Transcendental love is very different from all forms of love with which we are familiar in the world. The only object of transcendental love is Sri Krishna. Sri Krishna can never be the object of the so-called love of our mundane estate. The Biblical dictum, “Love God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,” is not an invitation for the practice of earthly love towards God.

How, indeed, can it be possible to love man without loving God? As a matter of fact we cannot really love anybody unless we love God. But we cannot also love any other entity exactly in the same way as we love Sri Krishna. The one process is categorically different from the other. The word maitri is used to denote the love of one soul for another soul. Maitri is qualitatively different from prema. The servant loves the master differently from the way he loves a fellow servant. He should not love a fellow servant in exactly the same way as he loves his only master. One cannot, of course, love his worldly brother, father or mother as one loves another soul, or as he loves Sri Krishna. 

The Unique Divine Sexological Relationship: The Only Purusa

The distinctive quality of prema consists in this that it carries the divine sexological reference. Sri Krishna is the only purusa; all other souls are prakritis. There are also spiritual prakriti-purusa and spiritual prakriti-prakriti forms all of whom are prakritis with reference to Sri Krishna. The prakriti-purusa form of soul loves Sri Krishna in the same way as the prakriti-prakriti form. The prakriti-purusa soul is not the divine purusa. He is not Sri Krishna. The formal masculinity of spiritual prakriti is no masculinity either to the divine purusa or the spiritual prakriti. For this reason prema, or the practice of love by all other entities towards Sri Krishna, refers to the unique divine sexological relationship.

The masculinity and the femininity of this world are again very different from the formal masculinity and femininity of pure souls. As a matter of fact the soul is never purusa in the sense in which the term is used in the scriptures or in this world. The soul has also no mundane sex as he has no mundane body. The soul is unborn. The soul is altogether immune from the jurisdiction of phenomenal nature. The soul is unmixed cetana (uneclipsed cognitive energy).

We are, nevertheless still, very far from the positive spiritual realization even after we are prepared to admit the difference between mundane and spiritual sex by mere intellectual conviction, as it is never possible for the eclipsed cognitive power of man to conceive the transcendental issue as it is. For such realization man requires to be fully helped by the initiative of the Absolute Himself. It is also necessary to be enabled to receive this initial help by the due exercise of the proper receptive activity.

The Teaching of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya

This help is most amply supplied by the teaching of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya. The Personality of Sri Krishna Caitanya reveals Himself, to us, in the form of the transcendental narrative of His lila, as the very acme of divine magnanimity. He is the only complete exponent of the sexological reference in the Divinity. The worship of the divine couple Sri Sri Radha-Krishna was taught by Him, by His word and example, as the consummation of all tentative forms of worship that have been revealed to the cognition of man by the causeless mercy of the divine will.

Sri Krishna Caitanya insists on the transcendence of the worship of Godhead with an emphasis that distinguishes His teaching from that of all the prophets and teachers of religion. The mystery of the worship of Sri Sri Radha-Krishna, taught and practiced by Him and His followers, is unapproachable by any mundane contrivance. It is for overlooking this fundamental consideration that the comparative study of religion by modern scholars has so utterly failed to produce unanimity of conviction. It is high time to pay our best attention to the proper method of approaching the transcendence, which is part and parcel of the revelations.

The necessity of transcendental guidance for being able to approach the Absolute in the only scientific way requires to be seriously pondered and fully acted up to in practice by modern religionists. The empiric methods are as misleading and meaningless as the attempt to read a record without caring to possess the knowledge of the script. The worship of Sri Sri Radha-Krishna is bound to remain far less intelligible to empiric scholars than the undechipered inscriptions at Mahenjodaro as they happen to be at the present moment and for an analogous reason.

On the proper method of the quest, which is all-important to the seeker of the truth, the teaching and career of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya shed a flood of light that was not available before Him. The entity of the seeker of the Absolute must needs be on the plane of the object of his search if he is to have a subject at all. Empiric theology, no less than empiric philosophy, and science are equally off the plane of worship. They are not less materialistic in their methods and conclusions regarding the Absolute than militant materialism that denies the very position of transcendence.

Revealed religion has suffered most grievously and most undeservedly alike at the hands of its empiric exponents and opponents. The teaching and career of the Supreme Lord offer the only constructive rebuttal of the vagaries of the empiric theologians, philosophers and scientists of all ages and countries that have misguided the world in its religious quest despite the real help that has been available from time immemorial in the shape of the revealed scriptures.

The central doctrine of the teaching of Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanya, in conformity with that of all the revealed scriptures of the world, refers to the divinity of the word or the transcendental spoken sound. The word is God. The name of God is God. The name of God is not any word on a par with the words or names for expressing the objects or ideas that are experienced by man in this world. There is, therefore, also a corresponding and consistent method of approaching the word by man with his present inadequate equipments. This method is part and parcel of the transcendental activity. It is only the transcendental in man that can approach the word on His plane. The preacher as well as the hearer of the word must follow this proper method, if they are to have real access to the word as He is. 

Guidance of Guru is Obligatory

The guru is no other than the transcendental person who is eligible to serve as the proper medium for the appearance of the word. The guidance of the guru is obligatory if man is to be able to avoid the method of futile empiricism in approaching the true meaning of the scriptures. The Supreme Lord Sri Krishna Caitanya enacted the role of the guru in order to teach the world the right method of following the different scriptures of the world. If the correct method is followed, everybody will obtain access to the plane of transcendence where there is no possibility of discord. So we earnestly appeal to our readers to bear in mind the epistemological method that is being followed in the propaganda of which this journal is the mouthpiece.

The initiative in serving the spiritual interest of all souls naturally lies with only pure serving souls in as much as they alone are the eternal mediums for the appearance of Sri Sri Radha-Krishna in and through their unalloyed service of Himself by all the faculties of their pure souls. But we have it in the revealed scriptures of the world that the Absolute Person, nevertheless, is pleased to manifest His descent to the plane of the conditioned soul in the form of the name or word.

Approach the Personality of Sri Krishna Through His Name

The word may be either descriptive of the Absolute, or the Absolute as the subject of such description. He is as a matter of fact both. The descriptions of the scriptures are truly the transcendental body of the Absolute. Nevertheless all words are not on a par with the Name who possesses all the potencies of the Absolute in the highest measure. It is possible to approach the personality of Sri Krishna through His Name. On the path of spiritual realization the Name makes His appearance even before the neophyte can have any realization of the form or any of the attributes of the divinity. The scriptures contain the descriptions of the form, attributes, activities and individual servants of Godhead. None of these are accessible to the eclipsed cognition of the neophyte till he has been purified of all earthly dirt by the preliminary practices of spiritual living. It is at this critical stage that the mercy of the Name alone becomes available to the humble seeker of His unalloyed service.

For this reason the service of the name Krishna, and not merely a descriptive designation, has been made available to all conditioned souls by the unparalleled mercy of the supreme teacher of all religions. It is this realism that constitutes the appropriate form of the divine dispensation of the present scientific age.

Radha is the Guru or the Eternal Counter Whole

But in the new dispensation there is a further revelation, namely, that even the Name cannot be available except by the mercy of the guru. Hence the Name, that has been offered by the Supreme Lord, is not merely the name of Sri Krishna but the coupled form, Sri Sri Radha-Krishna. The name of Radha precedes the name of Sri Krishna. Radha is the guru or the eternal counter whole and the source of the service of all individual souls who are the products of her essence.

It is not possible for the individual soul to chant the name of Sri Krishna except by willing subservience to the complete spiritual energy of whom he is a tiny spark. The service of the guru is, therefore, alone available to the individual soul in the truly unsolicited form. As soon as an individual soul is blessed by the real mercy of the guru he becomes an agent of the guru for conveying the message of the guru to all souls. But the individual soul, as he is not the principal but only the agent, cannot impart spiritual enlightenment in the form of the gift of the name Krishna. That is absolutely reserved for the plenary divine energy. The Harmonist seeks to carry the message of the guru to all sincere seekers of the truth.

Light Critique

Prema is our prayojana, our ultimate goal of life. The goal is first determined, then the means (abhidheya) and the relationship (sambandha) to that goal. Just as it is said, “No pain, no gain,” at the finish line, one may see the signpost, “No goal, no go.”

Sexology means “the study of sex.” But materialistic persons should determine their sexual gender from the viewpoint of God as the original male enjoyer or predominator. By trying to understand the mystery of sex without God, everyone falls prey to a competitive society between male and female.

Purusa means in the general sense, “male.” In the material world the male is the bread-winner and the prakriti, the “female,” is the bread-maker. Maybe, someone should inform these two worldly egos that love of Krishna is the bread. 

Epistemological refers to the theory of knowledge, its methods and validation. In the Harmonist as well as its child mouthpiece, Rays of Harmonist, knowledge of transcendence comes via following in the footsteps of the predecessor acaryas and by serving their lotus feet sincerely without duplicity and hypocrisy. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater is a puzzling term nowadays. In the face of societies gone awry one should think next though of drying the baby off, putting on his clothes, and giving him some life-sustaining milk, sometimes better known as rasa in a growing circle of conscious devotees who wish nothing better than wise old harmony.

Name is the maha-mantra: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.