Narayana Krishna

“Krishna continued, ‘O helpless women! All of you are very dear to me. Purely for Me, you have abandoned your reputation in this society, your Vedic duties and all your relations and have come here. In order to ensure that your meditation upon Me continues ceaselessly, I disappeared from your midst. Although I was invisible, I continued to love you all. This is true’.”

Just because I remained invisible it is wrong to assume that I ceased to love you all. In order to intensify your love for me, I make myself invisible. Then due to pangs of separation, your love gushes out. When I am visible, only limited love towards Me emerges in your hearts.

When the Lord is continuously visible, the grave danger of turning negligent exists in the devotee. ‘Swamiji is always available. Anytime I go I will get His darshan. So I will go later to see Him. What is the hurry’- such slackness arises in devotees. ‘So what if we missed morning darshan? When He comes out in the evening we can have His darshan’. Can you guarantee that He will give darshan at the specified evening hours? He may or may not come out to give darshan; He may come earlier than the scheduled hour and go away. Right now, He is talking to devotees. If you postpone having His darshan to tomorrow, then can you guarantee that He will address devotees tomorrow? He may or may not.

Innumerable such risks exist when living in close vicinity to Swamiji. At times, even devotion towards Swamiji may reduce. On the contrary, the devotee who lives at a distance is saved from such risks. During his occasional visits, he will derive great bliss upon having Swamiji’s darshan. Devotees who reside here in close vicinity cannot enjoy such bliss. When Swamiji returns from a tour, they then rush to see Him. His absence for a single day appears like a long period at that moment to them.

Even when Swamiji is leaving on a one-day trip, devotees come rushing to see Him before He leaves. Although He is likely to return the same evening and although He is away only for a few hours, they eagerly run for His darshan both before and after His trip. This gap between His departure from ashram and His arrival is the period of penance (tapas). Eagerly awaiting His arrival is the real penance. It is pure love.

When He is seated amidst devotees, they become slack as His darshan is freely available. In this, there is a risk that they may not bother to have His darshan and may continue with their work ignoring Him. Do you know for sure how long He intends to be seated there? By the time you raise your head and look up at Him, He would have vanished.

From this, it is evident that the Lord occasionally disappearing from our midst is for our benefit. Here the Lord implies, ‘Had I remained permanently in your midst, you would never have fixed your minds upon Me. You would never have entertained good feelings about Me. You have now seen My magnificence all through the world- in a flower, in a leaf, in the root, in rivers, mountains, in the sand particles, in animals, birds and in every living entity you have seen My presence. In case I were to be seated eternally before you, would you have bothered to acknowledge My presence in all the objects of this universe? During My absence, you searched for Me in all living entities. As long as I was present before you, your gaze was limited to Me alone. You saw Me as existing only within My body. You assumed the creation to be different from Me. But in my absence, you saw Me as existing in all living and non-living entities in this creation. You scaled up to grasp the theory of non-dualism’.

“Krishna continued, ‘My absence was purely for your benefit. Although I was not here, I continued to love you all. As such, it is improper for you to find faults in me, your lover’.”

For so long the Gopikas were accusing the Lord of having cheated them. Indirectly they had accused Him of showering attention on Radha while ignoring them and of finding her more beautiful than them all. They indirectly taunted that the Lord did not reciprocate their love. Hence the Lord implied, ‘It was my love for you all that caused feelings of love to surge in your hearts towards Me. Had I not loved you, feelings of love towards Me would never emerge in your heart. Only because I have loved you across your many births, only because I have desired that my devotee should merge into Me, all of you exist today. Thus it is incorrect to find faults in me’.

Krishna continued, “Your love is pure. Even if I obtain the longevity of the Devatas I can never repay this love of yours. Such is the unblemished love shown by you all’.”

Here the Lord implies that even the longevity of Devatas is insufficient to repay the Gopikas for the love shown by them.

“Breaking free from the shackles known as home and family, which cannot be easily broken, you have offered your love to Me. Therefore, may your love itself be the repayment for your love”.

Here Krishna implies that the love shown by the women-folk of Brindavan is beyond any form of repayment. Hence, he says that love by them itself is the repayment for the love.

In this way, Srikrishna blessed the Gopikas who had been yearning for Him and who loved Him dearly. To bring to their notice their mistake in finding faults with Him, He explained this relevant Vedanta to them. This is the most important portion of the Gopika Geeta, which highlights the unsurpassed devotion of the Gopikas. It teaches us what pure love and pure devotion are.

With this, the thirty-second chapter of the tenth canto comes to an end.

Narayana Krishna