The Rasa Pancha-adhyayi of the Srimad Bhagavata Maha Puranam: 4. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 08, June 2025, 19:30.
Article
Scriptures
The Rasa Pancha-Adhyai of the Srimad Bhagavata Maha Puranam: 4.
Swami Krishnananda.
(Spoken on April 28, 1985)

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To love God is not merely to understand, because love transcends understanding; it is beyond rationality. It is often said—rightly and wrongly, necessarily and unnecessarily, properly and improperly, either way—that reason fails when love manifests itself. It is true in every sense of the term, both in a subliminal lower sense and also in a higher sense. Shakespeare compares the lover to a madman. He is mad in a different sense because the reason fails in a person who is affected with lunacy. But in what sense the reason fails in a lover is very important to know because it is also said that from genius to madness is near alike; a thin partition divides them both. The lover of God who is bereft of his senses and a lunatic may look alike, as a genius and an idiot may look alike. A thin partition divides them both because they look alike.

They look alike, similar to the silence of a person who has everything and the silence of a person who has lost everything. Both are silent, but we know the difference between these two persons' silences. A person who has been inundated with all the wealth of the whole world has nothing to say. He is filled with a sense of completeness to such an extent, and has reached such an apotheosis of completeness, that he is silent. He does not speak a word because he has all the glory and joy of the world. The other person who is almost in a dying condition, who has lost everything, who has no ground on which to plant his foot in this world, who has lost everything except his little breath, such a person does not speak. That difference between the silence of the all-haver and the no-haver is very important to consider. All-knowing people speak not, and one who knows nothing also speaks not, but look at the difference between the two persons.

In the height of divine love, reason stops, and in every kind of mortal love, reason also stops. But we cannot compare mortal love with divine love, even as the silence of a poverty-stricken wretched person cannot be compared with the silence of the majesty of an emperor who has the whole Earth under his control. Reason can stop for different reasons. Due to the fulfilment of the purpose for which it has been given to us, it ceases. This is the case with manifestations of divine love. In the height of love of God, reason fails because it has exhausted itself by performing the utmost of its duties. Like an oil-less lamp, it has extinguished itself. But in the mortal ecstasy of human affection, reason has not extinguished itself. It has been stifled for the time being on account of its getting overpowered by the force of an instinct which is not necessarily divine. The stifling sensation felt in ecstasies of divine love are different from the stifling sensations in mortal affections. Hence, many a time one can be mistaken for the other.

But great experts on this path of divine love have very generously and intelligently told us that human love is a passage to divine love, and it is not necessarily a bondage. When love is fixed exclusively on a mortal object, a finite thing, then it becomes a binding factor. The beauty of an object may attract us to that object and engulf us to such an extent that there is a cessation of perceptive capacity and reasoning faculty in us. This happens due to the location of beauty in a particular object. The beauty is not the quality of any particular object; it is a pervasive principle which is everywhere. There is beauty in everything, and not only in one particular thing which we hug. What beauty there is in the rising of the sun, in the flowing of a limpid river, in the blue sky with diamond-like stars, in a budding tree in the spring season, in the chirping of birds in the early morning, and in the cool breeze when the sun rises! Are they not beautiful? Where do we not see beauty in this world?

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Continued

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