True Love and Vishaya-Ashraya theory

Love and Truth were lovers.

Love became the Love of Truth,
and Truth became the Truth of Love,
and together, they were True Love.

Love should be looked at as a verb, not just a noun. Love is as love does. There is no place in love for abuse. Unless we uproot the untruth from our self knowledge, there is no possiblity of love. There are no magical beliefs that we can dress our ignorance in: not even the most noble-sounding of lies, can make us eligible of love.

Krishna is a man. Like all men, he thinks he is God. And this is his problem. His lie. Until he gives it up and becomes a man, he is lost to love.

This is our current working theory. And because Krishna is a man, having nara-līlā, we have to make the connection to our human lives and our human reality. Here is what Bell Hooks says in her book All About Love:

"All my life I have thought of love as primarily a topic women contemplate with greater intensity and vigor than anybody else on this planet. I still hold this belief even though visionary female thinking on the subject has yet to be taken as seriously as the thoughts and writings of men. Men theorize about love, but women are more often love's practitioner. Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it."

This is a great statement of the problem, which we can recognize as a perfect confirmation of viṣaya/āśraya theory. Though in fact the one feeling love is the āśraya and the object of love is the viṣaya, regardless of gender, in both poetic description and practical experience, the former tends to be female, the latter the male.

Hooks herself is of the opinion this is a learned behavior and not innate in males and females; that really everyone is basically the same in their need for love, because if not, why would men even theorize about love? Nevertheless, in her book, she indicates the extent to which this "learned behavior" vitiates relationships and achievement of the true goal of love, which is a sacred mutuality.

Whether we accept that the tendencies of men and women are innate or learned, the true power of human nature is that we are free to combat the dictates of both nature and nurture. That is what defines us as humans with free will. In learning the art of love, the conditions of our respective genders are both a source of energy even as they are a source of obstacles to be overcome.

In my understanding, what we call the "material ego" though of course existing in both genders, is most solidly exemplified in the male ego. And that is why symbolically we accept the ideal feminine as the higher ideal, in Radha.

Krishna in the Rāsa-līlā of the Bhāgavatam is still God, the bahu-vallabha, in other words he has all the power and pleasure conceivable, but the lesson of the Gīta-govinda is that he has to surrender in exclusivity to his "pleasure potency" in order to find fulfillment in love. This is the point of our Dual Divinity. We are not Deists who worship a God "out there."

In other words Vaikuntha is not on our itinerary because where there is no genuinely mutual surrender of power, there is no love. Whatever kind of power. As Jung says, "Where the will to power is paramount, love will be lacking."

Power is the desire to be viṣaya rather than āśraya. But it is better to love than to be loved. And the whole religious process of devotion is to prepare us for that capacity to manifest love in this world, first in I-Thou relationships and then in community.

Krishna cannot love Radha properly until he knows what it is to be a woman, i.e., āśraya. Of course, in practical human terms, this is never entirely possible nor even desirable. But there must be comprehension and empathy on a very deep level in order for the unity of love to be effectuated. So, in other words, Krishna has to make Radha his guru; He has to internalize her and her mood of love. When he understands the truth of his need for her love, and the power her love has over him, he must act as the servant of Love. And we must follow, especially we men.

This is how people misunderstand Sahajiyaism. As soon as they here the word sex or erotic love, they immediately conclude that the man is acting from the male-ego platform, appropriating to himself the role of the viṣaya, but in fact he is learning the art of love from his beloved sādhikā partner. In other words, like Chaitanya, learning how to be a woman, i.e., an āśraya of love. This is the only way to love.

Again, with reference to Chaitanya, the rasa of Gīta-govinda and similar texts can only be perceived from the standpoint of a gopi, by which is meant woman, or female identity. The difference between a sādhaka and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, is that he is not relishing even in the spirit of Krishna serving Radha, but both sādhaka and sādhikā are in the mood of servants to the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna together. By doing so, they assimilate Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mood and they enter into the nitya-nikuñja. They create the līlā in their living reality and they relish that līlā as the manifestation of rasa, in their living reality. That is the meaning of mañjarī-bhāva.

So, as I understand it, when it comes to love, the masculine ego -- which in Vaishnavism is often called "the desire to be God" or the object of love, the viṣaya -- is the main problem. Krishna, who really is God, demonstrates the solution to the problem in his līlā when he surrenders to Radha. But in order to truly be able to love, he must know how to identify with her. This is also the case with a human man. There is no love without empathy, without identification. That capacity to empathize is the root of individual love and universal love also. So Mahaprabhu symbolizes and exemplifies that particular secret to love, which men have great difficulty with. These days we call it accessing your feminine side, etc.