29 Dec 2021
[Ms. Bhanu Samykya asked: Pādanamaskāram Swami, The actions performed by Gopikas appear very strange and courageous to me. They are extraordinary souls who showed unconditional love towards God surrendering everything for Him. But, I regret to say that a stupid doubt is bothering my mind i.e. How could the Gopikas be in physical relationship with their husbands when at the same time being physically involving with Lord Krishna? Is it because- Physicality is not given importance by them? If so, why didn't they leave their families? Does God not care about devoted soul's bad qualities, past actions, present sexual relationships or any other thing?
Swami, please help me come out of this physical point of view and concentrate on actual internal divine qualities of God.]
Swami Replied:- What Gopikas did was utterly wrong if you consider Krishna as a human being and not as human incarnation of God. The sacredness of God is so high that this sin does not result in punishment and on the other hand, it results as the greatest merit. In this context, the liberation from all hundred worldly bonds is important as complete salvation (Pūrṇa mokṣa) and unfortunately, the bond with husband also happened to be one of those hundred bonds and hence, to attain full liberation sacrifice of this one bond is also inevitable. Full salvation means that there is no worldly bond that can’t be left for the sake of the holy bond with God. Hence, this becomes inevitable. Moreover, sufficient care is taken to avoid the exploitation of the sacrifice of this bond since such sacrifice is kept in the final female birth of the soul when all other ninety-nine worldly bonds were already sacrificed. Without sacrificing all other worldly bonds, the sacrifice of this bond alone is a severe sin. The sages sacrificed all the other worldly bonds and even they sacrificed this bond with their life partners for the sake of God. But, sacrifice of the bond with life partner and with issues is not very significant if the soul is in male body. This sacrifice becomes very very significant only when the soul is in female body.
The sacrifice of bond with the life partner reaches the climax of inconvenience especially when the soul is in female body due to very rigid social traditions. Hence, it is justified to keep the test for the sacrifice of the bond with life partner in the final female birth only. This is the background for the postponement of this test to the next birth in the case of male sages by Lord Rama. In spite of all this justified logic in the sacrifice of this bond for the sake of God, in order to resist the exploitation of this point by other mischievous souls, God has kept punishment for this sacrifice as a special case. Since the sacrifice of this bond by Gopikas is fully justified in all the angles, God came forward to suffer the punishments of this sacrifice of Gopikas.
Even Gopikas were ready to go to hell to enjoy this severe punishment for the sake of Krishna because they felt that the bliss derived from Krishna through this bond is far far better than any other worldly happiness for which the punishment was just neglected like error below one percent is neglected in the titrations done in the chemistry laboratory during practical examinations. Hence, one need not worry about this since punishment exists. After meeting Krishna, some Gopikas never met their husbands and such Gopikas only went to Goloka. In the case of Raadhaa, she did not allow even her wedded husband called ‘Ayanaghosha’ to touch her body, who married Krishna secretly.
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