Verse 66
The desire of my heart is to see the amorous playful enjoyment of Rādhā and Mohan. The fulfilment of my heart lies in the pure fulfilment of the divine loving relation. The realisation of that loving relation is the goal of any jiva. That is the goal of practice: to deepen and enhance the project of Caitanya Mahaprabhu who appeared in order to full understand and feel what loving relation is, understand by feeling, feeling-understanding.
We, the ‘villagers’, are ‘fortunate souls’ (puṇyātma) in that we are allowed to observe the couple in this way. This good fortune (puṇya) does not come to us because we deserve it. It is mercy. There is no cause or reason for it. Mercy comes to us only through devotion, through loving relation to God.
The mañjarīs are indispensable for the success of the this relation. Only through their loving service of Rādhā, their support and advice, their intervention with Kṛṣṇa, their protection of Rādhā, their support of her in every aspect of the loving pastime, its preparation and aftermath, is this possible.
When we witness the divine couple joking lightly and childishly in the village, our hearts are stolen, the love in our hearts blossoms, and we are seen as fortunate. By witnessing both the lightness and youth, love is increased.
Two key attributes are ate work in the verse: joking and youth, the lightness of love, and its freshness.
Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī explains that this lightness is due to the fact that Rādhā is her parental village, far away from the strict control of her mother-in-law.
‘Everybody experiences Kṛṣṇa in his own way, but nobody can see Him in all His aspects’. This is because ‘God is the aggregate of all rasas’. All the different kinds of the loving emotions are contained in him. The emotion that one feels in contact with him depends upon the position one takes: mother, other women, other men, elevated or lowly, young girls or boys, mystic or mundane, gopīs, and of course Rādhā.
The villagers see the couple as children, the sakhīs and the mañjarīs see them as adolescents in full loving splendour. Only the maidservants know and understand that the relation between the two is the deepest sensual love. Others see only friendship.
The mood of the one who experiences Kṛṣṇa corresponds to the loving emotion (rasa) one experiences in return. This means that the love of God that each of us experiences, both our love for him/her and the love we feel receive, is determined in part by our spiritual situation, by our relation to him/her, by our evolution, our realisation and are karma.
The mañjarīs are incapable of seeing Rādhikā with anything but selflessness. They want only her pleasure and happiness. If there is any personal interest at all, they cannot see her. This is the very definition of a mañjarī, and it is the model for the self-less that we seek.
It is only by opening our hearts, extinguishing our selfishness, dismantling our ego that we can realise the complete and full Truth of the universe: that the Divine is love, a living and on-going loving relation. This perfect loving-relation is the beginning and end of all things, the answer to all questions, the meaning of all that is.