In2-MeC

Auckland, New Zealand
9 November 2003

Srila Jiva Gosvami, writing in his Priti-sandarbha, helps us to see the essential difference between the bliss of liberation--and here I mean the four personal kinds of liberation--and the bliss of pure devotional service.

The bliss of the personal kinds of moksa is the liberated soul's experience of the Lord's svarupananda, the joy He feels in His own transcendental perfection. But the most intimate happiness of the Lord, which surpasses even His svarupananda, is called svarupasaktyananda. This is the bliss of His interplay with His personal potency. In its purest essence, svarupasaktyananda is the bliss of His loving affairs with his adyasakti (original potency), Srimati Radharani, as well as with His pure devotees who are blessed by Her divine hladini nature.

Thus the Lord is more satisfied by transcendental exchanges with devotees who exhibit wonderful love of Krsna than He is by the joy of His own perfection. Pure devotional service, by its very nature, admits the soul into svarupasaktyananda.

Svarupasaktyananda appears in three degrees: aisvarya (majestic), aisvarya-madhurya-misra (a mix of majesty and sweet intimacy), and madhurya (pure intimacy). In the first (aisvarya), the devotee's love is entirely expressed through his consciousness of the Lord's greatness. In a previous journal entry I explained that this is the Vaikuntha mood of bhakti. In the second (aisvarya-madhurya-misra), the devotee thinks at heart of the Lord in an intimate way, as his near and dear one, but the love is expressed in the context of Krsna's majestic position. For example, in Mahabharata, Lord Krsna in the midst of a majestic assembly of kings displays a pastime in which His finger is slightly cut by His own Sudarsana weapon. In loving concern Princess Draupadi rushes close to Him to affectionately bind His finger with a piece of her own cloth. Then she resumes her place next to the Pandavas, as their obedient wife. In the third (madhurya), there is no sense of formal distance between the devotee and the Lord; awareness of His power, opulence and majesty completely recedes from the relationship. The damsels of Vraja love Krsna as He who is nearest and dearest to their hearts. They do not think of Him as "God", "all-powerful", "greater than the greatest" and so on.

Prema-bhakti actually surpasses even svarupasaktyananda. How is that? Because the only object of prema-bhakti is service to the Lord. The ecstacies that arise in svarupasaktyananda are considered by the prema-bhakta to be impediments to unalloyed, completely attentive devotional service. The prema-bhakta is wholly commited to contributing to the Lord's transcendental happiness by acts of pure devotion; this commitment is in total disregard for the prema-bhakta's personal happiness. The question of self-enjoyment, whether in svarupananda or in svarupasaktyananda, simply does not arise in the mind of the prema-bhakta. Therefore the Lord feels Himself especially beholden to the prema-bhakta because He does not know how to repay such a selfless devotee.

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