote was very kind. I will try to reply:
Bhagavad Gītā makes all this clear. By dharma one becomes able to do karma-yoga. By karma-yoga one becomes able to do jñāna-yoga. By jñāna-yoga one becomes able to do bhakti yoga. By bhakti-yoga, one becomes able to get bhakti.
So find the place you are at, and apply yourself to it. Do not try to put yourself at another place. Krishna says this explicitly in the third chapter, for example “karmany evādhikāras te” and “śreyān sva-dharmo viguṇaḥ”
Our conception of Kāma is currently based on acquiring objects we do not have, to fill a need we have. This is our idea of pleasure. This involves us in artha and dharma. But even when it is perfect our happiness is still imperfect. This is because real pleasure does not come from objects, but from consciousness – from people and connection to them.
The ultimate connection is to oneself, and the ultimate root of the self is Paramātmā, who ultimately, is Krishna.
Gradually we can get a higher conception of Sex, and ultimately conceive of it as union with Krishna.
Gradually things become purer and purer. They don’t go from being totally dirty to suddenly becoming totally clean. We gradually purify our concept of kāma from the impurities of pṛthak-bhāva (ignorant selfishness). When people rush it, they do so out of a desire to be famous or respected – and it causes feelings of repression, guilt, frustration, and so on.
Yes, but in ignorance the pleasure, happiness and enjoyment is thought to be something that we lack and have to find from external objects. In liberation, the pleasure, happiness and enjoyment is something that is intrinsically a part of us, and we express and share.
I think I have a video on this on my YouTube chanel… This is not it exactly, but it may help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTODZR_6Cwk – the definition of love is given perfectly by Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī in Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu 1.1.11.
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Just see the title. First of all you are telling about radha-krishna and then there is “wtf” in the title.
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Yeah…. wtf is THAT??? 🙂
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Wow…This is the deepest explanation of vraja krishna lila I have ever heard. You simultaneously show that gopi-bhava, and vraja-lila are attainable goals, but avoid portraying them cheaply. I have never heard anyone else bring those two ideas together. Thank you very much for your realizations Prabhu.
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The love between Krishna and Radha should be looked at only from vedantic, adhyatmic standpoint.. as such it is the deep relation between pure consciousness and consciousness . Do not spread unhindu , unaesthetic . Phenomenological, karanadehi explanations and accentuate asatya avidya in the new generation of mankind.
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I agree. This is a vedantic and adhyatmic understanding.
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