Dear devotees,
Today we are going to be singing a pad kirtan from Prem Ras Madira, Rasiya Madhuri: pad 3. And I’ll be explaining some of the lines of that. So let us sing the first line and then I’ll explain something.
In this pad we learn about the supremacy of the Divine bliss that Shri Krishna and Radharani distribute in Their most recent avatar which is called poornavatar, also known as leela avatar. Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj in his Radha Govind Geet, which is 11,111 doha’s, explains mostly the devotional philosophy, but also many of the leelas of Radha Krishna.
There’s a chapter about all the philosophy of avatar, and in there Shree Kripaluji Maharaj tells that there are several categories of avatar. There is gun-avatar, there is purush-avatar, there is manvantar-avatar, there is yug-avatar, there is avesh avatar, and there is leela-avatar.
Now, Ved Vyas Ji has made it clear,
सर्वे पूर्णाः शाश्वतश्च देहास्तस्य परमात्मनः
Sarve poorṇah shadhvavatashch dehāstasya paramātmanah.- Padma Puran
“All the different avatars, all the different forms, all the different descensions of Bhagwan, sarve-puranah, are all born.”
They are all whole and complete 100% Bhagwan. Bhagwan does not exist in percentages like this avatar is one quarter of Bhagwan, or this avatar is one tenth of Bhagwan, and Shri Krishna is 100% because we call Him ‘poornatam-purushottam-Brahm’. No, it’s not like this.
सर्वैः सर्वगुणैः पूर्णः
Sarvai-sarva gunai poornah.
In Varah Puran Ved Vyas Ji says, “All the gunas, all the qualities are there in each and every form of God, in each and every avatar.”
So we shouldn’t think that one avatar is greater and one avatar is lesser. However, Shri Krishna reveals different powers in His different avatars, or you can say, He, to a different extent, reveals the powers that He has, and that all the forms have, because They are all none other than Shri Krishna. Every avatar is none other than Shri Krishna. And yet there are differences, because in some avatars He’s revealing some part of His power, some part of His gunas, His qualities, and characteristics. And in others He’s revealing more, and when He comes with Radharani in His poornavatar, then we say that this is ‘poornatam-purushottam-Brahm’; He’s revealing Himself in full.
We can say that there’s really two main powers if we want to simplify it: His aishwariya and His madhurya or His almightiness and His lovingness - madhurya, you can say, prem. These are His two main powers. There are many different aspects to His aishwariya, and many different aspects to His madhurya. Now out of these two, aishwariya and madhurya, madhurya is supreme because where madhurya is revealed, the aishwariya loses its significance. Just like on a full moon night when the sun has set,
“Wow, the moon is so big! It’s so bright!” But the next morning when the sun is rising and the moon is still on the horizon and it’s just about to set,
“Huh, yeah, the moon is there, it’s fine. It’s no big deal.”
Why? Because now the sun is there. Did the moon lose its brightness? No, it just became insignificant in front of the brightness of the sun. Similarly, Shri Krishna’s aishwariya just drowns in His lovingness. It’s there, but it becomes unnoticeable. It’s there if He needs it, when and as required, but when His Divine love is revealed, the aishwariya isn’t noticeable anymore in His personality or His behavior. So, He has the potential to reveal Himself in so many different ways depending upon the different mix of aishwariya and prem, and which aspect of aishwariya He’s revealing, and which aspect of prem He’s revealing, and therefore,
अवतारा ह्यसङ्ख्येया हरे: सत्त्वनिधेर्द्विजा: ।
Avatārā hy asaṅkhyeyā hareḥ sattva-nidher dvijāḥ.- Bhagwatam
“He has infinite, uncountable avatars.”
But of those uncountable avatars, Shree Kripaluji Maharaj has said there are six main categories that you can put them in, like we have Gun avatar. In maya we have three gunas: sattva, rajas, tamas. They’re the three inherent qualities of maya. Three of Shri Krishna’s avatars - Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv - They are the local governors of our small brahmand. There are infinite such brahmands in the universe. Radhikopanishad says
“One Shri Krishna is the source of Maha Vishnu, who is the creator of the whole universe that contains akhil brahmand, infinite brahmands.”
A brahmand is a planetary system with an earth planet and souls residing there. There are all kinds of sizes of brahmand. Ours is the smallest kind, and each brahmand has the three gunavatar: Brahma, Vishnu, Shankar. So, Vishnu Bhagwan, when He descends in a brahmand, He adopts the sattva gun. He’s not under the influence of mayic gunas because Brahma, Vishnu and Shankar are Divine. They’re beyond mayic qualities. But They govern that quality for the proper functioning of that brahmand. Brahma takes on the rajo gun. And Shankar Ji takes on the tamo gun. So, rajo gun’s quality is active. So, Brahma is the creator, therefore He adopts the rajo gun. Satva gun gives stability, so Vishnu Bhagwan adopts the sattva gun to maintain and protect the brahmand. And Shankar Ji adopts tamo gun because the nature of tamo gun is destruction. So, Shankar Ji has to do pralay, He has to dissolve the Brahmand, therefore He adopts tamo gun. So, we call these three avatars of Shri Krishna, His gun avatar.
Then we have another way of looking at the whole process of creation. There is something called Purush avatar. Shri Krishna doesn’t do any kind of serious work. All He does is play and give Divine love in His form as Shri Krishna with the flute and peacock feather. So, then how does He create the universe? When it’s time to manifest the universe, He takes the form of Mahavishnu of Vaikunth abode. That is His pratham Purush avatar, His first discension in this world. Pratham, the first Purush avatar. Also we call Him Mahavishnu of Vaikunth. So, as Mahavishnu He manifests the whole universe. He activates maya and maya unfolds into the form of the visible physical universe.
Then, dwitiya Purush avatar, called Garbhodashāyī Vishṇu, He becomes omnipresent.
Then, Trittiya purush avatar, the third dissension in this infinite universe that He manifested. There are infinite pockets created where a Brahma is going to be made. So, before Brahma creates the brahmand, Vishnu comes again, or you can say Shri Krishna takes His third avatar, as Vishnu called Ksheerodakshāyī Vishnu, who resides in the ocean of milk, kcheer sagar. That is His branch office in our brahmand, or in any of the infinite brahmands. So, there are infinite Vishnus in infinite brahmands.
Devi Bhagavat Puran says, “You might count the grains of sand on this earth, but you could never count the number of brahmands in this universe.”
And you could never count the number of Vishnus, because there is one Vishnu in each, that is, Krishna’s tritya Purush avatar, happening in infinite millions of places. And in each brahmand there is also a Brahma, so there are uncountable Brahmas, and in each brahmand, there is a Shankar, so there are uncountable Shankars. So, see, we have understood now how these forms are related to Shri Krishna through the term Gun avatar, and Purush avatar. We can also use the word ansh, Ved says that Mahavishnu, who is the creator of the entire universe and the governor of infinite brahmands, the one Mahavishnu in Vaikunth is ‘ek anshah’ - He is one ansh of Shri Krishna. So, Shri Krishna’s ansh is Mahavishnu, Mahavishnu’s ansh is Vishnu, Brahma, Shankar of each brahmand. Therefore, They are the ansh of Shri Krishna’s ansh. So, we can understand it like that. They are His swansh. Ansh means ‘a part of’, but like I explained, not like a fractional ‘part of’; it’s Shri Krishna Himself, but just revealing a fraction of His potential or a fraction of His power. So, they are also called His Ansh avatar.
We are also His ansh,
ममैवांशो जीवलोके जीवभूत: सनातन: |
Mamaivānśho jeev-loke jeev-bhūtaḥ sanātanaḥ.- Gita 15.7
Shri Krishna says, “All the souls are My ansh, but we are His vibhinnansh.”
Vibhinnan means ‘distinct from’. Vishnu, Shankar, Brahma are His swansh, because They are the expansion of His own self. But we are distinct from Him. We are a distinct entity, although He pervades us, and we reside in Him.
एको देवः सर्वभूतेषु गूढः सर्वव्यापी सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा श्वेत ।
Eko devah sarvabhutaeṣhu gūḍhah sarvavyāpī sarvabhūtāntarātmā shweta.
Shvetashvaropanishad says, “God resides in the heart of every soul, and He is also omnipresent; He is all pervading. So, we also reside within Him, but we are distinct from Him as an individual entity with free will.”
So, we are His vibhinnansh. Brahma, Vishnu, Shankar are His swansh, or His Gunavatar, or His Purush avatar.
Okay, so we covered Gun avatar and Purush avatar. There is also Manvantar avatar and Yug avatar. See, in the life of one brahmand, Vishnu Ji takes avatar to manage that brahmand, then He has to keep taking avatar again and again in that brahmand to maintain things, and He does it according to the cycles of time. Our Kali yug is 432,000 years long. The yug before that, called Dwapar yug, is twice as long - 864,000 years. The yug before that is Treta yug, that’s three times Kali yug; it’s 1,296,000 years long. And the yug preceding that Sat yug, four times Kali yug, is 1,728,000 years long, totalling 4.32 million. That’s one time around the four yugs. Sat yug, Treta yug, Dwapar yug, Kali yug, one cycle of those makes 4.32 million years. So in those yugs there are certain avatars that happen every time. Just like Shri Krishna takes avatar in every Dwapar yug. Every Dwapar yug He comes. So like there’s a certain schedule of avatars in every yug; it’s called Yug avatar.
Then there’s Manvantar. If you go around those yugas 71 times you have one manvantar. 306,720,000 years is one manvantar. So you also have Manvantar avatar. Certain avatars that happen every manvantar. There’s 14 manvantars in one day of Brahma that’s called a kalp; that’s 4,320 million years long. And there’s one avatar that happens only once in a day of Brahma. That is Radha-Krishna coming in their full Divine love form where They reveal the ultimate form of Divine love bliss. And They do Maharas with uncountable gopis. That avatar happens once in a day of Brahma. And that avatar happened just 5,000 years ago. So think about that - in this current day of Brahma we’ve already had 6 manvantars. We’re in the seventh manvantar. So we’re about halfway through Brahma’s day; you can say it’s lunchtime. And in this day, the current manvantar, which is like an hour in Brahma’s day, has 71 cycles. We’re in the 28th cycle. So in that much time, basically half of Brahma’s day - 2 billion years for us - Shri Krishna just came, took His Poorn avatar and revealed the ultimate bliss of Divine love. He comes every Dwapar, but He doesn’t reveal the ultimate bliss like you hear Jagadguru Shree Kripalu Ji Maharaj is saying,
आयो ब्रज, रस बेचन-वारो ।
Ayo braj, ras bechan-varo.
“So Shri Krishna has come to Braj! Let’s celebrate!”
Why? Because He is the distributor of that ras. What ras?
जो-रस निगमागमहुँ अगम सोइ, देत वनचरिन कहँ कारो ।
Jo-ras nigamāgamahuṃ agam soi, det vancharin kahaṃ kāro.
That ras, which is indicated in Vedas,
रसो वै सः। रसं ह्येवायं लब्ध्वानन्दी भवति
Raso vai sah. Rasam hyevāyam labdhvānandī bhavati.
Ved describes ras, describes ras leela, even. What is ras rās? Ved tells these things, but these richas of the Vedas who are Divine powers of Shri Krishna are related to His Almighty power. So they don’t actually experience His Divine love bliss. The richas of the Vedas are also Divine personalities with a Divine form. But they don’t get to actually experience rās. So that’s why many of those richas of the Vedas beg Shri Krishna,
“Let us also get to experience Maharas.”
So Shri Krishna said, “Okay, you can come as gopis when I come, when I take My avatar and I’m going to reveal that Divine bliss on the earth planet, then you can come as gopis and with the grace of the eternal gopis of Golok, you can also gain entrance into Maharas.”
So many of the gopis were actually richas of the Vedas. But here Maharaj Ji is just mentioning ‘Jo-ras nigamāgamahum agam soi, det vancharin kahaṃ kāro’. The ‘nigam’ and ‘agam’ means like all the Vedas and shastras, it is agam for them. They can describe it, but they haven’t experienced it - until Shri Krishna gives them that chance.
But that same ras, when Shri Krishna takes avatar, He’s distributing it to the gopis, who although They are Themselves the ultimate Divine Saints, the topmost Divine Saints, but They do the leela of being illiterate, residents of small villages. They can’t even count to a hundred or sign their name. They don’t know reading and writing in this leela. And Shri Krishna is distributing that Divine love to Them. Yes, because They are surrendered to Him and They are selfless. They’re not asking for anything from Him. So this is the greatness of that ras that it is desired even by the richas of the Vedas, but it is beyond their reach without the grace of the gopis. And that same ras is available to anyone who worships Radha and Krishna with Madhurya bhāv. So more about the greatness of this Ras and the greatness of Shri Krishna’s most recent avatar, we’ll learn further ahead.
Chanting from Prem Ras Madira, Rasiya Madhuri #3
I told you about Yug avatar, Manvantar avatar, Purush avatar, Gun avatar and Shri Krishna’s Leela avatar, which is His supreme descension where He performs leelas. In those leelas He reveals the ras which is being referenced in this pad. So those are five kinds of avatars. So I told you In the Radha Govind Geet Jagadguru Shree Kripalu ji Maharaj describes six categories of avatars. The sixth one is called Avash avatar. And he describes in quite some detail that Avesh avatar is actually in the other Gun avatar, Gurush avatar, Yug avatar, Manvantar, Leela avatar, in those five, there is no ‘deha dehi ka bhed’ (the difference between the body (’deha’) and the soul (’dehi’). We have learned that Bhagwan and His body are not separate. Bhagwan is His body. In our case, our body is separate and we reside in our body. We are the soul in the body and even after God realization, when we go to Golok, we’ll get a Divine body made of ‘sat chit anand’, but we’ll still have a duality between our soul and the Divine body in which we’re residing. Right now we’re residing in a mayic body. So there’s a duality now and there will be a duality in the Divine world as well.
Now, some of Bhagwan Shri Krishna’s avatars are actually His Divine power of a certain kind coming into a God-realized Saint. That is called Avesh avatar. So in that case, that Divine Saint is still, you know, the body is separate and their soul is separate, but Shri Krishna’s power is now within them.
And he gives some examples. One example is Sanakadik-Paramahans. They are recognized as avatar of Bhagwan. In the list of 24 avatars, They are one of them. They are categorized as Avesh-avatar. They are four brothers who are always in the form of five-year-old boys. And they are actually souls. But Shri Krishna’s Avesh-avatar happened within them, and the main power within them is the power of gyan, the power of knowledge. And in addition to Sanakadik Paramahans, Maharaj Ji mentions that Parashuram is also an Avesh-avatar. Buddha is Avesh avatar. Kalki is Avesh avatar. Narad Ji is Avesh avatar. King Prithu is Avesh-avatar. They all have different special qualities of Bhagwan Shri Krishna that reside within them. Like Narad Ji, Bhakti, Parashuram, the destruction of evil-doers.
So here Maharaji is saying that
जो ब्रज-रसहित शुक सनकादिक, लतन पतन तन करि डारो ।
Jo braj-rasahit shuk sanakādik, latan patan tan kari daro.
This ras, this nectar of Shri Krishna’s Divine love is so great, that even this Avesh avatar known as Sanakadik-Paramahans desire to receive this ras so much that even though they are already established in the bliss that we call Brahmanand, the bliss of formless God, but they are so excited to experience the ras of Shri Krishna’s leelas and taste that Divine love that they are willing to take the form of the static beings in Braj - trees, plants, creepers.
Vallabhachariya Ji has explained that those Saints who didn’t initially worship Radha Krishna with madhurya, vatsalya, sakhya, dasya bhav to gain entrance into Divine Golok. But later after their attainment of their God-realized state, they desire to experience the ras of Radha Krishna leelas. They are given a status in the Divine abode of Radha Krishna, but not as the gopis or gwal bals.
So if there was, say, a devotee of Mahavishnu or Shankar Ji or Durga Ji would take the form of the moving beings like deer, peacocks, birds, that type of thing, monkeys. And those gyani Saints, like Sanakadik Parmahans, Shukdev Ji is mentioned here, come to Braj, although Shukdev Ji has the form of a parrot in the Divine abode, but here Maharaj Ji is saying they take the form in Braj of creepers, plants, trees. And in that way they also get to do seva, to Radha Krishna by beautifying the area, and they get to experience the ras of Radha Krishna leelas in that form.
So this shows the greatness of this ras that Radha Krishna are distributing in Braj that the Supreme Bhagwan has taken avatar on the day of Janmashtami that we celebrate and He’s come to distribute this Divine love to all the deserving souls. And that Divine love is so great that even great gyani Saints, who have already attained God but in the formless aspect, still wish to attain the Divine love of Radha Krishna.
द्वे वाव ब्रह्मणो रूपे-मूर्तं चैवामूर्तं च…
Dve vāv brahmaṇo roope-murtaṃ chaivāmoortaṃ cha…- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.1
“Bhagwan Shri Krishna has two main aspects: with form and without form”.
So those who have attained Him in His formless aspect can’t talk to Him or touch Him or interact with Him in any way. They just experience a total oneness with Him, with His formless existence, Divine truth. This is very abstract. This is why Roop Goswami says,
ब्रह्मानन्दो भवेद् एष चेत् परार्द्ध-गुणीकृतः ।
नैति भक्ति-सुखाम्भोधेः परमाणु-तुलाम् अपि ॥
Brahmānando bhaved eṣh chet parārdhd-gunīkṛitah.
Naiti bhakti-sukhāmbhodheh paramānu-tulām api.- Bhakti-Rasamrit Sindhu 1.1.38
If you take Brahmanand, the bliss that a Gyani Saint experiences in his oneness with nirakar Brahm, take that Brahmanand and multiply it by one parārdh, you can say, trillions and trillions of times, multiply that Brahmanand, and on the other side, parrnanu (micro particle), of Shri Krishna’s prem, one micro particle of Shri Krishna’s Divine love, even that micro particle of His Divine love will outweigh that Brahmanand multiplied by trillions of times.
This is why one time, Jābāli muni was wandering in the jungle and he saw a beautiful maiden sitting on a rock doing meditation. When she opened her eyes, he asked,
“What are you meditating about?”
And she said, “I am brahmāviddhya. Brahmāviddhya is the Divine Devi, Divine Goddess responsible for the mukti of the gyanis and their experience of brahmāgyan and Brahmanand. I myself am full of this Brahmanand, I myself am fully satisfied by this Brahmanand. I feel restless. I feel a void inside me. Without the Divine love of Shri Krishna, I feel that I am missing something. So I am meditating, I am doing tapasya, trying to experience the bliss of Shri Krishna’s Divine love.
So this gives us some idea when Roop Goswami is saying that one speck of Divine love is greater than trillions of Brahmanand and Brahmāviddhya Devi is saying that even she feels incomplete without Shri Krishna’s Divine love and Sanakadik Parmahans and Shukdev Parmahans are also willing to take the form of the static beings of Braj to get a taste of the ras that Shri Krishna is distributing during His avatar. So we can have some hint, we can have some guess at the greatness of that ras. So we’ll see more examples further ahead.
Chanting from Prem Ras Madira, Rasiya Madhuri #3
Next, Shree Kripalu ji Maharaj gives us the example of Shankar Ji, that He took a female form because He wanted to gain entrance to Maharas. When Radha and Krishna were ready to do Maharas, then Shri Krishna played on His flute to call all the gopis who were qualified for Maharas to come. The sound of the flute traveled all the way to Kailash where Shiv Ji and Parvati were sitting. They heard the sound of the flute and They knew,
“Krishna is going to do Maharas!That’s the top most bliss of the whole Divine phenomenon, and He’s going to reveal that now! We also want to experience it!”
So they came running. Now Parvati Ji already looks like a gopi so she directly entered. Shankar Ji was so excited, He was in His baba bheesh (looks) with ashes smeared on His face and body in His jatta tied up and wearing nothing more than a tiger skin and having skull mala (necklace). Such a strange look to come in and try to get into Maharas. If you’re going to a party, first you ask, is it formal, semi formal, business formal, casual; how am I supposed to dress? So Shankar Ji didn’t think of any of that. He was so excited. He just ran and gopis stopped Him,
“Baba, ji, where do You think You’re going? It is all gopis over here and only gopis are allowed in Maharas.”
So He pleaded with them. So they went and talked to Radharani. Radharani said,
“Yes, He can come but He has to take His form as a gopi!”
Gopeshwar Mahadev. That’s Shankar Ji’s other eternal form as a gopi. So He took his form as Gopeshwar Mahadev, His gopi form, and He came and got to dance with Shri Krishna and take part in Maharas and experience that even Lakshmi Ji, She also wanted to experience Maharas and she did tapasya, being away from everything for an extremely long period of time but she couldn’t qualify because she’s the Almighty Power.
And Almighty power cannot be manifested in Maharas; (if it did) hen what loving leela would happen? But it shows that even Shankar Ji, Parvati, Lakshmi, all these forms of Radha Krishna, They’re Almighty forms even desire to experience the bliss of Their Divine love and the ultimate form of that bliss, the ras ras revealed through Their Maharas leela.
Chanting from Prem Ras Madira, Rasiya Madhuri #3
Now that we have been given some understanding of the greatness of that ras, you might be wondering, “What do I have to do to get that ras?”
सो रास पियत सोइ जो वाको, निज तन मन प्रानन हारो ।
So rās piyat soi jo vāko, nij tan man prānan hāro.
Surrender, complete surrender to Shri Krishna, that’s what is required. There is no price, there is no trade. It’s just we surrender ourselves to Him: tan - our body, man - our mind, pran - our very life, our soul. We should have the feeling that everything is yours,
“I am yours, everything I have is yours!”
That complete surrender is the only requirement to receive His Divine love, that Divine ras. He’s ready to grace us. The surrender is required because that’s the means of receiving His grace. With the help of a Rasik Mahapurush (a Divine Saint) that we adopt as our Guru, we can practice bhakti and purify our heart so that we can develop our surrender, and eventually a soul can reach the point of this complete sharanagati (surrender). Then we’ll receive Shri Krishna’s Divine love instantly through the grace of the Guru.
So in the end, Shree Kripalu ji Maharaj says,
सो रस अस ‘कृपालु’ छिन छिन बढ़, रस बैकुंठ लगत खारो ।
So ras as ‘Kripalu’ chhin chhin baḍh, ras baikunṭh lagat khāro.
Narad ji says in his Narad Bhakti Darshan, that this bhakti, this Divine love, is ever increasing, not like Brahmanand (which is) always of one kind, one stable thing. The prem ras is ever multiplying and ever increasing and it makes even ‘ras bhaikuntha lagat kharo’. It even makes the bliss of Shri Krishna’s almighty form Maha Vishnu and Baikuntha abode look tasteless.
The rasik Saints, those who have experienced His prem ras, have no interest in His almighty form. They say,
“No, no, that’s kharo. That’s tasteless. I want the sweet experience of Your Divine love!”
And we can get that simply by surrendering to Him. Surrendering means to give yourself to Him. And He will give His best to you. He will give Himself to you. He will give His everything, the top most thing to you. So this is the philosophy of Shri Krishna’s avatar shared with us by Shree Kripalu ji Maharaj in this pad kirtan.
Chanting …
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