Posted on: 12 Mar 2022
[Ms. Laxmi Thrylokya asked: - Swami, can You send a message on Madhura Bhakti or sweet devotion in the form of very brief points in nutshell based on which a set of audio-videos can be prepared since it is a very crucial topic. I feel that this way of representation is very essential. I will be very happy if each point is confined to a single sentence.]
Swami Replied: -
1. God Kṛṣṇa is the highest form of God as said by scriptures (Paripūrṇatamaḥ sākṣāt…, Kṛṣṇastu Bhagavān svayam etc.).
2. Sages are the highest forms of souls, who are worshipped even by angels and who are the authors of scriptures that are the authorities for Pravṛtti as well as for Nivṛtti.
3. Re-born sages as Gopikas attained Goloka, which is the highest spiritual fruit, being higher than the highest abode of God.
4. From these three which are the highest in their categories, we can easily infer that the spiritual effort (path) put forth by the sages must also be the highest.
5. If anybody doubts about the effort of the sages, concluding that their effort, the illegal lust, is not holy, the mind of such a person is the worst.
6. Bṛndāvanam on earth is the reflection of Goloka and hence, can’t be treated as a night dance club.
7. Of course, one may see the lust in the Bṛndāvanam also, but, such lust must be treated as theoretical devotion (love to God)-transformed-practical-lust and not theoretical hormonal lust-transformed-practical lust.
8. God is the ultimate creator and controller of anything and everybody and need not have lust (Āptakāmasya kā spṛhā? – Veda and Nānavāptamavāptavyam – Gītā) and if required, He can create an unimaginable beauty secretly for the satisfaction of His lust and need not go with Gopikas to get public defame.
9. Sages have burnt their lust in severe penance-fire before whom even the topmost heavenly dancers failed in disturbing them.
10. After leaving Bṛndāvanam, God Kṛṣṇa neither repeated this dance or theft of butter elsewhere in His entire life nor returned back to Bṛndāvanam to repeat these.
11. Total salvation means spontaneous dropout of all worldly bonds due to the very powerful attraction towards God and not cutting the worldly bonds with effort.
12. Three worldly bonds are the strongest called ‘Eṣaṇās’ (which are bond with money or Dhaneṣaṇā, bond with chidren or Putreṣaṇā and bond with spouse or Dāreṣaṇā) and dropout of these three Eṣaṇās also can be treated as total salvation as per ‘Pradhāna malla nibarhaṇa nyāya’ (if you have defeated three strongest boxers in a town, it means that you have defeated the entire town).
13. God Kṛṣṇa tested these three Eṣaṇās for the sages born as the Gopikas in the context of their love for Him by i) stealing butter that was preserved for their children (Dhaneṣaṇā and Putreṣaṇā) and ii) dancing with married Gopikas in Bṛndāvanam (Dāreṣaṇā).
14. Dance in Bṛndāvanam was conducted in the midnight secretly to avoid hurting the husbands and relatives of Gopikas because as per the path of Yoga, the opposing worldly bonds shall be crossed tactfully without hurting them as represented by the serpentine motion of the Kuṇḍalinī in passing through the six Cakras that represent the whirlpool like worldly bonds.
15. For total salvation from all worldly bonds, no single worldly bond (like spouse) can be exceptional because total means total, which means that all the worldly bonds have to be dropped out before the attraction to God.
16. The bond with the spouse is actually the weakest bond having the facility of divorce and hence, it was tested in the final birth of the sages as the Gopikas so that when all the other worldly bonds were dropped out, dropping out of this one weakest bond becomes inevitable for attaining salvation from all the worldly bonds.
17. Practical lust may be common in a night club and the Bṛndāvanam-dance, but both differ in their intentional material of theoretical hormonal lust and theoretical divine love respectively, just like a mud pot and gold pot differ in material value even though, both have the same shape and volume.
18. Actually, Nivṛtti or spiritual life is discovered by devotees only, which is optional for any soul since i) the sages themselves proposed to hug Rāma in female forms and ii) as the Gopikas threatened to commit suicide when Kṛṣṇa warned them to go back since Pravṛtti or worldly life alone is mandatory for all souls.
19. There is no place for lust either in God or in Sages. When Sages wished to hug God Rama, it was not the ordinary hormone provoked theoretical lust-transformed-practical lust. But, it was only devotional love provoked theoretical lust-transformed-practical lust. The reason is that the sages wanted to follow the Vedic path, which says that God alone is male (Purusha) and all the souls including males are females only (Sthriyah Sathih pumsah- Veda and the soul is said to be Prakriti or Para Prakriti and not Purusha by the Gita). When Tulasidas refused Meera to stay in His asylum for a night, Meera asked Him "Is there a male among souls also? Till now I am thinking that Krishna alone is Purusha".
20. In fact, in the Bhāgavatam, King Parīkṣit, who was actually made alive by God Kṛṣṇa only, asked sage Śuka as to how God Kṛṣṇa Himself committed this sin (Duṣpravṛtti) to spoil the ethical Pravṛtti by dancing with the married Gopikas.
21. Sage Śuka did not give the actual explanation for this question since even though ancient people had high moral standard, they had lesser scientific IQ to understand this complicated truth and may have got spoiled by imitating God with innocence.
22. Even though the divine sweet devotion (Madhura Bhakti) is not at all a sin, God Kṛṣṇa took sufficient care to avoid the exploitation of God’s action by ordinary souls i) by lifting a hill previously on His finger proving that He is God who is not to be imitated and ii) by accepting this action as a sin done by both Himself and the Gopikas and declaring that He would undergo the punishments of both (Ahaṃ tvā sarvapāpebhyaḥ - Gītā) so that no soul would dare to imitate this through exploitation (in the Gītā, God tells that He will liberate His exceptional devotees from all sins and the way of liberation is not told, which can be inferred from the incarnations of God Datta to be suffering for the sake of Their true devotees).
23. The scriptural authority for the purity of the sweet devotion is a couple of sutras written by sage Nārada in his Bhaktisūtram (1. Tatrāpi na māhātmya jñāna vismṛtyapavādaḥ- which means that even in the lustful dance of Gopikas with Kṛṣṇa, such lust was not hormonal lust - transformed-practical lust, but, it was devotion love-transformed-practical lust and 2. Tadvihīnaṃ jārāṇāmiva – which means that if devotion to God was absent in Gopikas, it would have been certainly a sinful illegal lust.).
24. Understanding the scripture called the Bhāgavatam that gave salvation to King Parīkṣit in 7 days and that which described this love story of Gopikas and Kṛṣṇa in which Gopikas were tested for the three strongest worldly bonds, itself is a test for the spiritual knowledge of spiritual scholars (Vidyāvatāṃ Bhāgavate parīkṣā) and hence, while studying this topic, everyone shall be very careful with lot of patience avoiding hasty conclusions.
25. Finally, the ultimate God Kṛṣṇa Himself agreed to the arguments of the Gopikas and danced with them, which means that this concept is totally pure since God Himself is the ultimate authority of all divine scriptures of both Pravṛtti and Nivṛtti (Vedāḥ śāstrāṇi vijñānaṃ, etat sarvaṃ Janārdanāt) and what more authority than the ultimate God is required to say that in this concept, it is impossible to have any doubt about sin.
26. Souls always have limited and superficial knowledge. Hence, they can never fully understand the past or the internal information (at any time) about any soul. Hence, souls can never understand the actions of the omniscient God towards certain souls like the Brundavanam dance of Krishna with the Gopikas or the love affair of Jesus with a prostitute or multi-marriages of Prophet Mohammad, etc. We can't understand God Vishnu in cheating Tulasi (wife of demon Jalandhara), who was a beloved Gopika of Krishna in the past birth, and was protecting her husband who was fighting with God Shiva with an illegal proposal to marry the wife of God Shiva! We are like the persons sympathizing with the criminals being hanged without seeing their past unimaginable crimes!
27. The unimaginable God was mediated as the first energetic incarnation called Datta and Datta further incarnated as more energetic incarnations as well as human incarnations on earth to guide human devotees in the correct path by giving true spiritual knowledge. In this context, when God Datta merges with a selected human devotee to become human incarnation, God Datta will not interfere with the natural properties of the human medium (with which He is merging) like birth-death, hunger-thirst, sex-sleep, illness-emotions, etc. This will keep the human devotees in a normal ground state like friends without excitation so that the human incarnation can mix with the devotees freely, who can ask questions without any reservation. The human devotee shall concentrate on the spiritual path guided by the human incarnation (Sadguru) and shall not worry about His other normal and special points that can’t be understood by the little knowledge of ordinary souls.