Jagat

pustaka-pratyayādhītaṁ nādhītaṁ guru-sannidhau | sabhā-madhye na śobhante jāra-garbhā iva striyaḥ || Learning taken from books according to one's own impressions, but not learned with a guru, is unfit for the public space, like a woman who is pregnant with an illegitimate child. (Chanakya) I think that actually having the association of rāgānugā sādhakas , my own diksha guru, Lalita Prasad Thakur, Ananta Das Babaji in Radha Kund and many others over the years, has made a bit of difference in the way that I approach the issue of rāgānugā-bhakti and mañjarī-bhāva . Like my guru wrote on the back of the siddha-praṇāli sheet he handed out to his disciples: "You can't just get it from books." This offends people who are convinced that everything can be found in books, because why were the books written if not to inform of them? Of course, that Bhaktivinoda Thakur's books talk about taking siddha-praṇāli from or through the medium of a guru somehow seems irr...