śrī śrī guru gaurāṅga jayataḥ!
Year-2, Issue 8 & Year 15, Issue 8
Posted: 9 September, 2009 & 15 September, 2022
Dedicated to
nitya-līlā praviṣṭa oṁ viṣṇupāda
Śrī Śrīmad Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava Gosvāmī Mahārāja
Inspired by and under the guidance of
Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedānta Nārāyaṇa Gosvāmī Mahārāja
Śrī Kṛṣṇa Does Not Deny Anyone
By Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda
In the case of Lord Rāmacandra, we cannot offer our services in all the five different aspects. He cannot stand as our Consort, because if He were to do so, Sītā might attest that her devoted husband Rāmacandra had crossed the limits of His own ethical principles. Moreover, Sītā would never allow any other soul the privilege of rendering that sort of service to Rāmacandra.
We find the best example of this in the Daṇḍakāraṇya ṛṣis who approached Rāmacandra. Rāmacandra did not accept them because, for one, they had male forms, and second, He was devoted to only one wife. In other words, for fear of violating His ethical principles He could not accept service in the mode of consort-hood from them. While Rāmacandra could only accept services in modes other than consort-hood from Lakṣmaṇa and others, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who is eternally lovable, is very naturally referred to as Bahu-Vallabha, the dear-most lover of many.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa can accommodate hundreds of dependents as His consorts, whereas Rāmacandra can only welcome dependents in four modes – namely, His parents; His brothers and friends; His servants; and the neutral subjects of His Realm, who render unalloyed service to Him. All others, except Sītā, are barred from offering any confidential, loving service to Rāmacandra as His consort.
But in Śrī Kṛṣṇa we find that there is no such restriction. Every soul can offer all sorts of unalloyed confidential services to Śrī Kṛṣṇa. Moreover, we find that Śrī Kṛṣṇa verily welcomes every soul; He does not deny anyone.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa personally always wants His devotees to accept Him in the mode of consort-hood – indeed, He admits every servant of His who has truly got the capacity to approach Him in any of these most exalted moods and positions – and yet He never allows any of His temporary pseudo-servants to keep the corresponding sorts of mundane relationships with each other. The progress of any soul toward such confidential, loving services to the Over-soul is never hindered, provided the Lord is convinced that, remaining ever subservient to His Predominated Counter-Whole, that soul can truly offer this kind of service to Him.
* * *
Truly, Śrī Kṛṣṇa never restrains us from rendering any sort of confidential, loving service that, in our unconditioned stage, we are bent upon offering Him. However, we would be barred from offering such services to Him in His other aspects, either because our mental approach would then be somehow tainted or because it would have been arrived at through flawed speculations.
If we independent souls give up the kind of worship that emerges from our own mental speculations – if we can have a wider and larger scope – then we can easily approach the Transcendental Being with all our earnest and sincere endeavours. And He shall not deny anyone nor allow anyone to continue engagements that are meant for some other aspect of Him, inasmuch as He is the one who shall always enchant our soul.
So we should scrutinize most minutely whether we should at all utilize and engage some limbs for our personal benefits and some portion of our transcendental body for Godhead! But the real truth is that all our engagements – the whole of our occupation – may be engaged for Śrī Kṛṣṇa. We do not have this rarest fortune, the fortune of engaging our whole being in such pure perfection, in any other aspect of Godhead.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya has not taught us any anthropomorphic concept. Ordinary people might think that they can indulge in carrying conceptualizations born from the material nature of this world into that transcendental realm, but such anthropomorphic ideas are never enjoined or entertained by Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya.
All that we must know is that Godhead is the full, complete and perfect being and that no partial or crippled features are anywhere to be found in His person. We must not think that all that we have in this world – all that might be feasible or practicable or even ethical here – should be carried along with us to a region where imperfect acquisitions are not wanted. We have no such ambition.
Adapted from The Gaudiya Volume 25, Number 12
by the Rays of The Harmonist team
