All Glories to Śrī Guru and Gaurāṅga.
Loving Search for the Lost Servant
His Divine Grace Śrīla Bhakti Rakṣak Śrīdhar Dev-Goswāmī Mahārāj
Invocation
A Christian theologian predicted that Christianity is on the verge of a Copernican revolution. Prior to copernicus, it was believed that the earth was at the center of the universe, and that the sun and other planets orbited the earth. Until recently, in the western world it has been thought that Christianity was the central conception of divinity in the theistic universe. But as Western man has begun to gaze Eastward, he has discovered a plurality of theistic conceptions orbiting the Supreme Truth.
Accepting that plurality, we must also accept the accompanying gradations of theism, superior and inferior. As the planets are situated according to their gravitational attraction for the sun, the varieties of theistic conception are situated higher or lower according to their attraction toward the absolute center. The Kṛṣṇa conception of divinity is one of being irresistably drawn in attraction toward the infinite center of all love, beauty, and harmony.
The infinite can make Himself known to the finite, and the divine agent through whom this function manifests is Śrī Guru or the divine guide. His Divine Grace Śrīla Bhakti Rakṣaka Śrīdhar Dev-Goswāmī is an agent of divinity and a messenger of that supreme reality. He has reminded us that we are all “sons of nectar,” and that we shall have to “die to live,” “dive deep into reality,”and enter the “land of dedication.” As much as we sacrifice ourselves in this plane, we shall become released from its influence and be drawn through dedication into the higher plane of reality where the divine Pastimes “move in a crooked way.” And there we will find the “hidden treasure of the Sweet Absolute” in the service of Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī.
His Divine Grace has informed us that the heart’s inner hankering for ecstasy,charm, and sweetness, leads it in the search for Śrī Kṛṣṇa – Reality the Beautiful. The Kṛṣṇa conception of divinity is so irresistable that even Kṛṣṇa Himself becomes overwhelmed by His own potency and is madly engaged in tasting His own sweetness, ecstatically dancing, and thereby distributing that sweetness to others.
In Śrī Chaitanya-charitāmṛta, Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Goswāmī describes that while dancing at the Ratha-yātrā, Śrī Chaitanya Mahāprabhu would sometimes fall in an ecstatic swoon and appear like “a golden mountain rolling on the ground.” Śrīla Śrīdhar Mahārāj describes that “In the agony of separation from Kṛṣṇa, ecstatic eruptions of ecstasy flowed like lava from the heart of the Golden Volcana of Divine Love, Śrī Chaitanya Mahāprabhu.”
And now in The Loving Search for the Lost Servant, we find that the Lord’s heart is such that He also feels the agony of separation from His fallen devotees, and as they are engaged in searching for Him, He is also engaged in a loving search for His lost servants.
—Bhakti Sudhir Goswāmī
Transcript
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