The more the devotee experiences, the more the devotee’s devotional hope increases. When devotion appears in the heart the devotee feels himself unqualified, but he is also bound by strong hopes for attaining the beloved:

kva jano’yam atīva pāmaraḥ kva durāpaṁ rati bhāgbhir apy adaḥ
iyam ullalayaty ajarjarā gurur uttarṣa dhurā tathāpi mām
(Utkalikā Vallari 26, Rūpa Gosvāmī)

“Where am I, a very wicked soul and where is this love, that is rarely attained even by great devotees? Still I am agitated by strong hope for attaining this!”

This hope is nectar and is the support of life. This hope will be very strong in svarūpāveśa. This is a very beautiful thing. Much mischief will go by thinking ‘I am Rādhā’s maidservant!’ svarūpāveśa will set fire to the mischief of lust and anger in the heart.

From Sanātana Gosvāmī’s Bṛhad Bhāgavatāmṛta it is known that: “I don’t have the power to experience the bliss of meeting the Lord, separation is my practice.”

A person who has not experienced separation first cannot desire meeting. In svarūpāveśa separation will be experienced, not in bodily consciousness. In svarūpāveśa the practising devotee will constantly think: “When will I get it?” jala vinā yeno mīna, duḥkha pāya āyu-hīna “I feel so miserable I could die, like a fish out of water.”

The devotee sits down in the marketplace of mercy and gets what he desires by paying the price of having a feeling of dearth. The suitable place for having this feeling of dearth is Vraja-dhāma. Here the separated devotee wanders around, looking for his desired deity, weeping and lamenting. When Gopa Kumāra came to the terrestrial Vraja his condition was thus: sadā mahārtyā karuṇa svarair udan nayāmi rātrir divasāṁś ca kātaraḥ – “I spent all days and nights there weeping in great distress with a pitiful voice.”

In the material world a person is so distressed when he loses a child or so that he sits down in a lonely place without speaking to anyone, simply crying. “People of the world become mad when they are out of money. O Rādhe! When will I feel like this about You?”

When a devotee reaches that condition Svāminī cannot stay far away anymore.

The question may now arise: “Money and children are very tangible things, aren’t they? Rādhārāṇī is not such a tangible thing; how can we experience Her? How can we think of Her, while we have never experienced Her?”

The answer is: “You can’t experience Her because You don’t think of yourself as Her maidservant. This awareness will arise when You experience your relationship with Her. bhajana will swiftly be accomplished in this way”.

ānanda kori hṛdaya, ripu kori parājaya, anāyāse govinda bhajibo (Prema Bhakti Candrikā) – “My heart will be filled with joy when I defeat my enemies (lust, anger, greed etc.) and I will easily worship Govinda”.

A person in svarūpāveśa may be engaged in worldly duties, but his mind is always fixed on the lotus feet of his beloved deity. Śrīman Mahāprabhu compared these devotees with wives that have a paramour. The wife may be engaged in her householdwork, but her mind is always fixed on her paramour. When her household work is somehow accomplished she will run off to her lover. In the same way the devotee is also taking the lotus feet of Śrī Rādhā in his heart in a lonely place whenever he can get out of his material entanglement.

“Everyone in this world calls me ‘mine, mine’, but I don’t lend an ear to this. I will meditate on Svāminī’s lotus feet, Her form, Her attributes and Her pastimes. I will see to it that She will be satisfied with my devotional service!”

Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī has written the essential instructions down in his Upadeśāmṛta (8):

tan nāma rūpa caritādi sukīrtanānu-smṛtyoḥ kramena rasanā manasī niyojya
tiṣṭhan vraje tad anurāgi janānugāmī kālaṁ nayed akhilam ity upadeśa sāram

“Gradually the devotee must become more and more absorbed in engaging the tongue and the mind in chanting and remembering the glories of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa’s names, forms and pastimes, spending all his time living in Vraja in allegiance to the rāgānugā bhaktas. This is the quintessence of all instruction.”

(Srila Ananta das Babaji & Srila Ananda Gopal Goswami)