The article is to explain the absolute essence of Krishna consciousness, the ultimate conclusion of all scriptures, all philosophy, & all doctrines. Dive deep, dear readers. It is therefore suggested to read it till the end, word-by-word, with all your intellect, heart, and patience. The contents are as follows — Chapter One [Doctrine Of Love], Chapter Two [Understanding Love], Chapter Three [Kinds Of Love], Chapter Four [Beyond Brahman], Chapter Five [Beyond Vaikuntha, Beyond Vishnu] Chapter Six [Chaitanya Mahaprabhu].
Chapter 1: Doctrine Of Love
❝There is no happiness without love, and there is no love without happiness. Love creates happiness, Happiness creates love.❞
— Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakur
[Agni Purana, quoted in his purport to Srī Amnāya Sutras, 3.3.94]
❝If a poet writes love poems, he fills the world with nectar. If he writes songs about renunciation, there is no nectar. It is right that poets write about the nectar of love. They reveal the nectar of love.❞
— Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakur
[Agni Purana, quoted in his purport to Srī Amnāya Sutras, 3.3.103]
❝The aesthetic experiences of reading great literature, viewing a drama, and reciting poetry are experiences of the threshold of transcendence. Having tasted a drop of truth, we will be driven to drink deeply from its cup.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari Maharaj
[Aesthetic Vedanta, page no. 3]
❝God in His infinite goodness and kindness has established this unfailing connection between the truth and the shadow in order to impress upon us the eternal truth which he has reserved for us. The beautiful song of a harmonium gives the idea of eternal harmony in the spiritual world. Material pictures impress upon our spiritual nature, the truly spiritual idea of religion.❞
— Sri Bhaktivinoda Thakur
[In his public speech delivered in 1869, Dinajpur, later also published as a pamphlet named ‘The Bhagavata: Its Philosophy, Its Ethics, and Its Theology’]
❝Pleasure is something of the heart. Things can give some degree of satisfaction to the mind and senses, but nothing, no thing, can give any gratification to the heart. Only to love and be loved can give satisfaction to the heart.❞
— HH Rādhānāth Swāmi
[Click Here To Watch The Video Clip]
❝What can dispossess us of everything and full all our wants? What can compensate us and take the place of everything else? Only prema. No other thing can give us perfect health. Only prema: love. Love is above everything. Love is the only wealth in this world.❞
— Śrīla Śrīdhar Goswāmī Mahārāj
[Śrī Navadvīpa dhāma māhātmya, Śrī Chaitanya Sāraswat Mutt, page No. 456]
❝The dance of Krishna and the gopis thus demonstrated that it is indeed love that makes the world go round. All stopped at the sight and sound of this wonderful dance of aesthetic rapture.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari Maharaj
[Aesthetic Vedanta, page no. 146-7]
❝The root cause of our dissatisfaction is that our dormant loving propensity has not been fulfilled despite our great advancement in the materialistic way of life.❞
— Srila Prabhupada
[Nectar Of Devotion, Preface]
❝The basic principle of the living condition is that we have a general propensity to love someone. No one can live without loving someone else. This propensity is present in every living being. Even an animal like a tiger has this loving propensity at least in a dormant stage, and it is certainly present in the human beings... That loving propensity remains imperfectly fulfilled until we know who is the supreme beloved. Our love can be fully satisfied only when it is reposed in Kṛṣṇa. This theme is the sum and substance of The Nectar of Devotion, which teaches us how to love Kṛṣṇa in five different transcendental mellows.❞
— Srila Prabhupada
[Nectar Of Devotion, Preface]
❝We live for love. We live in search of emotional fulfillment. If we do seem at times to seek aloneness, it is only because our attempts for relationships have been fraught with the shortcomings of a life that does not endure, a life that is off-center. The frustration that ensues from material relationships does not in itself hold the potential to reveal the nature of the whole truth, and half truth may be worse than no truth at all. If, after many lifetimes of seeking love through material relationships, one realizes that all material relationships fall short and do not endure, one may drift toward the half-truth of impersonalism and voidism in the name of spirituality. The whole truth is that we will only thrive when we find the relationship in which there is no shortcoming, when we learn to love Godhead.❞
— Swāmi B.V. Tripurāri
[In his book ‘Rasa: Love Relationships in Transcendence’, page no. 82]
❝With the exercise of powerful reasoning, the utter futility of a life ruled by the heart, in a world in which all relationships are temporal, becomes apparent. Yet are we to conclude that our entire human experience with all of its varied emotional flutters is all false? Is there no truth in what we feel? Love is the king to whom reason is an advisor, an advisor who may or may not be necessary. What we see and feel is not false; we have merely drawn our perception from the wrong angle. The truth is before our eyes. It is not that by philosophizing away everything in our human experience we will arrive at the truth.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book ‘Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence, page no. 85]
❝Love is one of the words we use most and understand least. The problem is that there are many kinds of love. One of the distinctions we can make between different kinds of love has to do with time, duration – how long love lasts. Some love lasts a few days, some lasts a lifetime, and some lasts forever. Most lovers aspire for the latter, but in vain. Love between bodies is bound to be temporary because the lovers’ bodies are temporary. Ah, but what about the soul? Will the lovers not meet in the eternal spiritual world and there enjoy deathless love?Perhaps. But the question is, “How do we get to the spiritual world?” That requires a special kind of love, the love between the individual soul and the Supreme Soul, God.❞
— ISKCON
[Official introduction to the book 'Bhakti: The Art of Eternal Love']
❝Life without love is useless and poor they say, appoint me in thy service, O Lord, with Love as my pay.❞
— Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur
Chapter 2: Understanding Love
❝Rūpa Gosvāmī’s ultimate reality, in which the structure of love remains in place, while the foundation alone is changed. The foundation of transcendental love is selflessness; the foundation of mundane love [lust] is selfishness. Lust is an ugly, flickering product of the mind; love is the beautiful, eternal life of the soul.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Aesthetic Vedanta', page no. 39-40]
❝Lust means attachment to one's personal sense gratification. But as far as Radhārānī and Her associates are concerned, they have no desire for personal sense gratification. They only want to satisfy Kṛṣṇa.❞
— Srila Prabhupada
[In his book 'Teachings of Lord Chaitanya', Chapter 31]
❝The desire to gratify one’s own senses is kāma [lust], but the desire to please the senses of the other, is prema [love]. The object of lust is only the enjoyment of one’s own senses. But love caters [aims] to the enjoyment of the other, and thus it is very powerful. Therefore lust and love are quite different. Lust is like dense darkness, but love is like the bright sun. Thus there is not the slightest taint of lust in the gopīs’ love. Their relationship with Kṛṣṇa is only for the sake of His enjoyment.❞
— Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī
[Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā, 4.165-66, 171-72]
❝One should not misunderstand what is divine love. Just like in the material world, lust is accepted as love. The boy wants to enjoy the girl, the girl wants to enjoy the boy, and that is going on in the name of love. Love is not like that. Love means, "I enjoy or not enjoy, I love you." That is love. Just like Cowper said, "England, with all thy fault, I love you." That is love. There is no [expectation for] return. Just like Rādhārāṇī's love to Kṛṣṇa. She does not require any return. You see? Kṛṣṇa left Vṛndāvana, Rādhārāṇī, and their whole life remained simply crying for Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa never returned. But still, they loved Kṛṣṇa. That is love. That love is being shown by Chaitanya Mahāprabhu.❞
— Srila Prabhupada
[Lecture on SB 5.5.3, Boston, May 4, 1968]
Chapter 3: Kinds Of Love
❝Kṛṣṇa has many types of devotees — some are servants, some are friends, some are parents, and some are conjugal lovers. Devotees who are situated in one of these attitudes of spontaneous love according to their choice are considered to be on the path of spontaneous loving service (raganuga-bhakti).❞
— Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu
[Chaitanya Caritamrta, Madhya, 19.192-95]
❝Four kinds of devotees are the receptacles of the four kinds of mellows in love of God, namely servitude, friendship, parental affection and conjugal love. Each kind of devotee feels that his sentiment is the most excellent, and thus in that mood he tastes great happiness with Lord Kṛṣṇa. But if we compare the sentiments in an impartial mood, we find that the conjugal sentiment is superior to all others in sweetness. ❞
— Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī
[Śrī Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Ādi-līlā, 4.42-44]
❝In all of our attempts for love, the love between man and woman, conjugal love, holds the greatest potential for emotional fulfillment. We love our parents, yet in childhood we are unable to address every aspect of our guardian’s emotional needs. As we grow and make friends, we love them. Our parents in later life also become our friends. Yet among friends we find a bestfriend, who becomes our lover, and with whom we share most intimately. Thus, sexual love is the climax of loving exchange.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 83]
❝Our human experience dictates that truth is the love between man and woman. No subject has been written about more often, no thought contemplated more frequently. Out of this affair, entire countries have risen and fallen. All the lower species—the plants, the birds, the bees, and the beasts—are the backdrop of this reality. When a young man picks a rose from a garden and places it in his young lover’s hair, that flower reaches new aesthetic heights it could not have realized otherwise. The entire creation is moving in concert: birds chirping, bees humming, energizing the love of man for woman, woman for man.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book ‘Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 84]
❝If after scrutiny we conclude that our sexuality in all its subtleties is integral to our being, there must be a truly sexually positive spirituality in which Godhead is not asexual. This cannot be a mental [speculated] God, but one that all reason points to, leading us beyond reason’s own limitations. This focus will bring about a normalizing and harmonizing of our sexual urge, such that it is understood in terms of its spiritual source. It will enable us to realize that whatever we we find in illusion has its origin in reality. Thus a sexual, and thereby necessarily personal Godhead, both masculine and feminine, must come into focus.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 10]
❝If we are to pursue emotional fulfillment, as we must, we should do it in such a way that it brings us in connection with that which is eternal. When we begin to love the Absolute Godhead, an overwhelming sense of gratitude will fill our hearts. A great burden, the root cause of all our fear and anxiety, will be unearthed, as the threat of death turns into the relief of eternal life, peace at last. From gratitude to service, love thickens. Ultimately, we can make Godhead our lover, ourselves the beloved.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 87]
❝Sri Chaitanya has pointed out, as audacious as it may seem, that which is readily our experience: that truth is all about amorous love. He offers an entirely positive understanding of our sexuality—that it springs from Sri Krishna's pleasure potency, hlādinī-shakti. Sexuality is not something to be abandoned and condemned, but rather uncovered from the blanket of material nature. If we understand mundane sexuality for what it is, overwhelming inspiration to follow it to its natural spiritual conclusion will arise. Without this, moralistic repression or self-denying asceticism that leads to voidism will impede our natural spiritual evolution. To begin this spiritual evolution, we need only hear about the transcendental pastimes of Rādhā-Krishna through the lineage of Sri Chaitanya and embrace the path of rāgānugā-bhakti.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 83]
Chapter 4: Beyond Brahman
❝One afternoon, a guest asked Srila Prabhupada this very question. “Is God formless and impersonal or does He have form and personality?” I sat up with attention, eager to hear his answer. Srila Prabhupada slowly leaned forward, his face perfectly relaxed and full lips curved downward at the edges. With a grave gaze, he quoted from the Vedas and explained, “We must first understand the inconceivable nature of God. The Supreme Lord is simultaneously personal and impersonal. It is an eternal truth that He is both formless and that he has an eternal, blissful form.” I felt a warm, peaceful sensation flood my chest. With one hand Srila Prabhupada stretched his index finger upward. “The Lord’s impersonal, all-pervading energy is called Brahman. And Bhagavan is the personal form of God, who is the energetic source and never under the influence of illusion. Take for example the sun. The form of the sun as a planet and the formless sunlight can never be separated, as they exist simultaneously.”❞
— HH Radhanath Swami
[The Journey Home, page no. 310-12]
❝All the great scriptures of the world instruct us to love God, not merely to know him. How can we love something formless or void? We are all persons, and we desire to love other persons. We desire personal relationships, and the ultimate relationship is with the personhood of the Godhead. The undifferentiated spiritual light known by the Hindus as the Brahman is certainly an awe-inspiring concept. It is something we can appreciate, but hardly love. Brahman consciousness is the plane of pure knowledge—not the plane of love, beauty, and ecstasy.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book ‘Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence, page no. 59]
❝Sri Chaitanya has pointed to what is already before our eyes. He has only sought to adjust the angle of our vision. Others, such as Shankaracarya and his host of monistic followers, have labored to tell us that our human experience is all false, and that knowledge is our goal, not emotional fulfillment. They have troubled themselves much for very little. Theirs is a forced reading of reality.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book ‘Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence, page no. 91-92]
❝As we have discussed many times before, this material world is itself an illusion, like a mirage in the desert. In the desert there is an illusion of water, and the foolish animals become entrapped by such an illusion and run after water in the desert, although there is no water at all. But because there is no water in the desert, one does not conclude that there is no water at all. The intelligent person knows well that there is certainly water, water in the seas and oceans, but such vast reservoirs of water are far, far away from the desert. One should therefore search for water in the vicinity of seas and oceans and not in the desert. Every one of us is searching after real happiness in life, namely eternal life, eternal or unlimited knowledge and unending blissful life.❞
— Srila Prabhupada
[Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.2.6, Purport]
Chapter 5: Beyond Vaikuntha, Beyond Vishnu
❝Of these relationships (rasas), the relationship of servant and master is prominent in Vaikuntha. While a sense of neutrality or equipoise (shānta-rasa) also dominates, loving service in awe and reverence (dāsya-rasa), is the closest relationship the soul can have with Vishnu.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 55]
❝Although Gopa-kumāra had arrived in Vaikuntha, his heart did not feel satisfaction there. Nārada upon seeing the condition of Gopa-kumāra, said: “You are so very, very fortunate. Even here in Vaikuntha you are unhappy because you want Narayana to be Krishna. You want that sometimes Krishna will embrace you, and sometimes you will embrace Him. That you will eat together, and even with unclean hands you will place food into each others’ mouths. But what does Narayana do? When you go before Him, He lifts His right hand in bestowal of blessings: ‘May all auspiciousness be upon you.’ Saying ‘Namo narayana,’ everyone is offering pranama to Him. He lifts His hand and gives this blessing. You want to race to embrace Him, and you want to play the flute with Him, but you are not able to do any of this.”❞
— Srimad Narayana Goswami Maharaj
[In his book 'Beyond Vaikuntha', chapter four. This story of Gopa-kumāra is quoted from Brihad-bhagavatamrta of Sanatana Goswami]
❝Attachment for Kṛṣṇa is divided into two categories. One is attachment with awe and reverence, and the other is pure attachment without reverence. Pure attachment without reverence is found in Gokula Vṛndāvana. Attachment in which awe and reverence are prominent is found in the two cities Mathurā and Dvārakā and in Vaikuṇṭha. When opulence is very prominent, love of Godhead is somewhat crippled. According to kevalā devotion, however, even though the devotee sees the unlimited potency of Kṛṣṇa, he considers himself equal to Him. On the transcendental platform of neutrality and service, sometimes the opulence of the Lord is prominent. But in the transcendental mellows of fraternal, parental and conjugal love, the opulence is minimized.❞
— Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu
[Chaitanya Caritamrta, Madhya, 19.192-95]
❝Service to Vishnu in regulated devotion, however, is not the full picture of devotion advocated in the Bhāgavata. Regulated service is devotion that lacks spontaneity. It involves some calculation. The inhabitants of Vaikuntha serve with the knowledge that Vishnu is God and thus he ought to be served. This serving disposition, while pure and transcendental, is nonetheless service that forms only the basis of love. If we love someone, we serve him or her. But there is further development in love that is only hinted at in Vaikuntha. Vishnu has other more intimate dealings with his immediate associates. Vishnu, for example, is not asexual. He has a wife, Laksmi. Understanding more completely the influence of the feminine aspect of divinity is crucial to our arrival at a sexually pure and positive spirituality. For this, we will have to go beyond Vaikuntha and the Vishnu of Rāmānuja to the teaching of Sri Chaitanya. For Rāmānuja, Vishnu’s shakti, Laksmi, is of secondary importance. For Sri Chaitanya, this Shakti in her highest expression, Sri Rādhā, is the pure transcendental expression of sexuality (hlādinī-shakti) and the last word in spirituality.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa, Love relationships in transcendence', page no. 60-61]
❝In all of Krishna's play, he stands on equal footing with his cowherd friends and lovers, and thus he invites all souls to play with him as well. If we enter his life, we too will play in aesthetic rapture.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari Maharaj
[Aesthetic Vedanta, page no. 26]
Chapter 6: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
❝If I were asked to choose one man in Indian religious history who best represents the pure spirit of devotional self-giving, I would choose the Vaishnavite saint Caitanya.❞
— Christian theologian John Moffitt
[In his book "Journey to Gorakhpur: An Encounter with Christ Beyond Christianity"]
❝The religious life of Chaitanya unfolds unique pathological symptoms of devotion which are perhaps unparalleled in the history of any other saints that we know of...his love for Kṛṣṇa gradually so increased that he developed symptoms almost of madness and epilepsy. Blood came out of the pores of his hair, his teeth chattered, his body shrank in a moment and at the next appeared to swell up. He used to rub his mouth against the floor and weep, and had no sleep at night. Once he jumped into the sea; sometimes the joints of his bones apparently became dislocated, and sometimes the body seemed to contract. The only burden of his songs was that his heart was aching and breaking for Kṛṣṇa, the Lord...He was fond of reading the dramas of Rāmānanda Ray, the poems of Caṇḍidāsa and Vidyāpati, the Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta of Bilva-maṅgala and the Gīta-govinda of Jayadeva; most of these were mystic songs of love for Kṛṣṇa in erotic phraseology. Nowhere do we find any account of such an ecstatic bhakti in the Purāṇas, in the Gītā or in any other religious literature of India—the Bhāgavata-purāṇa has, no doubt, one or two verses which in a way anticipate the sort of bhakti that we find in the life of Caitanya—but without the life of Caitanya our storehouse of pathological religious experience would have been wanting in one of the most fruitful harvests of pure emotionalism in religion.❞
— Dr. Surendranath Dasgupta
[One of the greatest Indologists of all time, in his book "A History of Indian Philosophy" volume 4, 33rd chapter, part 3]
❝No one in religious history has better emphasized the essential elements of spiritual life than Sri Chaitanya. He did so by his personal example. No other avatāra has told us more about the nature of the absolute. Sri Chaitanya’s gift is greater, who gave us access to the most intimate transcendental pastimes of Godhead, thus enabling us to associate with God [Radha-Krishna] beyond awe and reverence [Laksmi-Narayana]. If we are to love God, we must love Sri Chaitanya, for no one has revealed more about the intimate social life of God. Such revelation provides overwhelming impetus for a life of loving God.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 101]
❝Rāmānuja, Madhva, and other Vaishava ācāryas pay little or no attention to this revolutionary concept of absolutizing our emotional drive such that it culminates in lawless love. Rāmānuja considers devotion in awe and reverence the highest. Madhva does not speak about lawless love. Not so for Sri Chaitanya, the emblem of divine love around whom the Gaudiya Vaishnavas unite. If God is mentioned with reference to a spiritual sexuality, Sri Chaitanya’s doctrine is the flower of the seed of such conceptions. He and his band of followers made the truth of conjugal love the central theme of their mission. In doing so they presented a tightly reasoned and scripturally backed philosophy of divine love.❞
— Swami B.V. Tripurari
[In his book 'Rasa: Love Relationships In Transcendence', page no. 87-88]
❝Krishna himself has now reappeared as the newly fresh Golden Lord, whose blessed name is 'Chaitanya'! Though clad Himself in skimpy rags, His pitambara (yellow divine attire) as well as His inner most divine love sentiments are revealed to me. Now Mira is the maid-servant of this Golden Krishna, whether the glory of My Krishna is recognized by all or not!❞
— Mira Bai
[In her work "Ab To Hari Nam Dhun Lo Lagi", verses 1-4]
नम ॐ विष्णु-पादाय कृष्ण-प्रेष्ठाय भूतले श्रीमते भक्तिवेदांत-स्वामिन् इति नामिने । नमस्ते सारस्वते देवे गौर-वाणी-प्रचारिणे निर्विशेष-शून्यवादि-पाश्चात्य-देश-तारिणे ॥
“I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, who is very dear to Lord Krishna, having taken shelter at His lotus feet. Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami. Out of your causeless mercy you preached the message of
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