Bhakti rasa helps us evoke love towards the Divine and compassion towards humanity. As it is simply divine to love the divinity in our lover, it is divine to seek the lover in Divinity. Meera stands out in my mind. Her songs are full of the pangs of separation from her Lord Krishna. Her yearning to merge with her lover/husband is so beautifully expressed in many of her songs. She has poured out her feelings just as any other wife/lover would have felt. I find Meera’s life a depiction of all mankind. She accepts Lord Krishna as her Divine Husband and lives her life serving HIM, loving HIM. We too know that we should accept Divinity within all of us, yet…For her it was the external world that wanted to keep her away from her Divine Lover. For us, it is our emotions that has created veils around us and keeps us from loving or wanting to merge with HIM. Her pangs of separation is equal to the separateness we feel from our true Divinity and how our soul yearns to go back home.
And Radha? Why not her? Radha was able to be with her Divine Lover. She got to actually physically be with Lord Krishna. But her possesiveness came in the way. Lord Krishna made her aware through the Rasa Lila, the game/dance of Love that HE is not ONE but MANY. And was it adulterous of the Gopis to come and spend the night with Lord Krishna, dancing away on a moonlit night when their husbands were sleeping in their beds? By displaying that HE was many, the interpretation that comes to me, is that only the physical body of the husband and his causal body is different for all. The Divinity that dwells within is the same Lord Krishna HIMSELF. So that night the Gopis’ True Self was dancing with the Ultimalte SELF. And why depict this idea with dance? Dance is rhythm, dance is vibration, dance is Shiva-the Cosmic Dance and Dancer.
I was listening to a song from the movie DIL HAI KI MANTA NAHIN. In the song, O mere sapno ke saudagar, there is a stanza which goes like this…
Chanda ke rath pe, mein woh aayega ik din
Mujhe saath leke, woh jayega ik din
Meri maang bhar dega taaron se woh
Banayega dulhan mujhe
While humming this to myself it struck me that this is what happens during a significant phenomena in the spiritual aspirant’s journey. Kundalini Devi or shakti is said to remain coiled in the Muladhara centre. During ascension it rises in the central canal of the spinal cord, the substance/vehicle conducting it being the cerebro-spinal fluid. It rises to the top to the Thousand petaled Lotus. This is where Kundalini merges with her Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva is known to sport the crescent moon on his matted locks. Clairvoyants believe that the charged cerebro-spinal fluid is silver and electrical to look at. At the time of Kundalini awakening, many seers and saints have been witness to light brighter than the stars. The union or marriage of Kundalini Devi with Lord Shiva could not be less than celestial! These lines would be fitting for Devi, singing to her Lord!!
Our Puranas abound in many stories where Parvati Devi has to take human birth to ‘attone’ for. She is shown to do penance and earn her right to be next to her Lord once again in Kailasam, the abode of Lord Shva. In the cave at Amarnath, where Devi is told by Lord Shiva, the secret of immortality, Devi is supposed to have fallen asleep not hearing the secret in full. If the cave is likened to our central canal in the spine then Devi sleeps as Kundalini within us all. And the sleep is of maya. When we take birth, we forget or are asleep to who we are, that’s part of the Supreme Game that we come back again and again to indulge in.
So why doesnt Lakshmi Devi keep doing the same thing? Take birth after birth? It’s my understanding that as Vishnu whom we usually connote as love in his avataar as Lord Krishna, resides at our heart centre. This is where we have the Vishnu granti or the knot of Vishnu. Lakshmi Devi is always denoted as serving her Lord. Similarly, when we are in love we naturally wish to serve the person we love. Be it our parents, our lover/husband, our guru. So, I believe Lakshmi and Vishnu go hand in hand just like service and love. Only when there is love, do we wish to serve. Service of any nature can bring happiness only when there is love for it.
The separation of Lord Shiva and Devi Parvati is like our separation from or rather our feeling of separation from our Divine Source. Something similar to what Meera went through. The Devi’s sleep at the Amarnath cave is what we are doing! Asleep we are to the Divine Lover within us. Parvati Devi’s death and birth cycle is actually our cycle.
Join me once again…on my journey to discovery…from the lotus pond.
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