Diving into the nectar-ocean of love

By diving into this nectar-ocean his body, mind and life-airs had become wholly nectarean. 

Ananta Dās Bābāji

In Verse 84 of his Rādhā Rasa Sudhānidhi Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī derides what he sees as the misguided principles of traditional religious practices.

First, if traditional Vedic principles warn against material sense gratification, they do not recognise the meaning of the spiritual senses, the spiritual longing that appears in the heart of everyone. Second, seeking the answers to our prayers by studying the many verses of the Vedas is equally fruitless. Third, to search for liberation by the merging with the divine, will only deny us the experience of a loving relationship with God. Finally, worshiping only the power and opulence of Vedic gods will leave us incapable of appreciating or sharing in the tender loving emotions of divine love. 

Instead, Prabodhānanda assures us that all we need in order to find fulfilment is to become absorbed in the loving flavours of Rādhā. Ananta dās Bābāji shares the same sentiment in his commentary to the verse : ‘By diving into this nectar-ocean his body, mind and life-airs had become wholly nectarean’.

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The power of divine love

Verse 42

In his commentary to Verse 42 of Vilāpa-kusumāñjali, Ananda Das Babaji describes the different classifications of love. There are four levels of intensity of that love, spanning from the love of ordinary devotees, to the love of the great sages, to the love of the Vrajavāsīs, to the love of Rādhārāni, which is the greatest love of all. 

Kṛṣna, he goes on, ‘is controlled by His devotees according to the amount of love they have for Him, and Śrī Rādhikā has the greatest love for Him (parama mahān), therefore She controls Him to the utmost’. 

Ananta das babaji thus gives us an important lesson about the difference between divine love (prema) and mundane love (kama

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