Recently I meditated a lot about our relationship to Sri Krishna and how we should develop and cultivate such a relationship.

Krishna has a lot forms and names and we as sadhakas should focus on “our” Sri Krishna and our relationship towards Him…

Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita:

ye yathā māṁ prapadyante tāṁs tathaiva bhajāmy aham |
mama vartmānuvartante manuṣyāḥ pārtha sarvaśaḥ ||BG 4.11||

“As all surrender unto Me, I reward them accordingly. Everyone follows My path in all respects, O son of Pritha.”

Srila Vishvanatha Cakravartipad writes to this verse:

“In whatever way they worship me (prapadyante), I also give them the fruits of their worship (bhajami) in a similar manner.”

So we can see that Krishna reacts according to how we approach Him.

Now, as rupanuga-devotees, following externally Srila Rupa Goswami and internally Sri Rupa Manjari, we focus on Sri Krishna Who plays His pastimes in Goloka Vrindavana.

Srila Rupa Goswami writes in his masterpiece “Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu” about the utter importance to have a clear conception on our relationship with Vrajendra Nandana Sri Krishna
and how we should develop this most wonderful relationship.

kṛṣṇaṁ smaran janaṁ cāsya preṣṭhaṁ nija-samīhitam |
tat-tat-kathā-rataś cāsau kuryād vāsaṁ vraje sadā ||1.2.294||

“Remembering the Vṛndāvana form of Kṛṣṇa and His dear associates who have inclinations for service similar to one’s own, absorbing oneself in hearing topics related to them, one should always live in Vraja.”

sevā sādhaka-rūpeṇa siddha-rūpeṇa cātra hi |
tad-bhāva-lipsunā kāryā vraja-lokānusārataḥ ||1.2.295||

“Following after the inhabitants of Vraja, one should perform service in one’s physical body and in one’s siddha body, with a desire for a particular bhāva.”

Here we can wonderfully see how we should try to develop and cultivate our relationship with Krishna. We as individuals should desire for a certain type of inner mood (bhava).

We are utmost fortunate to be able to desire a particular bhava of a particular inhabitant of Vraja. This is the highest conception for Gaudiya Vaishnavas.
And in particular, to follow the gopis of Vrindavana and even more particular, to follow the close girlfriends of Radhika and even more particular, to follow the maidservants of Radhika´s most inner group.
This is the gift and the mercy of Sriman Mahaprabhu, established via Srila Rupa Goswami who wrote:

anarpita-carim cirat karunayavatirnah kalau
samarpayitum unnatojjvala-rasam sva-bhakti-sriyam
harih purata-sundara-dyuti-kadamba-sandipitah
sada hridaya-kandare sphuratu vah saci-nandanah

“May the Supreme Lord who is known as the son of Srimati Saci-devi be transcendentally situated in the innermost chambers of your heart. Resplendent with the radiance of molten gold,
He has appeared in the Age of Kali by His causeless mercy to bestow what no incarnation has ever offered before: the most sublime and radiant mellow of devotional service, the mellow of conjugal love.”

Krishna can be approached in many different ways and accordingly, He reveals Himself to the one who approaches Him.

In the Srimad Bhagavatam we can read:

mallānām aśanir nṛṇāṁ nara-varaḥ strīṇāṁ smaro mūrtimān
gopānāṁ sva-jano ‘satāṁ kṣiti-bhujāṁ śāstā sva-pitroḥ śiśuḥ
mṛtyur bhoja-pater virāḍ aviduṣāṁ tattvaṁ paraṁ yogināṁ
vṛṣṇīnāṁ para-devateti vidito rańgaṁ gataḥ sāgrajaḥ
(Verse 10.43.17)

“The various groups of people in the arena regarded Kṛṣṇa in different ways when He entered it with His elder brother. The wrestlers saw Kṛṣṇa as a lightning bolt, the men of Mathurā as the best of males, the women as Cupid in person, the cowherd men as their relative, the impious rulers as a chastiser, His parents as their child, the King of the Bhojas as death, the unintelligent as the Supreme Lord’s universal form, the yogīs as the Absolute Truth and the Vṛṣṇis as their supreme worshipable Deity.”

So it is immensely important how WE WANT TO SEE AND APPROACH Krishna.

In this regard, I also found a wonderful verse in the beloved Srimad Bhagavatam.

Analyzing and reading this awesome verse, we can gain insight in how vastly deep the verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam are and how they can be seen in “different” but “unifying” lights.

It is this amazing verse:

tvaṁ bhakti-yoga-paribhāvita-hṛt-saroja
āsse śrutekṣita-patho nanu nātha puṁsām
yad-yad-dhiyā ta urugāya vibhāvayanti
tat-tad-vapuḥ praṇayase sad-anugrahāya
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Verse 3.9.11)

“O my Lord, Your devotees can see You through the ears by the process of bona fide hearing, and thus their hearts become cleansed, and You take Your seat there. You are so merciful to Your devotees that You manifest Yourself in the particular eternal form of transcendence in which they always think of You.”

This is the translation of Srila AC Bhaktivedanta Swami, following the interpretation of the famous Bhagavatam-commentator Srila Sridhar Swami.

Interestingly enough, this verse allows another, equally correct translation.

“O my Lord, Your devotees can see You through the ears by the process of bona fide hearing, and thus their hearts become cleansed, and You take Your seat there. You are very kind upon the devotees who are eager to serve You.
Whatever body they meditate upon, which is favorable for their service and which they desire, You bestow upon them, so that You can accept their eternal service.”

Here is the translation of Srila Bhanu Swami of this verse and the commentary of Srila Vishvanatha Cakravartipad:

tvaṁ bhakti-yoga-paribhāvita-hṛt-saroja
āsse śrutekṣita-patho nanu nātha puṁsām
yad-yad-dhiyā ta urugāya vibhāvayanti
tat-tad-vapuḥ praṇayase sad-anugrahāya

“O Lord! You, who are approached by being heard about, seen and directly served, enter and remain in the lotus of your devotee’s hearts infused with bhakti-yoga. Much praised Lord! By your mercy, you bestow to them spiritual bodies appropriate to the mood they cultivate during sādhana.”

Commentary by Srila Vishvanatha Cakravartipad:

Bhakti, even without jñāna, delivers one from material existence. But more than that, by bhakti the Lord becomes dependent on the devotee. Bhāvita means “infused with.”
Amara-koṣa says bhāvita means infused in all three genders. You sit on the lotus in the devotees’ hearts infused completely (pari) with bhakti-yoga. Or the phrase can mean “in the devotees’ hearts, manifested by bhakti-yoga.”

Bhāvita is the past participle form. Bhakti-yoga is the cause of the Lord’s manifesting himself. You enter the hearts of the devotees and remain there (āsse). You do not leave.
This is confirmed by verse 5 – nāpaiṣi nātha hṛdayāmburuhāt sva-puṁsām: You do not give up the lotus of the devotee’s heart. Your path is first being heard about from the mouth of guru, then seen and then directly served.
By this path you are brought to the devotees’ lotus hearts.

The implication is that the devotees know this path of sādhana-bhakti well. The consequent implication is that the person who desires to attain the Lord should understand this path. Even without hearing, the devotees meditate on your various forms (vapuḥ) using their minds. You reveal (praṇayase) those forms to the devotee. This is the meaning according to Śrīdhara Svāmī.

te sādhaka-bhaktāḥ sva sva bhāvānurūpaṁ yad yad dhiyā bhāvayanti tat tad eva vapus teṣāṁ siddha dehaṁ praṇayase prakarṣeṇa tān prāpayasi aho te sva bhakta pāravaśyam iti bhāvaḥ – Or your devotees doing sādhana concentrate on their spiritual form according to their mood of love using their minds, and you have them attain (praṇayase) their spiritual bodies. You become dependent on your devotee.

Now, one might ask: “Oh my God! These are two completely different meanings of the verse. This can´t be right.”

Actually, these are not different meanings, but meanings from different perspectives. Actually, they complement each other and they are in perfect harmony.

“tat-tad-vapu” here in this verse can mean “the body of Krishna” or “the body of a siddha devotee”.

“You are so merciful to Your devotees that You manifest Yourself in the particular eternal form of transcendence in which they always think of You.”

“By your mercy, you bestow to them spiritual bodies appropriate to the mood they cultivate during sādhana.”

Earlier we mentioned that it is of utmost importance to have a clear conception of our desired relationship with Sri Krishna.
Now according to the love we cultivate in our relationship with Sri Krishna, He reveal Himself in that very form with which we want to have a relationship.

We cultivate our desired inner mood. This mood is called “sthayi bhava” and according to this mood, we will then SEE and INTERACT with the form Sri Krishna will reveal to us.

But how can we truly SEE and INTERACT with Sri Krishna? We can´t see Him with our material eyes and we can´t interact with Him with our material body. We need a spiritual body to identify us with.
When we attain self-realization, when we attain the realization of that spiritual body which is bestowed to us by Krishna, we can truly SEE and SERVE Him accordingly.

When we reach the stage of prema-bhakti, we realize our spiritual body and then Krishna will reveal to us the form of Himself which we wanted to love and serve. So both meanings of the verse are equally “valid”.

Krishna reveals Himself to us in our desired form of Himself and bestows upon us a suitable spiritual body which we already cultivated by inner contemplation during our time of sadhana-bhakti.

Srila Vishvanatha Cakravartipad writes in his commentary to the Bhakti rasamrita Sindhu:

“One performs service with sādhaka-rūpa—the present body—and with the siddha-rūpa—the body which is suitable for serving Vraja Kṛṣṇa in the particular type of rati or bhāva one desires, and which is meditated upon (antaś-cintitābhīṣṭa) through inner contemplation with a desire for a particular rati directed to one’s beloved Kṛṣṇa situated in Vṛndāvana (tad–bhāva-lipsunā).”

Srila Narottama das Thakur echoes the harmony of both statements and clearly states that we should have a conception of our desired spiritual body already during our practice (sadhana-bhakti).

yugala caraṇa sevi,
nirantara ei bhāvi,
anurāgī thākibo sadāya.
sādhana bhāvibo yāhā,
siddha-dehe pābo tāhā
rāga pathera ei se upāya
(Prema Bhakti Chandrika, verse 55)

“I will always think of the devotional service of the lotus-feet of the Divine Pair, and I will always remain attached to that.
Whatever I think of during my spiritual practice I will attain in my siddha deha when I reach perfection. This is the means of rāga bhakti.”

sādhane ye dhana cāi,
siddha dehe tāhā pāi,
pakkāpakka mātra se vicāra
apakke sādhana rīti,
pākile se prema-bhakti,
bhakati lakṣaṇa tattva sāra
(Prema Bhakti Chandrika, verse 56)

“The treasure I desire as a practitioner I will get when I attain my spiritual body; it’s just a question of being ripe or unripe.
The ripe stage is the stage of pure loving devotion and the unripe stage is the stage of practice. That is the essential truth about devotional principles.”

At one time, the sadhaka should approach Sri Gurudeva to receive information about his desired spiritual body and to receive guidance on how to realize it.

Srila Bhaktivinod Thakur writes:

sādhaker jokhon rāganugā mārga lobha hoy, tokhon
sad-gurur nikaṭa prārthanā korile tini sādhaker
ruci parīkṣā koriyā tāhār bhajan nirṇoyer
saṅge saṅge siddha-deher paricaya koriyā diben.

“When the sadhaka’s lobha for raganuga bhakti is awakened, he approaches his gurudeva with great humility and ask for instruction. If he does so, the bonafide guru first examines the disciple’s taste and then, along with devising the appropriate bhajan introduces him to his own siddha identity.”
(Śrī Caitanya-śikṣāmṛta, Part 6, chapter 5)

Srila Jiva Goswami tells us also about how mercifully Krishna bestows a spiritual body to a perfected soul who attained the most “ripened” stage of bhakti (see Thakur Mahasaya) :

vaikuṇṭhasya bhagavato jyotir-aṁśa-bhūtā vaikuṇṭha-loka-śobha-rūpā yā anantā mūrtayas tatra vartante
tāsām ekayā saha muktasyaikasya mūrtir bhagavatā kriyata iti vaikuṇṭasya mūrtir iva mūrtir yeṣām ity uktam
Prīti Sandarbha 10

“In the spiritual world, the Supreme Lord has unlimited spiritual forms, all are expansions of Himself illuminating that world.
With each one of those forms, the Lord enjoys pastimes with a single individual liberated soul.”

Srila Viśvanātha Cakravartipada explains in his commentary on Srila Rupa Goswami´s Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi:

ye idānīntanā rāgānugīya-sādhanavanto niṣṭhā-rucy-āsakty-ādi-kakṣārūḍhatayā kasmiṁścij janmani yadi jāta-premāṇaḥ syus te tarhi bhagavat-sākṣāt-sevā-yogyās tad-dehānta-kṣaṇa eva… tat-parikara-padavīṁ prāpsyanti |

atra kramaḥ rāgānurāgīya-samyak-sādhana-niratāyotpanna-premṇe bhaktāya cira-samaya-vidhṛta-sākṣāt-sevābhilāṣa-mahotkaṇṭhāya kṛpayā bhagavatā sa-parikara-sva-darśanaṁ sevā-prāpty-anubhāvakam alabdha-snehādi-prema-bhedāyāpi sādhaka-dehe’pi svapne’pi sākṣād api sakṛd dīyata eva |
tataś ca śrī-nāradāyeva cid-ānanda-mayī gopikākāra-tad-bhāva-vibhāvitā tanuś ca dīyate |
tataś ca vṛndāvanīya-prakaṭa-prakāśe kṛṣṇa-parikara-prādurbhāva-samaye saiva tanur yoga-māyayā gopikā-garbhād udbhāvyate ukta-nyāyena snehādi-prema-bheda-siddhy-artham ||
Ānanda-candrika

“Those persons who are practicing rāgānuga-bhakti at the present time are on various stages of advancement such as niṣṭhā, ruci, āsakti, etc.
If they should at any future lifetime attain to pure love (prema), then they will become fully qualified to serve the Lord. It is only then that they will receive a body appropriate for rendering such service and will become actual associates of the Lord.

Such a practitioner of rāgānugā bhakti, when he finally attains prema due to his dedicated performance of sādhanā and is completely absorbed in the anxiety of desire, even though he has not attained the higher stages of love of God, such as sneha, etc. (which are actually impossible to attain in a material body), then the Lord himself appears along with his eternal associates and gives a direct vision of himself as well as the opportunity to engage in direct service—even if only once in a dream. Then he gives a spiritual body (in this case, the body of a gopī) just in the way one was given to Nārada Muni at the time of his death. After that, when the Lord makes his appearance in some material universe, his internal potency, Yogamāyā, causes that very body to be born in the womb of some gopī in the Vṛndāvana of that world. Then in that body, the higher stages of prema are realizable by the devotee.”

How wonderfully our acaryas are in harmony.

Now, which is our “favorite” Sri Krishna? It is the Krishna of our beloved Swamini Radhika.

The perfect example of the famous “think about Me”-verse in the Bhagavad Gita (Always think about Me, become My devotee by practicing bhakti, worship Me and offer obeisances to Me. Thus, you will certainly be with Me. This I promise to you because you are most dear to Me – Bhagavad-gita, 18.65) is Krishna´s most beloved, Srimati Radhika.

Not one second is She “not thinking” about Krishna. In fact, it is not even possible for Her to “forget Krishna”.
Her love is so great and wonderful that even Krishna Himself wanted to come to check it out. She experiences this love at every moment and it increases by the second.

By Sriman Mahaprabhu´s unlimited mercy, we too have the chance to be able to “think about Krishna” like Radhika does. Her girlfriends, the gopis of Vrindavana are masters of this art of thinking. And of all the gopis, Radhika´s maidservants come very close to Her thinking and feeling.

In fact, they feel and think the same as Radhika does by being Her most intimate friends.

By following Sri Gurudeva who is in one of the paramparas coming from Sriman Mahaprabhu, we can practice this thinking about Krishna in the most perfect way as maidservants for Radhika.
We only think about Krishna, because He is Radhika´s fix point in Her thinking and because She loves Him so much.

As Her dedicated maidservants, we have no “thinking about Him”-business otherwise.

How do we think about Krishna?

We think about Him by imagining our Selves as being always together with Srimati Radhika. We think about Him by helping our beloved Radhika in how can She meet with Him.
We think about Him by talking to Her about Him when She is not with Krishna. All our thoughts about Krishna are centered on our service to Srimati Radhika. Our only thoughts are: “How can we bring both of Them together?”.

So, we start by listening to the wonderful pastimes of Radha and Krishna. In sadhu-sanga we hear about Them and we fall in love with Them. There is nothing more beneficial for the sadhaka than to hear about the pastimes of Radha and Krishna from the mouth of advanced Vaishnavas.

By listening to and reading these pastimes we develop greed in us to immerse our Self in these pastimes. We begin to desire to become one of the closest friends of Srimati Radhika and by constantly thinking and hearing these pastimes, they get real more and more and we become pure more and more.

Which Krishna we want to love? The darling of our Radhika.

This Krishna, Who is madly in love with Her:

“Even Lord Madhusūdana (Kṛṣṇa), who is hard to attain even by the best of yogīs, feels Himself greatly blessed when He is touched by even the slightest playful breeze coming from the tip of Śrī Rādhikā’s garment.
I offer my obeisances to any direction in which I may find this daughter of Mahārāja Vṛṣabhānu!” (Radha Rasa Sudhanidhi)

This Krishna, Who longs for Her foot-dust:

“I remember the foot-dust of Śrī Rādhikā, which is held on the heads by the very generous gopīs of Vraja who desire the position which, with all its beloved attributes, is even desired for by Kṛṣṇa, who wears a crown of peacock-feathers, and which is a wish-yielding Kāmadhenu-cow of rasa for all those who worship it with a festival of loving emotions.” (RRS)

…Who needs to be reived:

“Glory to some nikuñja devī (bower goddess), Who revives the son of Mahārāja Nanda (Kṛṣṇa), Who has fainted out of affliction caused by millions of Cupid’s darts, with the nectar-waves of Her bodily contact, which is the essence of divine blissful rasa!” (RRS)

“O Śrī Rādhike! O jewel of play! When will I see You frowning Your eyebrows and hear You saying “no no!” (although You are actually very happy) when Kṛṣṇa, the best of lovers, falls at Your feet and begs You for a delicious festival of embraces?” (RRS)

tribhanga-bhangima-rupam
venu-randhra-karancitam
gopi-mandala-madhya-stham
sobhitam nanda-nandanam

“His form bent in three places, His hands bent over the holes of His flute, the son of Nanda Maharaja Lord Krishna stands resplendent amidst a circle of gopis.”

na pāraye ‘haṁ niravadya-saṁyujāṁ
sva-sādhu-kṛtyaṁ vibudhāyuṣāpi vaḥ
yā mābhajan durjara-geha-śṛṅkhalāḥ
saṁvṛścya tad vaḥ pratiyātu sādhunā

“I am not able to repay My debt for your spotless service, even within a lifetime of Brahmā. Your connection with Me is beyond reproach. You have worshiped Me, cutting off all domestic ties, which are difficult to break. Therefore, please let your own glorious deeds be your compensation.”

Exactly THIS Krishna. Indebted to the gopis.

Jay Sri Radhe