On both sides of the entrance hall in the old Berlin apartment building, metal reliefs decorated the walls, echoing the craftsmanship of a bygone time. They show a row of dancing girls, dressed in Greek-like, flowing robes, holding each other’s hands. The scene is similar to the one described in an ancient Hindu text, Srimad Bhagavatam, where Krishna, God, wandered into the forest in the night and began playing His celebrated flute. The sweetness of the sound mesmerized all the women in the village; they were instantly hypnotized by it and left their homes to meet Him, transgressing the societal rules of those times.
This is not surprising, because Krishna’s smile enchants the entire universe; when combined with the extraordinary fragrance imbued in His lips, this fragrance enters the space as the sound produced by the flute. The village girls were not ordinary persons either, but great devotees assuming these forms to serve Krishna in His natural, spiritual surroundings – the village of Vrindavana. The girls already had a natural propensity to love Him, so they could not resist His call. Their thoughts, emotions, and love flowed naturally toward Krishna like rivers running down toward the ocean. There was no need to mechanically align their minds and bodies or follow the religious rituals and prescribed guidelines of conduct.
Srimad Bhagavatam considers the state of being spontaneously attached to God the highest religious sentiment. Only the rare and the most fortunate reach that capacity. The women risked their reputation, freedom, and even life itself to be with Krishna. To show them kindness and reward them for their bravery and devotion, Krishna began His famous play called the Rasa dance. Srimad Bhagavatam depicts the Rasa dance where each village girl (gopi) holds Krishna’s hand, and where Krishna expands into as many forms as there are gopis, holding the hand of each one of them. The dance occurred at the bank of the resplendent river Yamuna; the moon was enchanting, and the breezes were mild and pleasing, enhancing the atmosphere. The gopis are the prime example of how to love Krishna passionately.
However, this is not the only way to bond with God. Another classical Indian text, translated as The Nectar of Devotion, reveals the five main relationships with God:
- In neutrality
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In servitude
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In friendship
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In parental affection
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And in passionate love.
It is important to notice that a devotee develops one of these relationships only after being liberated from attachments to the material world. These connections are eternal and represent the final stage of the perfection of God realization. At this level, love of God is uninterrupted and most intense.
The majority of religious practitioners, although aware of God’s glory, remember Him only intermittently. Their thoughts are mixed with materialistic impressions, sensations, and emotions. They think of Him when they go to a church or a mosque, while during the day they are involved in social affairs. Sleep is also considered a distraction, where people spend six hours lying mostly unconscious. The pure love for God, as The Nectar of Devotion describes it, transcends these material layers, and a God’s devotee directly interacts with Him 24 hours a day without interruptions.
Neutral connection to God is attained by mystics who deliberately deny worldly pleasures and intensely meditate on His impersonal feature. They are uninterested in, or possibly unaware of, God’s personal aspect and the delights of interaction with Him. They rather perceive Him as the all-pervading light, energy, power, or Universal Love. It is considered the lowest stage of God realization. The practitioners of this process may, however, change their view and begin to appreciate the transcendental form of the Lord. If impersonal adherents, by good fortune, see God’s spiritual body, they will develop the taste to interact with Him in one of the four other relationships.
Religious adherents engaged in prescribed practices and rules are in an inferior position to those who offer service to God directly. Desiring to replace the serving attitude toward material energy with a spiritual one, a devotee accepts a subordinate position and begins to serve God, consequently engaging the mind, body, and words in the service of Krishna. They are always eager to assist Him in His daily affairs; they walk with Him, help Him dress or put on His shoes, or they fan or massage Him.
There are two types of devotees who develop an attitude of friendship toward God: those who serve Him personally in an atmosphere of familiarity, and those who are simply amicable toward Him. Both groups utilize every moment by engaging themselves in Krishna’s service, while being firmly convinced that there is nobody else more worthy of worship, nor any other activity more desirable. In time, the devotees even forget boundaries and consider themselves and Krishna equal; they play, embrace, or even wrestle with Him.
The paradox of Krishna being the one and only, primeval and original person – existing before anything or anyone else – is only heightened by the fact that two particular devotees play the eternal role of His mother and father: Nanda and Yashoda. This is factually and indisputably impossible, but due to their affectionate love for Him, they develop these transcendental sentiments – parental, nurturing, and protective. Besides these two, there are other devotees who share the same feelings. Krishna reciprocates with all of them in a rewarding and satisfying manner by playing the role of a helpless child.
The last, and perhaps the most complex and puzzling union, is the association of Krishna and the village women of Vrindavan in fervent and emotional love. Superficially, the love between Krishna and the girls resembles the same acts of this world, conducted between boys and girls. Thus, most materialistic persons fail to make a distinction between the purely spiritual activity – where devotees have abnegated the last tinges of material, sensual attachments, which means nothing-for-me-and-everything-for-Krishna – and are fully absorbed and focused on how to satisfy the desires of God, and the selfish amusement of their own materialistic, bodily prerequisite, which are available in every species of life, even animals, insects, or fish – the instincts of eating, sleeping, fearing, and mating.
Therefore, seeing the artwork on the wall in the building in Berlin, with girls dancing, holding each other’s hands, resembling the divine and equally numinous Rasa dance between Krishna and the gopis, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between the action and its results in two axiomatically different worlds – material and spiritual. In this mundane world, everything done for oneself binds and twines one further into the depths of illusory reality, meanwhile, on the transcendental platform, devotees trying to please and assist Krishna in His eternal pastimes relish correspondingly spiritual fulfillment and satisfaction, although at times, and to the unenlightened and uninformed, both actions may seem the same — they are not — they compare to a tree and its wavering reflection in the river, where the materialistic, temporary image on the water only symbolizes the supernatural and everlasting spiritual reality.