Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 6

She is always there in that realm of the earth atmosphere from where she used to work even when here,- the same now as she was when in our midst. She is available in the same way – only we must know how to approach, to attune ourselves.

She is accessible to our prayer in the same way, even to our prayer most puerile and foolish – if it is genuine, spontaneous, simple and candid, spoken with a child's innocence. She has a ear even to our nonsense.

And yet...

There is some difference between Her being here in the body and Her not being in the body here. The value of her being here in the body we begin to find out and appreciate only when she is not in the body. The appreciation, should it be always behind the experience, should it come always too late!!

When the Avatar comes down, we know, there come down with Him a whole host of His comrades and followers. They

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form a unit, a nucleus, of the new creation that the Avatar initiates. The twelve apostles of Christ are famous. Chaitanya too had his group of Parshadas; nearer to us Ramakrishna with his Vivekananda-group, is familiar to us all.

But the greatest of them all was Sri Krishna who came down with a whole bevy of 16000¹ Gopikas – divine powers, emanations – Matrikas – to rule His new creation, His divine Lila. He was the lord of the Overmind, the cosmic manifestation. He cannot be satisfied with less than cosmic dimensions!

It is said the Avatar descends with His family repeatedly age after age pushing forward the Earth's march towards its divine goal.

Krishna is always conceived as a boy, quite a young boy. Krishna and Radha typify the love of a young boy and a young girl. The conception is to take love at its first flowering, at its earliest and purest expression. Later on with age and youth advancing, it becomes passion, dark and turbid: it grows in force and amplitude, in its own way, but soon it becomes a wild fury to end usually in a catastrophe. The Vaishnava poet says: when childhood and youth meet and unite², then there is born the true love, love Divine. The Vaishnava discipline is to keep and maintain love at this stage and mode; for early youth is the best time and age (vaya kaisorakam vayam). Love Krishna the boy, Jet your heart's yearning be moulded in the crystal clear limpid stream welling out of the pure spring of a new-born heart – that is the way of purifying the vital urge, keeping it ever pure.

1 16000 is a symbolic figure. 16 means full fullness – purnasya purnam; four represents completeness and square of four is complete completeness. The figure 1000 again means integrality, wholeness, cosmocity – infinity. Krishna consciousness is all this. Sahasrasirsa purusah.

2

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The Vedantin seeks to cut away the vital urge – the Purusha separating itself and keeping apart and aloof from the movements of Prakriti, – to push them away from or outside your field of consciousness. It is the path after all of rejection and forgetfulness.

The Tantric is a hero, he does not avoid or bypass the difficulty, he faces the vital urge but not in his own strength, his own individual capacity but invokes the Mother's help; he calls the Mother; the Divine Prakriti into himself so that she fights the battle for him; he simply lies quiet behind, perhaps like the Lord Shiva at her feet. The battle is fought by the Divine herself, the victory he enjoys – even like the victory of the gods given to them by the Divine U ma.

But the Vaishnava has followed the safer and a more pleasant line of approaching the problem seeking refuge in Balakrishna.

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