Sri Radha, the Human Divine

The dearest, the closest, because of earth, because human as us, Sri Radha makes the divine possible, real and achievable to all bhaktas. She is not vast and transcendent, distant or formidable, but frail and vulnerable. For she is the salt of earth. Nor is she a pundit, or an intellectual, or a philosopher, or even a poetess, but simple, surrendered, giving.

And we can emulate her. We can live like her and as her. For she is the incarnation of the psychic being, the nature and essence of our soul outwardly and inwardly. She teaches us how to love the Divine, and to adore so much in an unaffected and straightforward manner, that one is transformed into the Divine itself.

She holds Sri Krishna in her heart and because she holds him in her heart, she holds the Universe within. And she ascends to the highest and greatest of yogic realizations with this undemanding love, in the most natural manner, sahaja. The two crowning siddhis are hers, that of living in the atman eternally, and that of becoming the utmost flowering of the human heart.

And her heart is not turbulent or troubled by vicissitudes as ordinary human love that is often vital and sentimental. But she is still, her flame is white, no less intense and far purer than the dense clouds of smoke we see in our transactional relationships in the world.

And there may be many others who maintain that she is a myth of dreamers and poets who came centuries after the great Mahabharata. For if so, she is our own subliminal longing and archetype, our aspiration to experience love and unity in life and relationships.

And there may be many who maintain that the entire description of the gopis and raas-leela in vrindavanam is a legend out of fertile minds, fed on poppies and ganja. For if so, she is yet real and tangible to anyone who has loved the Divine with all his soul and her experience, if not in person yet in principle, is available to all, to each, if we were only to understand the beauty and glory of her being.

For the divine dance of nara and Narayana does not happen in a local place in certain parts of North India, but it is eternal and happens in worlds far too subtle for our senses. But those who have eyes can see and those who have hearts can feel the realization that Radha Ji and Sri Krishna made possible on earth with their play of absolute joy and purity in self-abandonment.

For she is no puritan, nor is she perverse. She is unstained and nirmala, and her love only makes her purer in mind, body and heart. And so it does for those who invoke her love in their hearts, seeking to love with their souls the Divine intensely, selflessly, unconditionally.

She is an incarnation, not yet sufficiently understood, or realized. She is a trail-blazer, in her grace and feminine allure, stronger and swifter than all of us. And yet, somewhere in our collective mind, we realized who she is and worshipped her. We need now more than worship. We need her direct presence in us. If she is an avatar of the soul, come here to show us how to love, to dedicate, to surrender to the Divine and only to the Divine, then she is indeed the most practicable and the most emulatable.

But most, it is her bliss of union, ‘abandoning all dharmas unto Him alone’, giving up everything, in intense oneness that transforms one’s yoga. Nothing is impossible to the one who touches that intimacy with the Divine if even for a moment, for then the seed of light has been planted within oneself eternally, and the final victory of constant and unbroken unity certain.

To her we turn in collective prayer and aspiration to teach us, inform us, mould us and guide us in the journey that was hers. That she clears up in us.