22 Aug 2021
[Ms. Thryloka asked: Pādanamaskāraṃ Swāmi, in recent times, You revealed the below facts about Gopikas whom You often consider as the climax devotees of God.
1. God likes to remove this Rūpabhrānti (fascination for beauty) by appearing in forms lacking beauty completely. For the sake of climax devotees, who are not yet liberated from the fascination for beauty, God Datta appears in beautiful forms only. Devotees attached to God through sweet devotion (Madhura bhakti) like Gopikas are also satisfied with the beautiful form of God like Krishna. God serves all devotees as per their tastes.
2. You mentioned about a Gopika (Candralekhā) who attained the energetic incarnation of God (Videhamukti) and could not attain the human incarnation of God, Kṛṣṇa (Jīvanmukti). She could not liberate her soul from the fear of her worldly bonds for the sake of God.
In both these cases, the Gopikas failed to overcome the fascination of beauty and the fear of worldly bonds respectively. How can You consider them as climax devotees although they are not at climax. If they were at a climax, they should overcome everything for God. Isn't it? Kindly enlighten me. -At Your divine lotus feet, Laxmi Thrylokya]
Swāmi Replied: Gopikas did not aspire for the beauty of God. It is the wish of God to come as beautiful for the sake of sweet devotion of Gopikas. Even then, Gopikas were not simply attracted for the physical beauty of God. Gopikas are not ordinary worldly females. They were sages for millions of births engaged in constant penance for God. Gopikas recoginsed Kṛṣṇa as God and this point is clearly mentioned by sage Nārada in his Bhaktisūtram. The love of Gopikas towards Kṛṣṇa is based on the total divine personality of God, which is not mere physical beauty. The mental beauty is love and we will be astonished if we see the inner mental beauty or love of Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa created a new world called ‘Goloka’ above His abode called ‘Vaikuṇṭha’. Love is the internal beauty of God, which is the basic material of all divine qualities (Kalyāṇa guṇas) like gold is the basic material of all jewels. God is originally beautiful to the unimaginable extent. He never comes down with His original beauty seeing which all the souls of the world will die instantaneously due to heart attack (Koṭi koṭi madanānāṃ rūpam).
Only the energetic beings called angels can withstand His physical and mental beauty because their energetic bodies withstand the shock. He reduces His physical and mental beauty to a great extent and comes down to this world to such level of physical and mental beauty that is on par with the ultimate human level. The beauty is at three levels:- 1. Superficial beauty, which is the external dress and jewels like golden cloth, garlands of pearls, peacock feather etc. 2. External beauty, which is the physical beauty of the personality. 3. Internal beauty, which is the unimaginable love towards devoted Gopikas in creating the topmost world called Goloka.
I said that God comes down, sometimes, with negative beauty like the face of monkey, face of elephant, face of horse etc., in order to stress on the internal beauty, which is eternal that continues from birth to birth. Such program is based on the foolish people hurting others lacking beauty in faces. This context is totally different from the topic of sweet devotion (Madhura bhakti). God came with physical beauty at very minimum level (remember that such minimum level means very high maximum level from the point of human standards). The program of sweet devotion requires some physical beauty and also some superficial beauty also.
Regarding Candralekhā, she is master in cunning devotion. But, when cunning devotion failed due to the will of God for test, she should have entered care not devotion. She is the highest devotee of Kṛṣṇa as we see her spot death caused by the obstruction given by her family members. This worldly bond-fear brought her down to the world. She is one of the liberated souls called twelve Gopikas and came down every time whenever there was need for God’s work to the earth as per the concept of liberated soul accompanying God in God’s work. Here, the point is that whether Candralekhā came down due to the influence of fear from worldly bonds or due to the status of liberated soul coming down along with God to participate in God’s work, the answer is that both the factors are responsible for her coming down.
The beauty of God Datta is 100 kalās (parts). Candralekhā was the incarnation of Goddess Satī, who sacrificed her life for the sake of God. Satī was the incarnation of Ādiparāśakti representing this entire creation. The first energetic body of God Datta itself is Ādiparāśakti with the help of which God Datta was expressed by the merge of unimaginable God with the first energetic body or Ādiparāśakti. Similarly, the beautiful body of Rāma was the incarnation of Goddess Lalitā and the beautiful body of Kṛṣṇa was incarnation of Goddess Śyāmalā (who blessed Kālidasa). The beauty of Goddess Ādiparāśakti is 100 kalās, the beauty of Goddess Lalitā is 12 kalās and the beauty of Kṛṣṇa is 16 kalās. The creator is Puruṣa and the creation is Prakṛti. The first energetic body created by unimaginable God is also Prakṛti or Śakti (power) and when unimaginable God (Puruṣa) merged with this first energetic body called Ādiparāśakti, God Datta resulted as Puruṣa expressed through His own created first energetic form. The original unimaginable God is Puruṣa and the first energetic form or Datta is a mixture of Puruṣa and Prakṛti. Puruṣa means the unimaginable God lying or pervading the Prakṛti or first energetic form (Puri śete iti Puruṣaḥ). The first energetic form is called Prakṛti since it is the first and best form of creation (Prakarṣeṇa kṛtā iti Prakṛtiḥ). This first energetic incarnation creates the world and hence, is also called as Prakṛti (Prakarṣeṇa kriyate anayā iti Prakṛtiḥ).
Datta, while coming as incarnation of Rāma, came with 12 kalās of beauty. Beauty means not only external but, internal also. Then, Datta came as Kṛṣṇa with 16 kalās beauty. These 16 kalās are the maximum human level. More than these 16 kalās, God cannot come down to earth because, if God comes with 100 kalās beauty (external and internal) people will die with heart attack at once or will kill God Datta at once due to Tsunami of jealousy! Beauty also is a point of jealousy and also brings very big problems. In the time of Kṛṣṇa, due to the 16 kalās of beauty, all the girls of kings (about 16,000) became unmarried with rigidity that they will not marry anybody other than Kṛṣṇa. Due to this, the future generation of kings was stopped and this was a big disturbance of pravṛtti! King Narakāsura arrested all these 16,000 girls torturing every day to marry somebody else other than Kṛṣṇa.
When Kṛṣṇa killed Narakāsura and liberated them, they told that they will not go to their homes and told that either they will marry Kṛṣṇa or die. Kṛṣṇa was forced to marry all of them. Regarding the 16 kalās of internal beauty of Kṛṣṇa, one example is sufficient, which is that He created a new 15th world called ‘Goloka’ above His abode for His devotees so that their feet dust falls continuously on His head! The value of 16 kalās of internal beauty is far higher than 16 kalās of external beauty because the internal beauty is in dollars and the external beauty is in rupees. Due to this big problem of disturbance of beauty in the end of Dvāpara age, God Datta never came to this world in Kali age, with 16 kalās of external and internal beauty. These 16 kalās of internal beauty is the infinite ocean of love of God incarnated on the earth so far. Since Kali age, God Datta came down as incarnations with 0.1 or 0.2 or at the maximum 0.3 percentage of external and internal beauty only. The souls cannot withstand more than this since jealousy is inherent quality of the soul.
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