Nitya-vihara and Achintya-bhedabheda
Those of you who follow this blog might wonder why there is so little activity. The fact is that I have started working, from morning to night,divā cārthehayā rājan, kuṭumbhābharaṇena vā.
I have said in the past that the monastic or eremetic lifestyle is really for those who have strong self-discipline. Those who do not have discipline ultimately have it imposed on them from outside. This is what is happening to me.
In a way, I am not unhappy, though I said to my wife that I did not find any fulfilment, nor did I expect to find fulfilment in the work I am doing. I do it, it is not strenuous. Indeed, I got a laugh today as I did a lengthy session of envelope stuffing--so it has come to this...
But I get an hour in the bus going and another hour coming. I chant. I am eating less and better. I am not less Krishna conscious, just less productive. I have these few hours left at the end of the day, when I am tired and dull, and I have to think, what project will I work on? Now that time is no longer available, what can I do about the Grantha Mandir, which is sitting there with hundreds of documents that need correcting or updating or adding.
I am correcting Bhagiratha Jha's commentary to the Gopala Tapani in the hope of completing my edition eventually. Since I am working on the section in Uttara Tapani where Durvasa tells Gandharvi that "Krishna is verily your husband" I have been reading Bhagiratha's lengthy refutation of parakiya rasa, which is even more elaborately expressed in the second chapter of Vrindavana-rasa-samiksha.
This evening I got back from work and was lying down listening to Prahlada's soothing album "Love Divine", which is really a homage to Nitai Gauranga. It made me realize just how different Gaudiyas are from the Nimbarkis. Bhagiratha just does not get separation. At one point he even says that the Gaudiyas concept of Radharani is inferior to even Durga because Durga can experience all of Krishna's lilas, whereas Radha is stuck in her particular lila and unaware of anything else! He is very expert in refuting all the arguments with scriptural quotations, and he says of Rupa Goswami, admiringly I think, but sadly, that one should not listen to devotees whose siddhanta opposes the scriptures.
Other aspects of Bhagiratha's disagreements lie in the concept of Yogamaya. He refuses to accept that yogamāyām upāśritaḥ means that Krishna subjects himself to the Yogamaya potency in order to experience another kind of joy. He says, "No one wants separation any more than anyone wants poverty."
The Nimbarkis, like most Vrindavan Vaishnavas, are worshipers of the nitya-vihāra. Krishna is Kunjabihari and he not only does not leave the Braj, he never leaves the kunja. Basically, there is a place in the cosmos where Radha and Krishna are making love without any respite for eternity. And there is a place where Radha and Krishna are conscious of their countless expansions and their infinite activities of creation, destruction and maintenance of the unlimited universes.
But those who have been blessed by Gauranga and washed in his tears, understand that the entire creation is built on a base of binaries, including not only Male and Female, but also union and separation. Just being is not enough, not even for God. Therefore God becomes. Becoming means that there has to be an unknown, even for the all-knowing, there has to be lack, even for the one who lacks or wants for nothing, there has to be obstacles even for the one who creates and destroys everything.
In fact, we really have to understand the deeper realms of acintya-bhedābheda here. Gaudiya Vaishnavas are not theists in the way that Muslims, Jews or Christians are. Vaishnavism was born in the land of the Upanishads, Buddha and Shankara. It is steeped in the concept of Oneness, ekam evādvitīyam, tat tvam asi. We are all a part of that Unity. The Creator God, Brahma, was long ago relegated to a secondary role, even though in early scriptures he is "brahma." The heavenly gods are relegated to mere big jivas. Who is this Krishna? Is he Jahweh or Allah, lording it over a world he creates out of nothing, ex nihilo?
In the Upanishadic concept, God is all things. He is the whole, and yet a part, and yet again he stands apart. Om pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idam.
So old Bhagiratha Jha does not understand the Yogamaya concept, in which God sacrifices his divinity, not for any other purpose than to experience finitude. Of course, Radha and Krishna ARE in the kunja all day and all night for all eternity. But sometimes they have to separate themselves from all that in order to appreciate it, at least in one, superlative manifestation somewhere.
Rasa is not rasa without amazement. How can anyone, even God, enjoy without becoming amazed? So could Bhagiratha Jha write a verse like this one--
aparikalita-pūrvaḥ kaś camatkāra-kārī
sphurati mama garīyān eṣa mādhurya-pūraḥ
ayam aham api hanta prekṣya yaṁ lubdha-cetāḥ
sarabhasam upabhoktuṁ kāmaye rādhikeva
Of course no one wants misery or separation. But Sanatan Goswami must have had some crazy realization when he puts these words into Krishna's mouth in Dvaraka--
tathāpi sambhoga-rasād api stutaḥ
sa ko'py anirvācyatamo manoramaḥ
pramoda-rāśiḥ pariṇāmato dhruvaṁ
tatra sphuret tad-rasikaika-vedyaḥ
That first part of the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta is a real eye-opener as it builds to this conclusion.
So, I who am so easily detoured, will make yet another detour, into chapters 46 and 47 of the Tenth Canto. I have to type these out for the Grantha Mandira eventually, but there is someone out there for whom I want to do this.
Everything is of course connected. Especially here, where all these millions of thoughts are flowing through my brain all day long, and yet they all come back to this eternal duel between oneness and difference. Yes, we are separated from God, and yet how can that be? He is as close to us, as Muhammad once said, as our jugular vein. Krishna's message, transported by Uddhava, is this--
bhavatīnāṁ viyogo me na hi sarvātmanā kvacit
yathā bhūtāni bhūteṣu khaṁ vāyv-agnir jalaṁ mahī
tathāhaṁ sa manaḥ prāṇa-bhūtendriya-guṇāśrayaḥ
Ah! No wonder the gopis were so angry with Krishna for his arrogant messages! How could he tell them to wait! How could he tell them that he was always present with them in some other divine brahmic manifestation, or in some other nitya-vihāra kuñja when they KNEW he was far away in Dvaraka. Even his sphūrtis, which he said were real--those visions in dreams and hallucination when they felt Krishna in their arms--were not enough. They only added to this suffering. I cannot explain this suffering--it is tad-rasikaika-vedyah.
When Krishna takes off in the rasa dance, on one level he knows what he is doing, on another he is helplessly in the thrall of Radharani. Call it Krishna, call it Yogamaya, call it lila, whatever. It is divine grace that throws us into the misery of separation, where we cannot think of anything else, just like the poor man who wins the lottery and then loses his ticket. He cannot think of anything else. Total absorption.
And he himself had to make excuses--I cannot help it, my dears, there are a few more demons to kill! I just have to satisfy Vasudeva and Devaki and the rest of my relatives. This duty, that duty--what about your duty to our love, Krishna! Don't you have anything to say about that?
And then, does he come back? For Jiva Goswami in the Gopāla-campū, he comes back. But in the Bhāgavatam, it is not so clear. Does he come back? Friedhelm Hardy starts his book on viraha bhakti with Forster's Godbole, singing "Come, come." But when asked by the Englishman, "Does he ever come?" the interestingly named Godbole says, "No, he never comes." He never comes, because he has always been there.
Try to stop thinking of Krishna. Bilvamangal challenges Krishna to get out of his heart. It's no big deal for you to throw down my hand and disappear from me. I am old and blind, after all. But you just try to get out of this prison where I have you locked up. Who is the doer here? Is it Bilvamangala, or is it Krishna, or is it some other force?
Krishna is God because he is rasa, raso vai saḥ. He is paramānanda, supreme bliss. He is paired with the supreme joy, his divine partner Radha, whose expansion is Yogamaya, to whom she also submits so that she will become angry with Krishna, even though he is never really unfaithful to her--how can he be when every woman is just a fragmentary part of Radha? Who can understand these things? Their inexplicability makes them a source of joy.
Does anyone understand what God really is? He is infinite in his wonder. But this little corner of God's infinite wonders is what has been given to us by Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The Christians understood a little bit when their God died on the cross and they insisted, against all the naysayers and philosophers, that it was indeed God, who had indeed become man, and had indeed experienced the cruelty of the crucifixion. And though he rose from the dead, it was his dying that was the real miracle. This too is a glimpse of rasa. What Christians call mystery, and what we call acintya.
And just one footnote--more acintya-bhedābheda. The lilas of Krishna and those of human beings are intertwined, like two colors of thread bundled together in one big, tangled ball.
I have said in the past that the monastic or eremetic lifestyle is really for those who have strong self-discipline. Those who do not have discipline ultimately have it imposed on them from outside. This is what is happening to me.
In a way, I am not unhappy, though I said to my wife that I did not find any fulfilment, nor did I expect to find fulfilment in the work I am doing. I do it, it is not strenuous. Indeed, I got a laugh today as I did a lengthy session of envelope stuffing--so it has come to this...
But I get an hour in the bus going and another hour coming. I chant. I am eating less and better. I am not less Krishna conscious, just less productive. I have these few hours left at the end of the day, when I am tired and dull, and I have to think, what project will I work on? Now that time is no longer available, what can I do about the Grantha Mandir, which is sitting there with hundreds of documents that need correcting or updating or adding.
I am correcting Bhagiratha Jha's commentary to the Gopala Tapani in the hope of completing my edition eventually. Since I am working on the section in Uttara Tapani where Durvasa tells Gandharvi that "Krishna is verily your husband" I have been reading Bhagiratha's lengthy refutation of parakiya rasa, which is even more elaborately expressed in the second chapter of Vrindavana-rasa-samiksha.
This evening I got back from work and was lying down listening to Prahlada's soothing album "Love Divine", which is really a homage to Nitai Gauranga. It made me realize just how different Gaudiyas are from the Nimbarkis. Bhagiratha just does not get separation. At one point he even says that the Gaudiyas concept of Radharani is inferior to even Durga because Durga can experience all of Krishna's lilas, whereas Radha is stuck in her particular lila and unaware of anything else! He is very expert in refuting all the arguments with scriptural quotations, and he says of Rupa Goswami, admiringly I think, but sadly, that one should not listen to devotees whose siddhanta opposes the scriptures.
Other aspects of Bhagiratha's disagreements lie in the concept of Yogamaya. He refuses to accept that yogamāyām upāśritaḥ means that Krishna subjects himself to the Yogamaya potency in order to experience another kind of joy. He says, "No one wants separation any more than anyone wants poverty."
The Nimbarkis, like most Vrindavan Vaishnavas, are worshipers of the nitya-vihāra. Krishna is Kunjabihari and he not only does not leave the Braj, he never leaves the kunja. Basically, there is a place in the cosmos where Radha and Krishna are making love without any respite for eternity. And there is a place where Radha and Krishna are conscious of their countless expansions and their infinite activities of creation, destruction and maintenance of the unlimited universes.
But those who have been blessed by Gauranga and washed in his tears, understand that the entire creation is built on a base of binaries, including not only Male and Female, but also union and separation. Just being is not enough, not even for God. Therefore God becomes. Becoming means that there has to be an unknown, even for the all-knowing, there has to be lack, even for the one who lacks or wants for nothing, there has to be obstacles even for the one who creates and destroys everything.
In fact, we really have to understand the deeper realms of acintya-bhedābheda here. Gaudiya Vaishnavas are not theists in the way that Muslims, Jews or Christians are. Vaishnavism was born in the land of the Upanishads, Buddha and Shankara. It is steeped in the concept of Oneness, ekam evādvitīyam, tat tvam asi. We are all a part of that Unity. The Creator God, Brahma, was long ago relegated to a secondary role, even though in early scriptures he is "brahma." The heavenly gods are relegated to mere big jivas. Who is this Krishna? Is he Jahweh or Allah, lording it over a world he creates out of nothing, ex nihilo?
In the Upanishadic concept, God is all things. He is the whole, and yet a part, and yet again he stands apart. Om pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idam.
So old Bhagiratha Jha does not understand the Yogamaya concept, in which God sacrifices his divinity, not for any other purpose than to experience finitude. Of course, Radha and Krishna ARE in the kunja all day and all night for all eternity. But sometimes they have to separate themselves from all that in order to appreciate it, at least in one, superlative manifestation somewhere.
Rasa is not rasa without amazement. How can anyone, even God, enjoy without becoming amazed? So could Bhagiratha Jha write a verse like this one--
sphurati mama garīyān eṣa mādhurya-pūraḥ
ayam aham api hanta prekṣya yaṁ lubdha-cetāḥ
sarabhasam upabhoktuṁ kāmaye rādhikeva
What is this amazing form that springs before me, so deep and full of sweetness!This is called mādhurya.
Never before have I seen anything like it, so wondrously does it amaze me.
Seeing it has suddenly fill my mind with desire to enjoy, just like Radha does. (Lalita-mādhava 8.34)
Of course no one wants misery or separation. But Sanatan Goswami must have had some crazy realization when he puts these words into Krishna's mouth in Dvaraka--
sa ko'py anirvācyatamo manoramaḥ
pramoda-rāśiḥ pariṇāmato dhruvaṁ
tatra sphuret tad-rasikaika-vedyaḥ
Even so, more praiseworthy than even the joy of union is separation, which is beyond explanation, full of charm. It ultimately transforms most assuredly into an abundance of joy. Only those who have relished this rasa can understand such matters. (Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta 1.7.126)
That first part of the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta is a real eye-opener as it builds to this conclusion.
So, I who am so easily detoured, will make yet another detour, into chapters 46 and 47 of the Tenth Canto. I have to type these out for the Grantha Mandira eventually, but there is someone out there for whom I want to do this.
Everything is of course connected. Especially here, where all these millions of thoughts are flowing through my brain all day long, and yet they all come back to this eternal duel between oneness and difference. Yes, we are separated from God, and yet how can that be? He is as close to us, as Muhammad once said, as our jugular vein. Krishna's message, transported by Uddhava, is this--
yathā bhūtāni bhūteṣu khaṁ vāyv-agnir jalaṁ mahī
tathāhaṁ sa manaḥ prāṇa-bhūtendriya-guṇāśrayaḥ
Ah! No wonder the gopis were so angry with Krishna for his arrogant messages! How could he tell them to wait! How could he tell them that he was always present with them in some other divine brahmic manifestation, or in some other nitya-vihāra kuñja when they KNEW he was far away in Dvaraka. Even his sphūrtis, which he said were real--those visions in dreams and hallucination when they felt Krishna in their arms--were not enough. They only added to this suffering. I cannot explain this suffering--it is tad-rasikaika-vedyah.
When Krishna takes off in the rasa dance, on one level he knows what he is doing, on another he is helplessly in the thrall of Radharani. Call it Krishna, call it Yogamaya, call it lila, whatever. It is divine grace that throws us into the misery of separation, where we cannot think of anything else, just like the poor man who wins the lottery and then loses his ticket. He cannot think of anything else. Total absorption.
And he himself had to make excuses--I cannot help it, my dears, there are a few more demons to kill! I just have to satisfy Vasudeva and Devaki and the rest of my relatives. This duty, that duty--what about your duty to our love, Krishna! Don't you have anything to say about that?
And then, does he come back? For Jiva Goswami in the Gopāla-campū, he comes back. But in the Bhāgavatam, it is not so clear. Does he come back? Friedhelm Hardy starts his book on viraha bhakti with Forster's Godbole, singing "Come, come." But when asked by the Englishman, "Does he ever come?" the interestingly named Godbole says, "No, he never comes." He never comes, because he has always been there.
Try to stop thinking of Krishna. Bilvamangal challenges Krishna to get out of his heart. It's no big deal for you to throw down my hand and disappear from me. I am old and blind, after all. But you just try to get out of this prison where I have you locked up. Who is the doer here? Is it Bilvamangala, or is it Krishna, or is it some other force?
Krishna is God because he is rasa, raso vai saḥ. He is paramānanda, supreme bliss. He is paired with the supreme joy, his divine partner Radha, whose expansion is Yogamaya, to whom she also submits so that she will become angry with Krishna, even though he is never really unfaithful to her--how can he be when every woman is just a fragmentary part of Radha? Who can understand these things? Their inexplicability makes them a source of joy.
Does anyone understand what God really is? He is infinite in his wonder. But this little corner of God's infinite wonders is what has been given to us by Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The Christians understood a little bit when their God died on the cross and they insisted, against all the naysayers and philosophers, that it was indeed God, who had indeed become man, and had indeed experienced the cruelty of the crucifixion. And though he rose from the dead, it was his dying that was the real miracle. This too is a glimpse of rasa. What Christians call mystery, and what we call acintya.
And just one footnote--more acintya-bhedābheda. The lilas of Krishna and those of human beings are intertwined, like two colors of thread bundled together in one big, tangled ball.
Comments
Thank you very much for your comment. Though I have decided to suspend publishing blogs for the time being, I felt I had to answer you here, as a matter of politeness.
It is too bad that in all the times we have met, we have never had the chance to discuss any of these things. I never had any idea that you had read anything of mine. It would no doubt have been easier for you to make your considerations clearer in person, even though writing also has its advantages. And, of course, if you feel that by expressing yourself in French, you would be able to make yourself clearer, I have no problem with that.
I am not sure exactly what you are refering to when you ask if I really believe what I write. I do not consider myself a completely free thinker, i.e. someone "qui, en matière religieuse , ne se fie qu'à la raison, qui ne veut être influencé par aucun dogme établi." In fact, my approach is much more traditional than that.
The complete human being has not only a heart, but a head and a body--in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, we believe in a spiritual body, and even that the so-called material body is spiritualized by engaging in devotional service. This means that even though bhakti is the center of all the yogas, reason and the senses must be engaged in the service of bhakti. I always remember that prema is the prayojan, no matter how far short of the goal I fall.
So I am a bhakta before being an intellectual, and I am only using reason in the service of understanding the message that has come to me through my experience of devotional practice and through my study of the devotional scriptures, especially the insights of Sri Rupa Goswami. I consider myself the unalloyed follower of Sri Chaitanya and the six Goswamis.
Now considering what I have to say about sexuality, that may seem odd, since we have seemingly incontrovertible proof that there is absolutely no place for sexuality in the bhakti path, or indeed any yogic path whatsoever.
I feel that this is a misunderstanding. I do not deny that the approach to bhakti that renounces all sexual practice is a legitimate one, but I simply don't think that it is the natural path. Nor do I think that sexuality has to be renounced (or sublimated) in order to achieve perfection in devotion. In fact, I believe that it is far more natural or easier (sahaja) to engage in devotional practice with a partner of the opposite sex, using the natural love that exists between the sexes as an engine for devotional experience. The only real consideration is that both partners be committed sadhakas. This means that the misogyny that is the natural tendency of celibate-dominated paths is completely rejected. The symbol of the Divine Couple and the honor given to the divine feminine in Srimati Radharani must be given a functioning role, nay a place of honor, in the everyday practices and attitudes of aspirants to prema-bhakti.
Because I happen to have a little knowledge of Freud and Jung (and others), and happen to find that their theories, each in their own way, add credence to my understanding, I sometimes quote them. However, the principal source of my inspiration is always the Divine Couple, Sri Sri Radha and Krishna, and the theologies that have been developed around them, especially that of Srila Rupa Goswami. However, all the Vraja-based Vaishnava sampradayas have a generally similar point of view and I do not mind hearing what they have to say.
I am thus not in some kind of "spiritual puberty" where my only motivation is to "montrer le doigt à l'autorité." The positions I have taken are the fruit of a long and arduous engagement with this path, to which I have been completely committed for 36 years now. As such, I am eternally grateful to all my gurus and all the Vaishnavas, of all sampradayas, and I offer them my humblest respects again and again, begging them to be merciful to me and not to reject me because I have some ideas that appear different from theirs and radical to the orthodoxy.
In our Western society we have a great deal of hand-wringing about sexuality. The extremes of complete liberty and complete renunciation are both complete failures, in my opinion. Sahajiyaism is often misunderstood as some kind of libertinism. It is not. It is a sadhana that must be practised with great care. Like all spiritual paths, it is full of pitfalls and dangers--kSurasya dhArA, as the Upanishad says. It is, however, extremely powerful and fully complementary to the other devotional practices of sravanam, kirtanam, smaranam, vandanam, etc.
My current situation makes it difficult for me to speak about these things without compromising myself further. God challenges us at all times, and sometimes it is difficult to meet that challenge. Strangely enough, religion can be a bigger challenge than irreligion when cultivating the path of prema. Raghunath Das says, na dharmaM nAdharmaM zruti-gaNa-niruktaM kila kuru. This is why I pray for the mercy of the Lord, the guru and the devotees, to help me do the right thing, for their sake.
I greatly appreciate your kind well wishes. I beg to remain your humble servant,
Jagadananda Das.
In fact, I have a fundamental philosophical objection to the kind of hagiography that takes the spiritual master to be an eternally perfect icon flown in from the spiritual world, in other words, a spiritual master as something other than human. I do not believe that the guru comes in two dimensions only. The guru must be human for bhakti sadhana to have any meaning.
The reason for this is that in the dichotomy of being and becoming, it is becoming is what allows the jiva to experience ananda. Ananda, or rasa, is not a static, undifferentiated state, but one of evolution into God's infinite being. It is an adventure that God himself is experiencing and through which he also experiences rasa.
The thing about telling someone to just "chant and be happy" is that it only takes one half of the achintya-bhedabheda equation—that is the part that is about "being." Yes, we are all eternal particles of sat-chit-ananda, eternally united with God and we need only remember that in order to access an eternal state bliss. But that is only half of the story.
Do you think you could tell the gopis to just "chant and be happy"? Was Ramachandra Puri not telling Madhavendra Puri to just "chant and be happy"? To tell someone to be happy with being alone and not with becoming is like telling him to be a jnani and not a bhakta. The sat-chit-ananda of the jnani is not the same as that of the bhakta.
What is the meaning of the jiva's being separated from Krishna by the curtain of Maya? Is it simply a punishment for an original sin that is so far in the past that no one can remember it? That seems to be the story we have been told, but I think the rasa lila reveals another, deeper message. The rasa lila and the rest of the gopi cycle in the Bhagavatam is a philosophy of suffering. Suffering is separation from Krishna, which is simply Krishna's way of making it possible for the jiva to experience the infinite ananda of the loving relationship with Him.
Here is a quote from Schiller, a 19th century German philosopher--"Being is sensible only in becoming; in the latter, rather, it is itself posited as eternity. But in the actualization (of being) through opposition, there is necessarily a becoming. Without the conception of a humanly suffering God--a conception common to all the mysteries and spiritual religions of the past--history remains wholly unintelligible." (Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit, Schellings Werke, ed. A. Weiss, 3, 499 (1907).
This statement summarizes much of what I am getting at. The "concept of a humanly suffering God" means Krishna himself suffering desire. It is all in the idea of God voluntarily relinquishing his divinity in order to experience uncertainty, and therefore rasa. But this concept comes later, in the second rasa-lila, that of the Gita Govinda. The Bhagavata rasa-lila sees things from the point of view of the jiva, which is what I am mainly talking about here.
Did the gopis not have obstacles to overcome? Did they not have to suffer? Some gopis were held back by their husbands and confined to their rooms. They had to give up their bodies to be able to join Krishna. Was this not hard to do? We think that the gopis are nitya-siddhas, so they did not have to overcome any challenges in order to attain Krishna, but if they did not, then what would be the meaning of Krishna's praising them by saying durjara-geha-zRGkhalAM saMvRzcya ("You cut off the unbreakable chains of household life" 10.32.22) or Uddhava saying, dustyajam Arya-pathaM svajanaM ca hitvA ("who abandoned the path of civilized life and kinfolk, which are so hard to give up?" 10.47.58)?
If you look in the introduction to my Mystic Poetry, you will see that I have written a little about Jiva Goswami's analysis of separation.
Krishna sends a message from Uddhava in which he says that he is always present to them in the form of Brahman or Paramatma. Well, the gopis know this, but that does not satisfy them. This is like Krishna telling the gopis to chant and be happy. I am everywhere, so what's your problem. The gopis have a problem with that philosophy, however.
Then Krishna suggests that they are present with him in another manifestation, somewhere. This is like saying that lila-smaranam is a substitute for separation. (There are some in the Gaudiya Math who distinguish themselves from the "sahajiyas" by saying that they (the GM) worship in separation, whereas the sahajiyas imagine themselves through lila-smaranam to be in union with Krishna. The GM, following Madhavendra's and Mahaprabhu's path of love in separation are superior.) But this is nonsense. Lila-smaranam is not a substitute for separation, but is the only alternative for those suffering in separation. tava kathAmRtaM tapta-jIvanam. The gopis at the beginning of chapter 2 of the Panchadhyaya are engaged in lila-smaranam as a survival tactic. But just as it was not a substitute for sakshatkara there, it is not a substitute for sakshatkar for the sadhaka either. Anyway, the gopis will not take any substitutes for Krishna's physical presence.
And that goes for the third possibility, which takes place when Krishna is in Dvaraka and he tells the gopis, "I come to you in the hallucinations you have of me. In fact, I never leave Vrindavan. I am always there. You simply do not always see me (mayA parokSaM bhajatA)." There are some nice verses about this in the Hamsaduta (around verse 100). But the gopis will not accept this version either. They are very concrete-minded.
But in all this, Krishna is such a rascal that he says, "I can only reward you by making you suffer."
There is yet one more thing that I need to say: One loves the devotee because the devotee loves Krishna. The devotee in fact IS Krishna, in the sense that he has become one with Krishna's internal potency. Krishna is not Krishna alone, but Krishna and the internal potency, which includes Krishna's dhama and all his associates, including the sadhaka devotees in this world.
The sadhaka and sadhika thus do not love each other separate from Krishna, but because through each other, they enter the internal potency. Just like the gopis in chapter 10.30 who are imitating Krishna's pastimes in separation from Krishna.
It is not a replacement. It is a kind of ersatz perfection. But even the ersatz points to the real. As Karl Stern comments on the above quote from Schiller: "...between the spiritual order and order in the human family, there exists a correspondence. Thus the lives of men are related tothe order of ideas by a relevance that is more than psychological. All tragedy of the contingent and haphazard is a mysterious signpost towards the meaningful, the immutable and the harmonious."
This is how Krishna's lila stands in relation to our lives. Both point to one another as ideal and image.
You present your esoteric epistemology as if you KNOW that what you are saying is truth. For someone in your position all you can do when contemplating the esoteric nature of rasa lila is rely on the words of others. This is because you have no direct experience of what you are writing about. I can see that very clearly whenever you write on these topics. It's one thing to opine about the the fundamental aspects of bhagavat philosophy which you may have some realization of, but it is another thing entirely when you attempt to ascribe your inexperienced words and conceptions to a realm you have never actually directly experienced.
The nature of Radha Krishna's confidential lila is not something which an inexperienced person can opine on with authority. It's one thing if you simply repeat the words of people you believe to have actually directly experienced the inner workings of Radha Krishna rasa lila, it's another thing entirely to put forth your own esoteric interpretations as truth while lacking that direct experience. You can only get it wrong.
I only say this because I know you are not experiencing what you are writing about concerning the esoteric details of gaudiya tattva. There is a philosopher who can come up with myriad ways to contemplate esoteric truths, but due to the nature of those truths philosophers are unable to truly know if what they think is truth actually is truth. That is why Krishna says above all be a yogi, not a philosopher, connect with him, then you can have those truths shown to you, then you can truly know from experience what is reality. Truth isn't something which is arrived at by philosophical perambulations. Truth is something which is known by experience alone. It is revealed, not attained.