The Love of the Gopis

Bhagavan Baba has spoken about the gopis and their devotion to Lord Krishna on Krishna Janam Ashtamis [the day He was born] past. He has said that the inner eye and the inner senses are needed to grasp the meaning of their relationship. This year the festival falls on August 24th.

Kompella Subbaraya Sastry [a learned devotee] spoke about the incarnation of Krishna on earth, and read excerpts from the Bhagavatha [the epic on Krishna] describing the antecedents of His birth. All of you enjoyed listening to him, though many of you are listening to the story for the hundredth time; the story of the Lord does not lose its sweetness when repeated. Jnana, yoga, and karma (knowledge of supreme Self, meditation, and selfless action) are each hard to go through. However, like chutney, which has salt, chilies, and tamarind in the right proportion ground to a paste, bhakti [devotion] that is jnana, yoga and karma in the correct proportion, is bound to be appetizing to all tongues.

The Lord’s grace is a subject dear to everyone. It is a subject that is within the grasp of all. The Lord also can be addressed by any name that tastes sweet to your tongue or pictured in any form that appeals to your sense of wonder and awe. You can sing of Him as Muruga, Ganapathi, Sharada, Jesus, Maithreyi, Shakti, or you can call on Allah or the Formless, or the Master of all forms. It makes no difference at all. He is sarvanama and sarvaswarupa (all names and all forms). He is the beginning, the middle, and the end—the basis, the substance, and the source. So, any story that brings into your consciousness, His glory, His grace and His beauty, must perforce appeal to you.

Ripples of Thought

Believe Me, all vrittis (mental modes or functions or thoughts) are anitya (impermanent). A vritti is a circle, like the circle that emanates from the place where a stone falls into the still water of a lake. The water gets agitated and the circle affects the water up to the farthest end of the lake. Every thought acts like the stone on the stillness of the mind; it sets up a vritti and agitates all round. The pravritti marga (path of attachment) multiplies these circular waves and seeks to create further and wider agitations. But the nivritti marga (path of detachment) aims at stilling the waters, experiencing no agitation at all. Preserve the calmness, even the level, and keep the agitating thoughts away.

Concentration on the name and form of Krishna tends to calm the waves of vritti. When E. M. Forster came to India, he stayed for sometime with the Thakore of Rajkot. When he found the Thakore engaged in dhyanam (meditation) before the image of Radha‑Shyam, he wondered at first what it was all for. The Thakore had no wants to fulfill. What could he pray for? One day, he asked the Thakore why he prayed. The Thakore replied that for him, Krishna was the embodiment of prema, soundarya, and anandam (love, beauty, and bliss). When he meditated on that form, he, too, was filled with love, beauty, and joy. The senses, intellect, and emotions get purified and clarified by dwelling on the pure and the splendid. Forster was induced to try the first steps of dhyanam and though he found it rather difficult at first, the thrill engendered by the strange calm egged him on to persist. He found it good and useful.

His pranks reveal His essence

Krishna was only a few weeks old when a certain ascetic came into the house of Nanda. Yashoda [Krishna’s foster mother] had the baby on her lap. Of course, this is an incident not found in any book; I will tell you this Myself. The maids ran in for they were afraid the child might start weeping at the sight of the uncouth individual. He walked in, nevertheless, and Yashoda found that the baby cried when the ascetic was sent away, not when he was approaching! The muni (ascetic) also announced that he had come to see Krishna-paramatma  (Krishna, the supreme Self), a name that was new to the entire family. No wonder the baby cried when that distinguished visitor was asked to go! Devaki [Krishna’s mother] had been given a vision of Krishna as the Lord Himself, but this muni had discovered the arrival of the Avatar by the grace of the Almighty. It was Baba who had invited the muni for His darshan (sight of a divine being).

The replies that Krishna gave when the gopis (milkmaids) complained to His mother about His mischievous pranks and thefts of milk, butter, etc., also reveal His divine essence by the inner meaning they convey.

“Why did you drink the milk from the pot she was carrying?”

“She was taking it to be offered to God; perhaps, God might have drunk it up.”

“Where had you run away?”

“I was always with you, is it not?”

“Why do you hold that butter pot in your clasp?”

“So that others may not eat it!”

“Why do you put your hand into that butter pot?”

“I am looking for a lost calf.”

These were the types of answers with which He taught them. He was the Ancient One, in new garb. His words came from the beginning of time.

Radha’s prema was pure

The Radha‑tatwam (principle) is also a deep, inscrutable one. She was always immersed in the contemplation of the Lord and His glory. She, too, saw the child Krishna as the divine manifestation, separate from the human form. One day, Yashoda was searching for Krishna as he had strayed away. She searched almost everywhere and at last went to Radha’s house. Radha just closed her eyes and meditated on Krishna for a while and when she called “Krishna,” He was there. Yashoda shed tears of joy. She said, “I love Krishna as a mother, but I have a sense of ego that He is my son, that I must save Him from harm and seek to give Him guidance and protection. Your prema is pure; it has no egoism prompting it.”

The gopis had that one‑pointed prema (love)—unwavering, clear, and pure. Persons who have not regulated and controlled their vrittis have unfortunately judged the relationship [as depicted in the Bhagavatha] between the gopis and Krishna. This subject is beyond the comprehension of such people. Only brahmacharis (celibates) of the most ardent and ascetic type like Suka Maharishi who described it to King Parikshit, and more recently, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, can appreciate that relationship and talk about its uniqueness. All the rest are apt to see in it only the reflection of their own failings and their own feelings. The language of samsara (worldly life) is the only language they know. The regions of turiya [beyond the regions of wakefulness, dream, and deep sleep], to which those experiences relate, are not within their reach. So they drag the subject down to their own level and claim that they have mastered their mystery.

Godward steps shed attachments

The inner eye and the inner senses are needed to grasp the meaning of the relationship between Krishna and the gopis. Oruganty has shown that it has eluded the grasp of most interpreters, for it is closely allied to the adwaitik [non-dualistic] experience of nirvikalpa samadhi (the super-conscious state where there is no mind). For the interpretation to be correct, the mind has to be the master of the senses and not its slave. Thoughts, wishes, deeds, and feelings—all have to be purified of the desire for gain. Ahamkara (egoism) itself must lose all its hold on the interpreter, as it did on the gopis. Prema, such as the gopis had toward the Lord, should make a man strong, not weak. In fact, the gopis were not weakened by their love; they were rendered tough. Ramakrishna also exhorted his disciples, like Narendranath, to grow strong with the cultivation of prema toward the Lord.

Every step taken toward the Lord makes you shed bit by bit all attachment to the world. How then could the gopis retain their physical awareness? Dhruva went into the forest to get from the Lord the boon of sitting on the lap of his father, a very ordinary wish of a plainly earthly type. But as he advanced in tapas [penance], that wish disappeared from his mind, and his mind was elevated to great spiritual heights. How can one who has tasted amrita (nectar) be eager to taste water? Or crave for tamarind fruits after tasting khajur (dates)? Every craving will be sublimated into the higher realms of pure consciousness the moment one enters the spiritual field.

The gods came to the world

And then who are these gopis, according to the Bhagavatha itself? They are the demi‑gods who wanted to share in the glory of the Avatar and who came down to the world as witnesses and sharers in the divine leela (cosmic sport). They came for a purpose; they are not ordinary village folk who could be dismissed as a crowd of voluptuous women. They saw the divine, not the human, in Krishna’s every gesture, word or phrase, and in His gait. They had no occasion or chance to be agitated by a secular vritti (thought wave); all vrittis were awakened by divine promptings and urges. Like the magnifying glass that catches the rays of the sun and directs them all to one spot, thus concentrating the heat and helping the fire to ignite, so, too, the hearts of the gopis collected all the vrittis and concentrated them and caused the illumination and the flame. The flame burnt all dross; the illumination revealed the truth. All other interpretations are to be laid at the door of either ignorance or scholasticism, the pompous pride of mere book learning, which scorns the exercise of discipline.

Krishna’s theft of butter

Krishna is condemned as a thief who stole butter from the cowherd maidens, but the butter represents the bhakti of the heart obtained after the process of churning. It is a question of a symbol being taken as literally true. He is chittachor (the stealer of hearts). The thief steals at night, in the darkness, without awakening the master. But when this divine thief steals, He wakes the master and tells him that He has come. The victim is left supremely happy and satisfied.

Every gopi had the highest type of bhakti in her heart. They saw only Krishna wherever they turned; they wore blue Kumkum [dot] on their foreheads in order to remind themselves of Krishna. There were many husbands who protested against the color of the kumkum, but they dared not wipe it off lest harm should befall them and the sacrilege recoil on them alone. (Here Baba, who had filled His hand with petals of mallika (jasmine) flowers taken from garlands given to Him, showered the petals from one palm to another and they fell in a cascade of blue gems.) Even the gems they preferred were of this type, blue like Krishna. (He showed the astounded gathering the gems to which He was referring. Each gem had Krishna’s form in it, beautifully clear.)

For example, there was Neeraja. When she came to Brindavan from a distant village as the bride of a gopa, she was warned against the stratagems of Krishna. Despite all warnings, however, she saw Krishna during the Govardhanagiri festival and surrendered her heart to the Lord. She passed through great ordeals on account of this spiritual attachment, but she bore it all with courage. She had seen Krishna first at the foot of the Govardhana hill, playing sweetly on the flute. So she used to go often to that bower where she first saw Him, to inhale the holy air.

Years passed thus. When Akrura was taking Krishna away to Mathura, she was foremost among those gopis who tried to curb the horses that drew the chariot in which Krishna sat. Neeraja silently suffered the separation for years and years, until one day when she was exhausted with the agony and well nigh spent, Krishna appeared before her in the self-same bower. He fondled the gopi and consoled her. She, however, had one request to make. She longed to hear the divine flute before she died on Krishna’s lap. The Lord said, “I have not brought it.” However, just to grant her the boon, He broke a length of reed from the bower and turning it into a flute, played a tune on it that melted Neeraja ‘s heart into tears, and washed her soul away. The moment the song ended, she passed into the Krishna-tatwa [principle]. And Krishna, too, gave up the flute that for her sake, He had played again. The bower came to be called Vamsikunj, in memory of the flute.

No pride in attachment to God

There was a gopi named Suguna. One day, when Krishna was with Sathyabhama, He pretended to have a severe stomachache, and in spite of all the remedies that Sathyabhama tried, she could not afford relief. Of course, it was all acting, superb acting, such as the paralytic stroke I had for a week prior to Guru Poornima recently! Even Rukmini was not admitted into the house to inquire about Krishna’s health. But Rukmini found Suguna pining outside the door in great agony at the illness of the Lord. She gave Suguna the articles she had brought and asked her to go in. Krishna welcomed Suguna, made her sit at His Feet, and ate the fruits she had picked up from Sathyabhama’s own garden. And suddenly, the ache had gone. It was her agony at the Lord’s condition, her simple sincere devotion that was so effective.

There should be no artificiality in your attachment to the Lord, no affectation, no pride, and no egoism left, to soil the freshness of the flower you offer. Sathyabhama protested when Krishna accepted the fruits, for Krishna had brushed them aside as tasteless when she had herself offered them as the precious product of her assiduous gardening efforts. They were tasteless, since her pride had entered into them. When the simple rustic gopi picked them from the ground and saturated them with her devotion, they became tasty and attractive for the Lord, who cares for the bhava (inner feeling), not the bahya (outer show)!

The only prema that will not allow pride and envy to interfere with its purity is prema toward God. Knowing that I have been taking only a cup of buttermilk daily for the last two months, many of you are genuinely grief‑stricken, though I have been telling you that no work of Mine has been stopped or delayed as a result of My “reduced intake of food.” That is a sign of your prema, but really I live on your anandam (divine bliss), not on this material food at all. I wish that you realize this and stop worrying or weeping.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 3