Bhagavatham Stories

As Krishna entered his later childhood years, moving toward adolescence, his pastimes took on an increasingly sophisticated and profound dimension. The miraculous displays of divine power—the lifting of mountains, the subduing of demons—were interspersed with pastimes of a more subtle and intimately personal nature. These were the pastimes that would touch the hearts of all beings and establish the principle that transcendence is not impersonal detachment but the most intimate and personal relationship possible. Chief among these pastimes was the Rasa Lila, the circle dance of divine love, which occurred in the moonlit nights of autumn.

The Rasa dance began on a night when Krishna, filled with a divine intoxication of love, came to the banks of the Yamuna River with his flute. The sound of his flute, playing ragas (musical modes) that had never been heard before and have never been heard since, resonated through all of Vrindavan. The gopis, hearing this celestial music, felt an irresistible pull toward Krishna. They were in their homes, some with their husbands, some with their families, some engaged in household duties. Yet when they heard the flute, all other considerations became irrelevant. The call of Krishna's love was more compelling than any familial duty, any social obligation, any conventional morality. They rose from their beds, left their homes, and made their way to the Yamuna in the middle of the night.

When the gopis reached Krishna, they found him in a state of divine beauty that transcended all categories of earthly attraction. He stood in the light of the full moon, his form darkly radiant, his eyes luminous with an emotion that contained all the love of the universe concentrated into a single gaze. He held his flute to his lips, and the music that emerged seemed to be the voice of the supreme consciousness itself, calling all beings to recognize their true nature and their eternal relationship with the divine. The gopis, seeing Krishna in his full glory, felt that all their lives had been a preparation for this moment, that their existence had been guided toward this meeting through countless lifetimes of subtle spiritual evolution.

Krishna invited the gopis to join him in a dance. The dance that followed was not merely physical movement but a spiritual experience of such intensity that all the gopis felt themselves dissolving into Krishna and Krishna dissolving into them. Each gopi experienced Krishna as if she alone had his complete and undivided attention. Each felt that she was the most beloved, that Krishna's love was directed toward her alone. This was not a delusion but a recognition of a profound truth: the infinite consciousness can give itself completely to each individual without dividing itself. There is no competition in the realm of spirit, no scarcity of love, no need for any being to be diminished so that another might be blessed. Each gopi danced with Krishna in a circle, yet each experienced that circle as existing in a realm beyond ordinary space and time.

The Rasa dance continued throughout the night, yet it seemed to last only moments. The gopis moved in perfect synchronization with Krishna, their movements reflecting his movements, their hearts beating in rhythm with his heart, their consciousness expanding beyond the boundaries of individual identity to encompass a shared experience of infinite love. This was the yoga of love that the scriptures spoke of—not the suppression of emotion but the purification and elevation of emotion to its highest and most transcendent form. Every feeling the gopis had ever experienced—love for their families, yearning for the divine, joy in beauty, the pain of separation—was incorporated into this dance and transformed into an offering to Krishna.

The significance of the Rasa dance extended far beyond the immediate experience of those who participated in it. The dance revealed a crucial principle that had been veiled in previous teachings: that the path of devotional love is not inferior to the paths of knowledge or renunciation, but is in fact the highest path. The gopis, who had no formal spiritual training, who had not studied the scriptures, who had not performed great rituals or austerities, achieved through love what even great yogis spent lifetimes attempting to achieve. Their hearts, purified by the intensity of their longing for Krishna, became vessels for the direct experience of the divine. This teaching would become central to the spiritual philosophy that emerged from the region—the principle that bhakti (devotional love) is the supreme path, accessible to all, and more powerful than any other approach to truth.

When the Rasa dance finally concluded and Krishna departed, the gopis found themselves forever transformed. They had experienced a union with the divine that transcended all ordinary religious practices. Their consciousness had been permanently altered by the knowledge of Krishna's infinite love. They returned to their homes and their ordinary duties, yet everything had changed. The water in their wells seemed to contain Krishna. The food they cooked seemed to be an offering to Krishna. Their children seemed to be extensions of Krishna. Their husbands seemed to be Krishna in different forms. They had become what the scriptures call "Krishna-saturated"—every moment, every thought, every action was now colored and informed by their memory of that night and their knowledge of Krishna's love.

The Rasa dance also established a principle that would address one of the deepest questions of human existence: How can an infinite, transcendent being be intimate and personal? How can the Supreme be accessible to ordinary individuals? The answer revealed through the Rasa dance was that the infinite chooses to be intimate and personal not as a diminishment of its transcendence but as an expression of its infinite power. To be infinite love requires the capacity to love each individual totally and completely. To be the Supreme consciousness requires the power to be fully present to each being while simultaneously being present to all beings. The divine achieves this not through diminishing itself but through expanding into dimensions beyond ordinary comprehension. The gopis' experience of being simultaneously individual and merged with Krishna, simultaneously separate from each other and united in a common consciousness, revealed the nature of divine reality itself.