Madhura Bhakti
Bhagavan Baba says that mellifluous devotion or madhura bhakti is the final stage in the experience of merging in God. He says this love is without any blemish and the being is completely dedicated to Divinity. So, a devotee has to aspire for such a state of devotion to be one with the Supreme Consciousness.
The youthful dalliances of Lord Krishna [Avatar of Vishnu] with the gopis [cowherd girls] are interpreted as symbolic of the loving interplay between God and the human soul. Radha’s [consort of Krishna] utterly delightful love for Krishna and their chaste relationship is often interpreted as the quest for union with the Divine. This kind of love, pure and wholesome, is the highest form of devotion and is symbolically represented as the bond between the wife and husband. The banks of the river Yamuna [sacred river in India where the interplay occurs] is the personification of calm, charm, inspiration, and thrill.
The cool breeze brought soft, sweet strains of divine music from the flute of Krishna to the ear. Radha came down from the high sand dunes toward the waterline with a big pot on her hip. Half way through she stopped short, for she heard her name ‘Radha, Radha’ wafting on the wind from where Krishna stood. With eyes wide open she looked around. No one was to be seen anywhere and there was no habitation around. Krishna was ever thus.
Radha fell down in a faint, the pot still in the fold of her arm. Then she suddenly awoke to the reality: “There is no place where You are not,” she said in her heart, addressing Krishna. “The call surely came from You, none else could be so soft and sweet, so sincere and compelling. But let me ask for just one boon of You. You made us all act our roles; we played our parts as best as we could. You urged us to laugh and to weep, and enjoyed both to Your heart’s content. I have had enough. Please, please let me go back to where I belong.
“I addressed myself in desire and in disappointment, in anger and in anticipation, in anxiety and in aspiration. I fed myself with sensual thrills—melodious sound, smooth touch, ambrosial taste, bewitching sight, and bewildering fragrance. I had on my ankles the jingle of illusion. I met both the applause and the scorn of the world. When I sang, delusion marked time in accompaniment. The tamasic (inertia) and rajasic (passion) qualities encouraged me to dance with their background melody. Now my limbs fall. I am sick of the whole affair. May the play end? Please, please agree to this my prayer.”
Radha and Krishna were indivisible
But Krishna did not agree. He approached nearer and nearer. The Lord is a clear mirror wherein the pure heart is reflected. Radha was His image, the embodiment of His ecstasy. Radha was the power of spiritual exhilaration for Krishna, and so the two were inseparable, indivisible. That is why Krishna called out, “Radha, Radha,” when she made her appearance on the Yamuna bank.
Radha continued, “This is the best chance for me to lay the gem of my devotion at Thy feet. Alas, it is still uncut and dull. I was misled for so long into the belief that the world is only sweet, but it is bitter as well. I have had enough. I am, as You know, prakriti dhara (uninterrupted flow of objective world), called Radha. So I am burdened with three gunas (qualities)—the satva, rajas, and tamas (goodness, passion, and dullness). Since prakriti (nature) is feminine I, too, perforce am feminine.”
Prakriti is feminine and so its representative, Radha, is also a stri (woman). The Sanskrit word stri has three consonants—sa, ta, and ra. These consonants signify the three gunas in that order —sa meaning satvaguna (purity and goodness), ta meaning tamoguna (dullness and ignorance) and ra meaning rajoguna (passion and aggression). Women have satva guna in ample measure. They are by nature helpful, tender, compassionate, humble, and trustworthy. They also have a good measure of tamoguna. They are timid, shy, and sometimes lacking initiative. It is good that women are so molded. They have been endowed by nature with only a small measure of rajoguna.
Of course, this is only the general truth; there may be exceptions where the rajoguna predominates and the tamoguna recedes into the background. Rajoguna makes women aggressively bold, adventurous, and desirous of freedom from restraint. The day rajoguna is accepted as a mark of womanhood will mark the beginning of the end of femininity.
A mother is the first teacher
Man has only one home. However, a woman has two homes to guard from ill fame—the home where she was born and brought up and the home into which she marries. When she breaks all rules and runs unbridled into freedom, she becomes dangerous to the reputation and good name of both families—that of her parents and that of her parents-in-law. Indian culture and spiritual traditions have always awarded a high place to women, since upon her rests the strength of the entire social fabric.
She is a companion and guide to her husband and the first teacher of her children—an example for their social attitudes, a model for their speech, and a guardian of their health and mental happiness. She is called the ardhangini (half body) of the husband. There are many temples where God is worshipped as ardhanariswara (half woman and half man)—the right half being male and the left half female. The honor and glory of a country is said to be held in the hands of the woman.
Wife can make the home a temple
Whenever a religious rite is performed or the Gods or Goddesses propitiated by some ritual, the wife must sit by the side of the husband or else the rite or ritual is ineffectual. This is the high status given to the wedded woman in the Indian religious scriptures. No charitable gift can be valid without the wife’s assent. Of course, she has no authority to perform these rites by herself, and so she is called abala (one without strength or power). The power implied here is “spiritual power over rites.” Unfortunately, the use of this word has become so widespread that women themselves have come to believe that they are fundamentally weak and powerless in all fields. This is a big mistake. Women are not weak, they only lack the authorization to perform rituals.
When Rama [Avatar of Vishnu, Lord of preservation in the Hindu trinity] decided on performing the Ashwamedha yajna (horse sacrifice), the objection was raised that Sita was in exile in the forest, and so without His spouse He was not entitled to perform the yajna (sacrificial rite). Some sages suggested that a golden idol of the absent wife be placed by the side of the principal officiator. The spiritual importance of the woman was thus validated when a golden idol of Sita was placed by Rama’s side before the yajna began. Abala does not mean lack of physical or mental strength. It is the wife who can veritably make the home of her husband a temple, a school, a council, a chamber, or a hermitage.
The six streams of devotion
Radha lived the life of an ideal woman in accordance with the standards set by the Sanathana Dharma [Eternal Universal religion]. She kept her thoughts fixed at all times on the Lord in pure, unremitting devotion, and so secured the bliss of merging with Him. This is the type of bhakti [devotion] referred to in the scriptures as “madhura bhakti” (mellifluous devotion).
There are six streams of bhakti flowing toward the Lord which are characteristic of six different types of spiritual attitudes. They are shanta [calm], sakhya [friendly], dasya [servitude], vatsalya [parental love], anuraga [deep affection], and madhura [sweet]. Madhura is the highest of the six, since it gives the maximum bliss. Milk is curdled and churned, and butter produced and clarified into ghee. Ghee is the end, the final stage. So, too, madhura bhakti is the last stage in the experience of merging in the Lord. The journey ends and the feet stop when the goal is reached. When the madhura experience is achieved, there is nowhere else to go, nothing more to do. The totality of God—His poorna (full) aspect, and His prema (love) aspect—is experienced in madhura bhakti.
In shanta bhakti, the aspirant practices equanimity and considers all that happens to him as a gift of God’s grace. Therefore he is unaffected by success or failure and is ever grateful for whatever God grants him. In sakhya bhakti, the aspirant takes God as his constant counselor, confidante, companion, and mate. He feels the constant presence of the Lord and is never unaware of Him. In dasya bhakti, the aspirant feels that he is the servant, the instrument of the Lord, and revels in the role that God gives him in life. In vatsalya bhakti, the aspirant loves the Lord as the mother loves her child—with tenderness, anxiety, compassion, and vigilance. In anuraga bhakti, the aspirant is deeply attached to the manifestation of the Lord, to all emanations of Divinity, and he is highly pleased when he gets a chance to serve.
Since man has as his essential characteristic the quality of love, he has only to foster it and attend to it so that he might love the Lord to the fullest by loving the Lord’s creation as much as the Lord Himself. Then the tree of life will yield the sweet fruit of madhura bhakti (intimate loving devotion). The fruit will have the bitter skin of I-ness and my-ness, which has to be removed. Certain egoistic desires and attributes might persist as ‘seeds’. They, too, have to be removed before the sweet pulp of love is offered to the Lord.
When Radha said that she had the vesture of desire and anger, she meant that she was unaffected by them. When she said that she was wearing the five elements contacted by the five senses in five distinct ways—sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound—as a ‘garland’ round her neck, she meant that she was not contaminated by their contact. Naturally, the Lord knew that she was completely dedicated to Divinity, that hers was madhura bhakti, that her prema had no blemish. So He granted the final consummation of bhakti to Radha.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 14
