The Love of the Gopis

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba said in His discourse on Krishna Janmashtami [Krishna’s birthday] in 1963 that there should be no artificiality in your attachment to the Lord, no affectation, no pride, no egoism left to soil the freshness of the flower you offer.

Kompella Subbaraya Sastry spoke about the coming on earth of the incarnation of Krishna and read extracts from the Bhagavata describing the antecedents of the birth. All of you enjoyed listening to him, though many of you are listening to the story for the 100th 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 one of them hard to go through, but like chutney, which is salt, chilly, 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.

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.

Every thought sets up a function, agitating all around

Believe Me, all vrittis (mental modes or functions) are anithya (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. Every thought acts like the stone on the stillness of the mind; it sets up a vritti. It agitates all around. 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. No agitation at all. Preserve the calmness, even the level. 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 was for some time with the Thakore of Rajkot. And 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 fulfil. What could he pray for? One day he asked the Thakore, “Why?” He replied that Krishna was for him the embodiment of prema,soundarya, and anandam (love, beauty, and bliss). So when he meditated on that form he was filled with love, beauty, and joy. The senses, intellect, and emotions all get purified and clarified by dwelling on the pure and the splendid.

Forster was induced to try the first steps and though he found it rather difficult at first, the thrill engendered by the strange calm egged him on to persist. He found dhyanam good and useful. Krishna’s pranks reveal His divine essence. Krishna was only a few weeks old when a certain ascetic came into the house of Nanda [Krishna’s foster father]. Yashoda [Krishna’s foster mother] had the baby in her lap. Of course, this is an incident not found in any book: I have to 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 when he was sent away, the baby raised a cry; not when he was approaching! The Muni (sage) also announced himself as having 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 had been given the vision of Krishna being the Lord Himself, but this Muni had discovered the arrival of the Avatar by the Almighty’s grace. It was Baba who had invited the Muni for His darshan.

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

“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 He taught them with. He was the Ancient One in the new garb. His words came from the beginning of time.

Radha’s prema was pure without egoism

The Radha‑tatwam (principle) is also a deep and inscrutable one. She was ever in the contemplation of the Lord and His glory. She, too, saw the child Krishna as the Divine manifestation, separate from the human form. Yashoda one day was searching for Krishna who had strayed away. She sought almost everywhere and at last she went to Radha’s house. Radha just closed her eyes and meditated on Krishna for a while, and when she called “Krishna,” Krishna was there. Then Yashoda shed tears of joy. She said, “I love Krishna as a mother; I have a sense of egoism in me that He is my son and 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. The relationship between the gopis and Krishna as depicted in the Bhagavata [scriptures] has been unfortunately judged by persons who have not regulated and controlled their vrittis. 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, in recent years Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, can appreciate that relationship and pronounce upon 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.

Every Godward step makes you shed all attachment

As a matter of fact, the Inner Eye, the Inner Senses are needed to grasp the meaning of this relationship. Oruganty has shown that it has eluded the grasp of most interpreters, for it is closely allied to the advaitik [non-dualistic] experience of nirvikalpa samadhi (the super-conscious state where there is no mind) itself. The mind has to be the master, not the slave, of the senses, if the interpretation has to be just. 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 toward the Lord such as the gopis had should make a man strong, not weak. In fact, the gopis were not weakened by their love; they were rendered tough. Ramakrishna, too, 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) and having it in his possession? 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

Who are these gopis, according to the Bhagavata 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 in every gesture and gait, every word and phrase of Krishna the Divine, not the human at all. 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 on one point and helping it to ignite, 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.

Meaning of Krishna’s theft of butter

Krishna is condemned as a thief who stole butter from the cowherd maidens; but the butter represents the bhakti [devotion] of the heart that is got 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 thief steals, the master awakens; He wakes him 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 on their foreheads blue kumkum 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 pulled apart by Him 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 He was referring to. Each gem had Krishna’s form in it, beautifully clear.)

There was Neeraja [a gopi], for example. She was warned against the stratagems of Krishna when she came to Brindavan from a distant village as the bride of a gopa. Despite all warnings, however, she saw Krishna during the Govardhanagiri Festival, and when she saw Him she 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 she was the foremost among those gopis who tried to curb the horses that drew Akrura’s chariot with Krishna in it away from Brindavan to Mathura.

She suffered silently 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 where she was. He fondled the gopi and consoled her. She had one request to make, however: she longed to hear the Divine flute before she died on Krishna’s lap. The Lord said, “I have not brought it,” but just to grant her the boon, he broke a length of reed from the bower, made it in a trice into a flute, and played on it a tune that melted Neeraja’s heart into tears, which washed her soul away. She passed into the Krishna-tatwa the moment the song ended. And Krishna, too, gave up the flute that he had resumed for her sake. The bower came to be called Vamsi Kunj in memory of the flute that it gave birth to, and which it heard so much.

Do not have pride in your attachment to God

There was a gopi named Suguna. One day when Krishna was with Sathyabhama, He pretended to have severe stomachache, and in spite of all the remedies that she tried she could not afford relief. Of course, it was all acting, superb acting such as the paralytic stroke I had for a week before Guru Poornima recently! Even Rukmini was not admitted into the house by her 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 her the articles and asked her to go in. Krishna welcomed Suguna and 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, 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 effort. They were tasteless since her pride had entered into them now. 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. I know that many of you, who know that I have been taking only a cup of buttermilk daily for the last two months, are genuinely grief‑stricken though I have been talking to you that no work of Mine has been stopped or delayed because of what they call My “reduced intake of food.” That is a sign of their prema, but really I live on your anandam [happiness], not on this material food at all. I wish that you realized this and stopped worrying or weeping.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 3

Remember always that it is easy to do what is pleasant, but it is difficult to be engaged in what is beneficial. Not all that is pleasant is profitable. Success comes to those who give up the path strewn with roses and brace the hammer‑blows and sword­ thrusts of the path fraught with danger.

~Sathya Sai Baba