Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi 1 Chapter 4, Verse 16
The Lord wanted to taste the sweet essence of the mellows of love of God
Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmi
Throughout the ages Lord Kṛṣṇa is beloved by all. The word ‘kṛṣṇa’ itself means ‘all attractive’. Nowhere is this more clear than in the rāsa pastime, in which the countless milkmaids (gopīs) of Vrindāvan are irresistibly drawn to him, the local cow-herd boy . According to the legend their eagerness and jealousy is so great that Kṛṣṇa expands into countless embodiments of himself, one for each gopī, so that the dance can go on, each girl delighted that she alone has the privilege of entertaining Kṛṣṇa.
There seems to be no end to the love for Kṛṣṇa. And why not? He is after all everything: all existence (sat), all knowledge (cit) and all bliss (ananda). In other words, whatever exists stems from him, whatever can be the object of consciousness, stems from him, and whoever knows pleasure knows it from him.
And yet, all being, Kṛṣṇa does not know what it feels like to be. All knowledge, Kṛṣṇa does not know what it feels like to know. All bliss, Kṛṣṇa does not know how it feels to give pleasure. And all beloved, Kṛṣṇa does not know the experience of loving.
Thus, as described in the pages of the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā Chapter 4, Kṛṣṇa assumes the mood and the complexion of Rādhā, the most precious of the gopīs, and enters the world in a double form, lover and beloved, taking birth in one unique body, that of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu.
The consequences for our time are monumental.
First, the appearance of Lord Caitanya represents a completely new understanding of the God and the Divine. God is no longer fixed in immobile perfection, formless, flawless Absolute Reality (Brahma), with neither qualities nor personality. He is no longer existence, but being.
He is no longer knowledge, but knowing. He is no longer pleasure but pleasing. And most of all, he is no longer pure love, but pure loving. He is the relation between lover and beloved, the movement of desires, of the push-and-pull of attraction, the give-and-take of pleasures. These are all the names of the Divine in the appearance of Lord Caitanya. What is more, these moving elements flow into each other: being is loving, knowing is loving, pleasing is loving.
Second, the appearance of Lord Caitanya represents a completely new understanding of who we—individual spiritual beings—are. In the form of Lord Caitanya, the Divine is no longer seen as a far-away, unattainable, absolute reality. The Divine is loving relation. The Divine’s is sincere, ardent, and pure devotion. Wherever there is loving-relation there is the Divine. This is the meaning of Bhakti: Deepening our loving relation means deepening our divinity. The path to God is wide-open and available to all: deepen your love and you will deepen your relation to God. There are no conditions, no qualifications.
Greater still: This miracle of Bhakti is not only transformative for us, but also for the eager and devoted gopīs of the rāsa pastime. With the appearance of Lord Caitanya the lovers of Kṛṣṇa become the lovers of the love of Kṛṣṇa. They are the first to realise that their love for Kṛṣṇa means love for his experience of love in the position and mood of Rādhā.
As intimate friends of Rādhā, they are the first to understand that loving God means perfectly empathising with her feelings of love, and perfectly serving those feelings. They are mañjaris: the lovers of divine loving, the servants of the servant of love.
Loving love, consciousness of love, wisdom and insight into the soft, sweet delicacy of love, this is mañjari-bhāv. It is the model and the ambition for all living souls who seek nothing else than to devote themselves to the love that naturally occurs in their own hearts, the love of the love of God.