# Questions and Answers: ## 1: Sometimes we become confused about the goal when we speak with those who do not know the difference between mundane rasa and spiritual rasa. Could you please help us? Nondevotees want to enjoy the material world, but the devotees want neither to enjoy nor to renounce the world. They want only to serve the Lord. lakṣmī sahasra śata sambhavam sevyamāṁ: “The Lord is always served by hundred of thousands of Lakṣmīs or gopīs.” After achieving perfection and upon giving up the body awarded by our parents, we attain uninterrupted devotional service to the Lord. The Lord is supremely independent and everyone must respect His supreme will. Those who are trying to develop their serving propensity should follow the rules and regulations given by the ācāryas. No one should make a pretense. What is the value of making a show of following your constitutional duty if you are still conditioned by your gross and subtle body? Only mundane sahajiyās make such a show. The descriptions found in ornamental literature like Kāvyaprakāśa or Sāhitya-darśana is mundane. Such books describe the affairs between men and women—or a number of men and women together. If the two and half types of rasas are applied to the Lord and the other two and half to the abominable experiences lived out by forgetful living entities, the consideration of rasa remains incomplete. There are five rasas fully manifest in the complete kingdom of God, Goloka. The transcendental gopīs are not concerned with superiority or inferiority or whether they are mature or immature girls. They serve Kṛṣṇa with all their limbs and all their senses. The sages who could not attain perfection in their worship of the Supreme tried to do so by seeing Śrī Rāmacandra’s beauty, but since Lord Rāma vowed to accept only one wife, it was impossible for those sages to achieve their goal. Therefore they took birth as gopīs in Vraja. The Padma Purāṇa describes this incident. Among them, a few attained perfection at the beginning of the rāsa-lilā pastimes. This is confirmed in the Bṛhad-Vāmana Purāṇa. When the personified Upaniṣads were struck with wonder upon seeing the gopīs’ good fortune. As a result of their own intense and focused kṛṣṇa-bhajana, they too took birth in Vraja as gopīs. If one considers it from a neutral stance, one will find that the gopīs’ love in mādhurya-rasa is far superior to and more wonderful than the love of God found in any other rati. Of the gopīs Śrī Rādhikā is topmost; She is principal among the group leaders headed by Lalitā and Viśākhā. By great good fortune one gains entry into Lalitās group. Those who desire to circumambulate Śrī Rādhā Kuṇḍa today try to live on the banks of Lalitā Kuṇḍa with this prayer in their heart. Some people consider Candrāvalī the topmost gopī, but the topmost achievement is to have the opportunity to surrender as Śrī Rādhās maidservant. She is the personification of mahābhāva. Śrī Rādhās name is secretly mentioned in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam because the author feared this literature would fall into the hands of materialists. But the most magnanimous Śrī Gaurasundara and my spiritual master, Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī Prabhu, have revealed information about Śrī Rādhā without hiding it from qualified devotees. The Padma Purāṇa states: yathā rādhā priyā viṣṇos tasyāḥ kuṇḍaṁ priyaṁ tathā sarva-gopīṣu saivaikā viṣṇor atyanta-vallabhā Just as Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is most dear to Kṛṣṇa, Her bathing pond is similarly dear. Of all the gopīs She is the most beloved of the Lord. Only by Śrī Rādhās mercy can one reside eternally on the banks of Rādhā-kuṇḍa, the topmost place in the entire creation. Therefore Śrī Rūpa Prabhu mentions taking bath in Rādhā-kuṇḍa in his ultimate instruction: kṛṣṇasyoccaiḥ praṇaya-vasatiḥ preyasībhyo ’pi rādhā kuṇḍaṁ cāsyā munibhir abhitas tādṛg eva vyadhāyi yat preṣṭhair apy alam asulabhaṁ kiṁ punar bhakti-bhājāṁ tat premedaṁ sakṛd api saraḥ snātur āviṣkaroti Of the many objects of favored delight and of all the lovable damsels of Vrajabhūmi, Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī is certainly the most treasured object of Kṛṣṇa’s love. And, in every respect, Her divine Kuṇḍa is described by great sages as similarly dear to Him. Undoubtedly Rādhā-kuṇḍa is very rarely attained even by the great devotees; therefore it is even more difficult for ordinary devotees to attain. If one simply bathes once within those holy waters, one’s pure love of Kṛṣṇa is fully aroused. “I have taken bath in Rādhā-kuṇḍa”; “I took a dip in Rādhā-kuṇḍa”; “I am a lump of flesh and blood”; “I am my wife’s maintainer”; “I am a sannyāsī”; “I am a brāhmaṇa; kṣatriya, vaiśya, or a śūdra” thinking in any of these ways does not give the qualification to bathe in Rādhā-kuṇḍa. What to speak of such materialistic conceptions, if we are filled with the conception of awe and reverence, we cannot bathe in Rādhā-kuṇḍa. We have to walk the path of Śrī Rādhās maidservants without imitating them (as the sakhī-bhekīs do). Simply decorating a male body as if it were female does not qualify one to serve Śrī Rādhā-kuṇḍa. ## 2: What is the difference between the paramahaṁsas who wear white, and the tridaṇḍa sannyāsīs? Some devotees who follow the regulative principles are encouraged to accept tridaṇḍa and on the path of attachment to wear white cloth instead of saffron out of respect for the paramahaṁsas. It is improper for devotees on the path of attachment to wear saffron. But if they harbor a cheating propensity in spiritual life, none of the prescribed paths will help. Despite maintaining material attachments, some devotees externally accept the symptoms of tridaṇḍa and wear saffron, deceiving ignorant people. Śrīla Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī wrote Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhī while living at Kāmyavana. He made a show of accepting sannyāsa, but was a paramahaṁsa who maintained deep attachment for the Lord in his heart. The point is that one has to give up all material conceptions. The external dress is not important. Those who are truly fixed in transcendence engage in the transcendental service of transcendental Śrī Rādhā in the transcendental Vraja, after attaining the transcendental body of a gopī on the transcendental grove on the bank of transcendental Rādhā-kuṇḍa. A person fixed in transcendence knows himself as one of Śrī Rādhās transcendental maidservants. Śrīla Jagannātha dāsa Bābājī Mahārāja was a disciple of Śrīla Madhusudana Dāsa, who performed bhajana at Surya-kuṇḍa. My spiritual master was a disciple of this Jagannātha dāsa. They had no tinge of a material conception in them. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (10.84.13) states: yasyātma-buddhiḥ kuṇape tri-dhātuke sva-dhīḥ kalatrādiṣu bhauma ijya-dhīḥ yat-tīrtha-buddhiḥ salile na karhicij janeṣv abhijñeṣu sa eva go-kharaḥ One who identifies his self as the inert body composed of mucus, bile, and air, who assumes his wife and family are permanently his own, who thinks an earthen image or the land of his birth is worshipable, or who sees a place of pilgrimage as merely the water there, but who never identifies himself with, feels kinship with, worships or even visits those who are wise in spiritual truth—such a person is no better than a cow or an ass. By considering ordinary water holy water and the gross material body the self, one can neither see nor bathe in Rādhā-kuṇḍa. Mundane sahajiyās think that by considering the gross bodies the self, by considering their wives and children their own, by considering imaginary objects God, by considering ordinary water sacred, and without understanding that the Lord’s pure devotees are their real well-wishers, they can still bathe in Rādhā-kuṇḍa. Śrīman Mahāprabhu said: dīkṣā-kāle bhakta kare ātma-samarpaṇa/ sei-kāle kṛṣṇa tāre kare ātma-sama, sei deha kare tāra cid-ānanda-maya aprākṛta-dehe tāṅra caraṇa bhajaya “At the time of initiation, when a devotee fully surrenders unto the service of the Lord, Kṛṣṇa accepts him to be as good as Himself. When the devotee’s body is thus transformed into spiritual existence, the devotee, in that transcendental body, renders service to the lotus feet of the Lord.”(Caitanya-caritāmṛta Antya 4.192-93) One’s spiritual body manifests when Vaiṣṇava qualities manifest according to his constitutional propensity. Matter can never become spirit; spirit is eternally spirit. We don’t have to bring our original spiritual consciousness down into our gross material conception. If the artificially dressed bodies of the sakhi-bhekis are unclothed, then their natural male bodies will be exposed. The topmost principle in the spiritual kingdom is to bathe in Śrī Rādhā-kuṇḍa.