On Radhastami we commemorate and celebrate the appearance of Rādhā. Who is Rādhā?
One answer to this question starts by asking a different question : Where is Rādhā?
It is simple to say that Rādhā is everywhere. After all, she is the goddess of love and chief consort of Kṛṣṇa. But in her most immediate, real, concrete, and living form she is in us.
Every tingle of emotion in our body, every quickening of the heart, every impulse to care, every flash of passion, every timid stirring of love is the presence of Rādhā in our hearts, in our souls. Every moment of tenderness felt, every trace of hope, every moment of melancholy, gentle sadness, missing or longing, of wanting love—not to have it, but to give it—this is Rādhā in our souls.
On our spiritual journey, if we want to ask, why do I exist? why am I here? why do I have a soul? Then I am asking about Kṛṣṇa, creator and controller of the universe. If I want to ask: why do I feel the way I feel, then we are asking about Rādhā.
If Kṛṣṇa is all beauty than it is Rādhā who is living beauty. If Kṛṣṇa is all knowledge then Rādhā is the experience of the knowledge If Kṛṣṇa is all bliss, then Rādhā is the giver of bliss. If Kṛṣṇa is love, then Rādhā is loving.
The figure of Rādhā has been wandering through Indian history for thousands of years, always in relation to Kṛṣṇa. In the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam she appears, though unnamed as an object of Kṛṣṇa’s attention. But with the appearance of Caitanya Mahaprabhu in 1486, she becomes the centre of Bhakti yoga, the practice of loving devotion.
Thus Rādhā appears as a divinity. But not to give us love as a kind of gift. But to reveal herself as the very love that the creator has planted in us.
Radhastami is the discovery of Rādhā, divine love, in our hearts.
The soul is divine: this is a long-held truth. The discovery of Rādhā through Caitanya Mahaprabhu is the discovery that the soul is love.
Rādhā is a guru who lets us make sense of the love we already feel, and to make it grow. The more this love grows, the closer we come to Rādhā, and the closer we come to the divine.
Rādhā’s gift is to show us that the divine is not a shapeless, formless, lifeless truth. It is not purity or perfection in itself.
On the contrary, the awareness of Rādhā in our minds, lets us understand the presence of the flow of love in our souls. It makes us understand that the loving soul is the most mysterious force of our interior experience. She gives a name to what we feel. And she teaches us that these feelings are not frivolous, not superficial. They are the very shape of the divine.
The qualities and pastimes of Rādhā are the qualities and pastimes of the human soul. They are endlessly changing, ebbing and flowing, growing and receding, strengthening and weakening, intensifying and softening.
The life of the soul is the life of Rādhā in us. Her endless love for Kṛṣṇa guides us in becoming divine lovers.
In a remarquable sequence of Ujjvala-nilamani (The Sapphire of Divine Love), Rupa Gosvami describes the ’25 Qualities of Rādhā’ (together with a list of her attributes and ornaments), which were communicated to him by Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
Together these qualities make up the loving personality put on display by Rādhā as she eternally plays out her love for her divine counterpart Mohan. They are the qualities that admirers of the Nitya Lila will recognise immediately. They are the tender witness to the qualities of divine love
But these 25 qualities are much more than this.
Just as Rādhā lives in the heart of every jiva, so the potential of her divine love lies there as well, waiting to be uncovered through the process of spiritual growth. And just as the spiritual identity (svaruāpa) of every jiva is modelled on the qualities of Rādhā, so will the goal of every jiva that these qualities become their own truth.
Rādhā’s 25 qualities are present in any and every heart that lives to know love.