Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta Adī-līlā, Chapter 4 describes the ‘confidential’ reasons, for Kṛṣṇa’s decision to take birth as Caitaniya Mahāprabhu. In verse 4.28 Kṛṣṇa declares that he will appear as a pure devotee and carry out pastimes ‘by which even I am amazed’.
It is difficult for us to imagine that God himself should be amazed by anything at all. Isn’t God by nature all-knowing, all-seeing, all-feeling? What could possibly amaze him?
The answer is as miraculous as Bhakti itself: Kṛṣṇa is amazed by his own feelings.
Indeed there is much amazement in the forests of Vṛndavan. The written prayers, poems and dramas of the closest associates of CaitanyaMahāhaprabhu recount often how many the actors in the divine pastimes—but most of all Mohan—experience surprise.
Divine surprise begins with divine ambition. Kṛṣṇa, creator and maintainer of the universe, is all beauty, all knowledge, all truth. He is adored throughout the creation for these things. This adoration is a source of great pleasure for him. And this pleasure moves him to in turn mercifully care for all the souls of creation.
And yet his own enjoyment plants in him a seed of curious desire: What is the nature of the happiness that my creation feels for me? Of all the wonders experienced by Kṛṣṇa there is one experience he has never known.
The hearts of the world’s jivas are full of love for him. And while he has enjoyed receiving this love, he has no knowledge of the pleasure they feel in giving it. What is the experience of loving God?
To taste this experience Kṛṣṇa decides to take birth in the shape, mood and position of his most beloved gopī consort, Rādhā, and thereby enjoys the experience of being the lover of Kṛṣṇa.
The emotion he experiences through the heart of Rādhā are completely new and therefore utterly astonishing. Kṛṣṇa is surprised by the love he feels.
What is still more astonishing is that since the world’s jivas, as before, mercifully experience happiness by the pleasure of Kṛṣṇa, and since this new experience of love increases the pleasure of Kṛṣṇa, they in turn become enchanted by of the loving pastimes of Rādhā and Mohan. The realised jivas become devotees of the this divine practice: Bhakti yoga.
As the jivas realise—and thus liberate—the love in their hearts, their devotion to the loving couple grows, and the intensity and richness of their love grow, increasing at every turn. Not only is Kṛṣṇa amazed by his experience of loving the divine (prema) in the mood of Rādhā, this amazement is constant, ever refreshed, ever renewed.
We can only be surprised by love that is unconditional.
Love that is planned for, expected or assumed, constrained or coerced, warped or misshaped: this love cannot surprise us.
Love that is imitated or staged, demanded or repaid, owed or taken, wished for or forsaken, conditioned, prepared or programmed, bought or sold: this love — predictable in all its ways and means — can never surprise us.
Love that we scrutinise, rationalise, calculate, and anticipate, that sharpens our senses or hardens our hearts: this love can never surprise us.
Love that wants, takes, assumes or presumes, love that deviates from the souls that we genuinely are: this love can never surprise us.
Any individual is many things, but all individuals are one thing: a core of pure feeling called soul. To be surprised by love means to be loved in the realisation of this unique, but miraculousy shared, self.
‘I love you’ means: a pure and perfectly loving soul is revealed to you at the very moment it is revealed to me.