Sahajiya - a religious cult

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Sahajiya a religious cult. Its followers believe in the sahaja or simple way to feel the sahaja or innate reality that is present in every animate or inanimate object. According to Sahajiya philosophy, along with an external form, every object also has an internal form. This internal form is the eternal, otherwise known as sahaja. To feel the sahaja is to feel the internal eternity in one's self. The whole range of animate and inanimate objects can be felt by experiencing this internal form. The followers of this cult think that a simple, direct way is the best means to experience this feeling.

What goes in favour of human nature is the sahaja (simple) and what goes counter to it is vakra (crooked). The attainment of the self through that which is in accordance with human nature is the objective of Sahajiya philosophy. The Sahajiya believe that the object of worship is knowledge, and this knowledge resides within the self, not outside it. They believe that this knowledge cannot be acquired through study and books, but only apprehended through the advice of preceptors and the indoctrination of sahajasadhana.

The Sahajiya emphasise the importance of the body. They believe that the body embodies the universe and attainment of the self can only be made through bodily love. Literature based on Sahajiya philosophy is classified as Sahajiya literature.

Buddhist Sahajiya Bengal faced internal disturbances after the death of King Shashanka in 635 AD approximately. During the Pala dynasty, around the eighth century, Buddhist Sahajiya emerged as a religious doctrine. To understand the nature of living beings and the phenomenal world through the realisation of the eternal nature of the inner-self constitutes the inherent truth of the religious doctrine of the Buddhist Sahajiya. However, this doctrine also teaches one to renounce worldly ties. Initiates to the Sahajiya doctrine were known as Siddhacharya. Famous Siddhacharya include Luipa, Bhusukupa, kahnapa, Sarahpa, Shantipa, and Shavarpa, who composed the Buddhist songs and doha (distiches) of the charyapada. Most of these composers were inhabitants of Bengal, Mithila, Orissa and Kamrup and hence the life style of eastern India predominated in their religious practice. Bhusukupa and Kahnapa were among the Churashisiddha or Dharmaguru (religious teacher) included in the Nathdharma or Tantric Buddhism. They were followers of Tantric Buddhism or Sahajiya Buddhism but they concealed their own creed and caste and adopted nicknames.

The Charyapada describes the Sahajiya philosophy through various similes and metaphors, in what is known as sandhya bhasa. mahayana as a religious doctrine of Buddhism was later subdivided into vajrayana, Kalachakrayana, Mantrayana, etc. While these different sects differ in matters of religious practices, they agree on the concept of Nirvana. The objective of the religious practice of Sahajiya is to attain Nirvana through transcending age, disease, death, and reincarnation. Those who are committed to or initiated in the religious doctrine of Sahajiya believe that they can reach their desired goal through a number of tantric rituals and practices. The Buddhist songs and doha of the Charyapada have been composed on the basis of these practices.

The poets of the Charyapada emphasised the purification of the soul. According to the Siddhacharya the explanation of the doctrine is this: 'In order to purify one's soul it is necessary to reduce one's desire for material things and to concentrate on shunyatavodha or the sense of the void'. The salvation of the soul is attained through the divine grace resulting in contentment and absolute happiness attained through Nirvana. This absolute happiness is the objective of life in the world.

The Buddhist emphasised Buddhist philosophy through the use of such terminology as shunya, trisharana, vodhi, jinaratna, dashavala, nirvana, etc. and associated these words with different doctrines. That is why the influence of tantrashastra or the theory of tantra is felt in the Buddhist songs. Moreover, guruvada, the belief in the importance of the guru, is also greatly emphasised. The Sahajiyas believe that Sahajiya meditation can not be acquired through books or scholarship. It can be learned only through the instructions of the guru or religious teacher. Hence the meditation to attain the Supreme or Absolute needs to be conducted in an easy way. The Sahajiya also believe that the key to such meditation lies in the innermost soul. It is useless to look for the Absolute outside the soul. He exists within us: 'Arupa Buddha rupe'. As the poet Kaknapa says: 'Guru vova shisya kala' [The disciple even if he is deaf can understand whatever the guru intends through hints and suggestions.] More precisely, the guru by virtue of his own power directs the disciple in the right way.

However, the meditation of the Sahajiyas is not easy. As the Sahajiyas say, 'Make the frog dance in the mouth of snake'. In other words they suggest that great restraint must be practised by the followers of this cult, who like the snake must resist devouring the frog though it is dancing in the snake's mouth. [Azharul Islam]

Vaisnava sahajiya The fourteenth-century poet baru chandidas is believed to be the deviser and preacher of this creed, which he divined after coming in contact with a washerwoman named Rami. Later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the creed, based on the Buddhist Sahajiya doctrine, started gaining ground. The followers of this doctrine believe themselves to be sahaja rasika (versed in sahaja) or travellers of the sahaja patha (simple path). The phrase sahaja patha here means love, which is human nature. The ultimate goal of a human being is to attain the self through love; and the Vaisnava sahajiya consider the body to be the best means for this. The ideals of the Vaisnava sahajiya are beauty, love and enjoyment.

The philosophical doctrines and practices of the Vaisnava sahajiyas are different from those of the Gaudian Vaisnavas. The Gaudian Vaisnavas believe that all philosophy lies in the human body and they take the philosophy of love allegorically, not literally unlike the Sahajiya.

The Vaisnava sajahiya instituted a diversified form of philosophy of love by mixing vaisnavism and the doctrines of radha and krishna in the name of Nimai and Nitaichand. Their philosophy incorporated the spiritual and the physical. According to Sahajiya philosophy, each man and woman has an inner and outer form. Thus a man has the outer form of a man, but his inner self is Krishna. Similarly, a woman has the outer form of a woman but her inner self is Radha. When the external forms unite physically, the inner selves attain the highest enjoyment. This is mahabhava or the enjoyment of sahaja. Deification of man is the basic principle of the Sahajiya doctrine.

The Gaudian Vaisnavas look down on the Vaisnava sahajiyas because to the latter the philosophy of love or the worship of body is of great importance. This has distanced one sect from the other and has lowered the social dignity of the Sahajiyas. Even Chandidas himself was excommunicated from the Brahmin society. Despite this fact, the philosophy gained ground and became widespread. This is now recognised as an alternative means of worshipping God.

A large part of medieval bangla literature is based on the Sahajiya creed. Among the people who wrote on this philosophy, Baru Chandidas is considered the best. His srikrishnakirtan depicts the basic principles of Sahajiya in a lucid manner. Many poets including Chandidas, who believed in the Sahajiya doctrine, composed verses on practices of the attainment of the self in an enigmatic language, known as ragatmika pada (verses that consider pure love to be the attainment).

Vaisnava sahajiya literature is of two kinds: one, based on padavali (lyrics), the other, based on nivandha (composition). Poets like vidyapati and rupa goswami are proponents of the padavali literature while Baru Chandidas and krishnadasa kaviraja are proponents of nibandha literature. The prefatory parts of many pieces by less famous figures impute the works to famous names such as Vidyapati, Chandidas, Narahari Sarkar, Raghunath Das, Krsnadas Kaviraja, Narottam Das, Rupa Goswami, Sanatan Goswami, Vrindavan Das, Lochandas, and Chaitanyadas. Some noted books of Sahajiya literature are Vivartavilasa (Akinchan Das), Anandabhairava, Amrtarasavali, Agamagrantha, Premavilasa (Yugalkishore Das), Radha-Rasa-Karika, Deha-Kadcha (Narottam Das), Sahaja-Upasana-Tattva (Taruni Raman), Siddhanta-Chandrodaya, Rativilasa-Paddhati, Ragamayikana, and Ratnasara. [Sambaru Chandra Mohanta]

The following is taken from Obscure Religious Cults by Shashibhushan Dasgupta, MA, PhD. (Calcutta, Firma KLM, 1976). This is a famous book, first edition 1946, which was the first thorough treatment of the subject in English. The first four chapters cover Buddhist Sahajiyasim. Vaishnava Sahajiyaism is covered in chapters 5 (pp. 113-146) and 6 (pp. 146-156), Bauls in 7 (157-187). The Naths and Dharma cult are covered in the rest of the book. If I can, I'll try to scan in at least chapters 5-6. I haven't entered footnotes. This first entry covers pages 113-123.

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CHAPTER V

THE VAISHNAVA SAHAJIYA CULT

(i) Transition from Buddhist Sahajiya to Vaishnava Sahajiya

THE Vaishnava Sahajiya movement of Bengal marks the evolution of the Buddhist Sahajiya cult in a different channel as strongly influenced by the love-religion of Bengal Vaishnavism. The Vaishnava Sahajiya cult has a considerable literature to its credit. As many as two hundred and fifty manuscripts of small texts containing the various doctrines and practices of the cult are preserved in the Manuscript Library of the Calcutta University and about an equal number of texts (many of them being common with those preserved in the Manuscript Library of the Calcutta University) belong to the Manuscript Library of the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. These texts, however, do not possess much intrinsic literary value and as such their contribution to Bengali literature would not have been of much importance but for fact that they help us in studying a large number of lyrical songs belonging both to the Sahajiya Vaishnava and the standard Vaishnava cults, both of which accepted the ideal of Parakiya love as contrasted with the ideal of Svakiya love in their doctrines.(1)

These love lyrics, belonging to the province of Vaishnavism, combine in them a genuine poetic vein of an absorbing human interest with an avowedly religious sentiment and as such they offer a good specimen of how far it may be able for erotic sentiment, aesthetic sentiment and religious sentiment to combine in popular poetry. In the history of the Vaishnava literature of Bengal, the most important factor is the graduaI evolution of the ideal of Parakiya love; but whereas the ideal of Parakiya love was merely recognised as a theological speculation in standard Vaishnavism, it was accepted even in its practical bearing by the Sahajiyas. In the history of Bengal Vaishnavism there seems to have been a process of interaction between the two sects--the practice of the Sahajiyas influencing to a great extent the ideal of the Vaishnava poets, and the ideal of the Vaishnavas in its turn influencing the practices of the Sahajiyas. Though the story of the love episodes of Chandi Das, the greatest love poet of Bengal, with the washer-woman, Rami, is still shrouded in mystery and as such cannot be credited historically as supplying proof of Chandi Das himself being an exponent of the Sahajiya practice, yet we should remember that tradition always indicates possibility. Judging from the heaps of tradition centering found the figure of poet Chandi Das and also from the number of Sahajiya poems ascribed to him, it will not be far off the mark to hold that there might have been some truth in the tradition of Chandi Das himself being a Sahajiya sadhaka and that his practical culture of the divinisation of human love supplied him with the deep inspiration that made him the immortal poet of the Radha Krishna songs. The indebtedness of Sri Chaitanya to the love lyrics of Jayadeva, Vidyapati and Chandi Das is well-known through the Caitanya-caritamrita (the standard biography of Chaitanya) and the songs of some other poets; the inspiration derived from these songs was not negligible in moulding Chaitanya's ideal of divine love. Apart from the controversy over the religious viewpoint of Chandi Das and its influence on Chaitanya's ideal of love, it may be held that the general history of the Vaishnava Sahajiya movement with its stress on Parakiya love was closely related to the general devotional movement of Bengal; it is because of this close relation between the two that the rich field of Bengali lyrics cannot be fully and properly studied without a proper study of the Sahajiya religion and literature.

The lyrics belonging to the Vaishnava Sahajiya school are generally ascribed to the well-known poet Chandi Das and to some other poets like Vidyapati, Rupa, Sanatan, Vrindavan Das, Krishna Das Kaviraj, Narahari, Narottama, Lochan, Chaitanya Das and others, and the innumerable Sahajiya texts are also ascribed to their authorship. Such assignment, which was evidently made with a view to securing authoritative support from the great Vaishnava poets and thinkers for the unconventional practice of the Sahajiyas, need not be credited historically. In their zeal for propaganda these Sahajiyas have held all the great poets like Jayadeva, Vidyapati, Chandi Das and others, and the great Vaishnava apostles like Rupa, Sanatan, Svarupa Damodara, Jiva Goswami and others to be the exponents of Sahajiya practice. Even Sri Chaitanya himself has been held by some of the Sahajiyas as having practised Sahaja sadhana with female companions and attained perfection through it,(2) as Lord Buddha was held by the Buddhist Sahajiyas as having practised Sahaja sadhana in company of his consort Gopa. It seems, however, that almost all the songs (including the enigmatic songs ascribed to Chandi Das’s well-known as the Ragatmika Padas) and the texts were composed by the exponents of the Sahajiya cult in the post-Chaitanya period, and mostly in or after the seventeenth century A.D.

We have hinted on several occasions that the secret yogic practices, round which grew the paraphernalia of the different Sahajiya cults, belong neither strictly to the Buddhist fold nor exclusively to the Hindu fold; they are essentially yogic practices, which by their association with different theological systems, either Buddhist or Hindu, have given rise to different religious cults. The most important of the secret practices is the yogic control of the sex pleasure so as to transform it into transcendental bliss, which is at the same time conducive to the health both of the body and the mind. This yogic practice with its accessories, being associated with the philosophy of Shiva and Shakti, stands at the centre of the network of the Hindu Tantric systems, and when associated with the speculations of Prajna and Upaya of later Buddhism gave rise to the Tantric Buddhist cults including the Buddhist Sahajiya system; and again, when associated with the speculation on Krishna and Radha conceived as Rasa and Rati in Bengal Vaishnavism, the same yogic practice and discipline has been responsible for the growth and development of the Vaishnava Sahajiya movement of Bengal. It will, therefore, be incorrect to say, as has really been said by some scholars, that the Vaishnava Sahajiya movement of Bengal is a purely post-Chaitanya movement having no relation whatsoever with the earlier Buddhist Sahajiyas and that the two cults are distinct fundamentally. A close study of the literature of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas wiIl leave no room for doubting the clear fact that it records nothing but the spirit and practices of the earlier Buddhist an Hindu Tantric cults, of course in a distinctly transformed form, wrought through the evolution of centuries in different religious and cultural environments. The psycho-physiological yogic processes, frequently referred to in the lyrical songs of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas and also in the innumerable short and long texts, embodying the doctrines of the cult are fundamentally the same as are found in the Hindu Tantras as well as in the Buddhist Tantras and the Buddhist songs and Dohas. There are sometimes discrepancies only in details and differences more often pertaining to terminology and phraseology than to conception.(3)

It is very interesting to note in this connection that like some of the texts of the Sahajiya Buddhists some of the Bengali texts of Sahajiya Vaishnavism, composed some time between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, are introduced in the form of a dialogue between Shiva and Shakti, who are depicted as discussing the secrets of the Vaishnava Sahajiya sadhana,(4) and in the Ananda-bhairava it is hinted that Hara or Shiva himself practised this Sahaja sadhana in the company of the different Shaktis in the country of the Kuchnis (women belonging to the Koch tribe.(5)

We have discussed before at length the salient features of the Buddhist Sahajiya cult and literature. The Vaishnava Sahajiyas, like other medieval schools who were Sahajiyas in a broader sense, and of whom we shall speak in detail in the next chapter, harped on the same string. But we have seen that the angle of vision from which the different schools of Indian religious thought criticised one another was different. Consequently, whereas the criticism of the Buddhist Sahajiyas represents an admixture of the spirit of Buddhism, Vedanta, Tantra and Yoga, the criticism of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas is marked by a dominating spirit of love, which is the watchword of their sadhana, although, however, the lurking influence of Yoga and Tantra is not altogether missing. The Buddhist Sahajiyas, we have seen, inherited from the Yogic and Tantric schools in general the spirit that all truth underlying the universe as a whole is contained in the microcosm of the human body; this belief, we shall presently see, was brought by the Vaishnava Sahajiyas to a deeper sigrnficance, which inspired them to declare to the world abroad, “Hearken men, my brothers! Man is the truth above all truths. There is nothing above that.” (6)

Again, the same spirit of Guruvada that characterises the songs, Dohas and other Sanskritic texts of the Buddhist Sahajiyas as also the literature of the medieval saints, characterises also the songs and other texts of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas.(7) Again, as many of the Buddhist Siddhacharyas and medieval saints employed an extremely enigmatic and paradoxical style in their songs in describing the secrets of their sadhana, so also it was the custom with the Vaishnava Sahajiyas to couch the secrets of their cult under a similar enigmatic style. Many of the songs ascribed to Chandi Das are good specimens of such an enigmatic style. Thus it is clear that in spirit as well as in literary representation the relation between the Buddhist Sahajiyas and the Vaishnava Sahajiyas clearly shows an easy gliding from the one to the other.

Historically it seems that the fall of the Pala dynasty of Bengal also marked the fall of Buddhism in the province and that there was something like a Hindu revival during the reign of the Senas, who succeeded the Palas. Vaishnavism, based mainly on the love-dalliances of the cowherd Krishna with the cowherd girl Radha, began to gain popularity during the reign of the Senas and the first Bengali Vaishnava poet to sing the sweet immortal songs of Radha-Krishna was Jayadeva, who is said to have been the court-poet of the last Sena king, Lakshman Sena in the last half of the twelfth Century A.D. Chandi Das of the fourteenth century popularised the legends and ideals of the love of Radha and Krishna through his exquisite lyrical poems. Similar lyrics were composed also by poet Vidyapati of Mithila, who was contemporaneous with Chandi Das and enjoyed enormous popularity in Bengal; this widespread popularity of the Radha Krishna songs began to influence the minds of people belonging to all substrata of society. It was through the influence of this love ideal of the Radha Krishna songs that the ideology of the Buddhist Sahajiyas gradually began to change, and the change of methodology was consequent on the change of ideology.

With the popularity of the Radha Krishna songs the ideal of parakiya-rati, or the unconventional love between man and woman not bound by the conjugal tie, became emphasised. In almost all the theological discussions of the Vaishnavas of the post-Chaitanya period, the superiority of this ideal of parakiya love to that of svakiya was variously demonstrated. In his Typical Selections from Old Bengali Literature (Vol. II, pp. 1638-1643), Dr. D. C. Sen has quoted two old documents, belonging to the first half of the eighteenth century, where we find that regular debates were arranged between the Vaishnava exponents of the parakiya and the svakiya ideals of love, and in the debates the upholders of the svakiya view were sadly defeated and had to sign documents admitting the supremacy of the parakiya ideal of love. This will help us in guessing how much influence this parakiya ideal did exert on the people of the time belonging to the Vaishnava fold. This ideal of parakiya love has been the strongest factor in moulding the doctrines of the Sahajiya Vaishnavism of Bengal.

It is customary to sneer at the Vaishnava Sahajiya cult as an order of debauchery under the cloak of religion. Abuses and aberrations there are in every religion, and there is no denial of the fact that debauchery found its field of play in the Tantric schools, both of Hinduism and Buddhism and in the school of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas, but that should not be the only point for consideration in judging the value of these religious orders. As students of literature, religion and culture, let us (like the wise swan) drink only milk out of a mixture of milk and water.

We have pointed out before that the innumerable texts available on the doctrines and practices of the Sahajiyas few can be said to possess much intrinsic merit; but the lyrics the Sahajiyas, whoever might have been their author, really reached a high pitch of poetry and philosophy, and these songs assigned a sublime value to human love; and with this deification of human love humanity as a whole has also been deified, and heaven above and earth below have met together in the songs of the Vaishnava Sahajiya poets.

(ii) The Mode of Transformation

Let us now follow the mode of transformation of the ideology of the Buddhist Sahajiyas into that of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas. The final aim of the Buddhist Sahajiyas, apart from the customary way of describing it as the Vacuity, or the Prajna, or the Bodhi-citta, was supreme bliss, and this conception of the final state of the Buddhist Sahajiyas differed from that of the early Buddhists in this that the Maha-sukha state of Nirvana is a definitely positive state, while the earlier Buddhistic tendency was towards negation; again, the conception of the Buddhist Sahajiyas differs from the general conception of the final state of the different schools of yoga in this that it is not a state of absolute dissolution; though it is a state of arrest and a negative state insofar as it involves the arrest of all states and processes of mind, it is a positive state of supreme bliss. Of course, sometimes this state of supreme bliss has been criticised as a state of mere thought-construction, and Nirvana has been defined as a pure state of negation bereft of all sorts of thought-constructions but in general Maha-sukha itself, bereft of subjectivity and objectivity, has been held to be the final state--the state of vacuity and direct enlightenment.

The final state of Maha-sukha as the state of Sahaja of the Buddhists is also the final state of Sahaja with the Vaishnava Sahajiyas; but the Vaishnavas conceive of this Sahaja state as the state of supreme love, and this supreme love has been conceived as the primordial substance which underlies the world-process as a whole. But how can this Sahaja be the ultimate reality? It is the ultimate reality inasmuch as it is the non-dual state of the unity of Shiva and Shakti, which are but the two aspects of the absolute reality as conceived in the Hindu Tantras. Again in the Buddhist school it is the non-dual state of unity of Prajna and Upaya which are also the two aspects of the absolute reality. The principles of Shiva and Shakti or Upaya and Prajna are represented by man and woman, and it is, therefore, that when through the process of Sadhana man and woman can realise their pure nature as Shiva and Shakti, or Upaya and Prajna, the supreme bliss arising out of the union of the two becomes the highest state whereby one can realise the ultimate nature of the absolute reality Now the conception of Krishna and Radha of the Vaishnavas was interpreted by the Sahajiyas in a sense akin to the conception of Shiva and Shakti, or Upaya and Prajna, and all males and females were thought of as physical manifestation of the principles of Krishna and Radha.

So the highest state of union of the two, which is the state of supreme love is the final state of Sahaja. Thus the theological speculations centering round the love-dalliances of Radha and Krishna in standard Vaishnavism could very easily be assimilated by the Sahajiyas into their cult. More over, the standard Vaishnava schools of devotion were all deadly against the final aim of liberation either in any sense of negation or in the merging of the individual self in the absolute. The supreme state of the Vaishnavas is no state of abso1ute cessation or annihilation, it is a positive state, though of a supra-mental nature, of the eternal flow of divine love, like the smooth and incessant flow of oil. This ideal of the final positive state of love could very well be utilised by the Sahajiyas in a slightly modified way and thus the Sahajiyas could gradually associate their practices with the whole network of Bengal Vaishnava theology. And once the practices of the Sahajiyas could be thus associated with the Vaishnava theology, their whole ideology and methodology began to be influenced palpably by those of standard Vaishnavism.

The main deviation of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas under tue sway of Vaishnavism was towards a psychological development, and it wiIl be more correct to speak of it as an innovation through a process of gradual transformation. The Tantric schools, which emphasised the sexo-yogic practice (and all schools did not certainly emphasise or encourage it), were essentially schools of psycho-physiological yogic practices; but already in the Buddhist Sahajiya we ~ towards the psychological development. There we sometimes find it explained that the most intense sex-emotion, produced under a perfect control of yoga, has the capacity of suspending the ordinary states and processes of the mind and producing a non-dual state of supreme bliss, where, absorbed in the unfathomable depth of emotion, our mind shakes off all its relation to objects and all its character as the subject; and this unique state of bliss is the absolute state of Sahaja-realisation. This psychological aspect of the sadhana was, however, most emphasised in the school of the Vaishnava Sahajiya, with whom the Sahaja Sadhana soon developed more into a religion of psychological discipline in the culture of love than a religion of mere psycho-physiological yogic process. In fact, the importance of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas consists in the high pitch which they reached in their enquiry and practical culture of love psychology and in the new interpretation of our whole being offered in the light of love. It was a religious process of the divinisation of human love and the consequent discovery of the divine in man. As we have said before, the psycho-physiological yogic process was there, but its yogic aspect was dominated by the psychological aspect of the Sahajiyas with which we are mainly interested in our present study.

(page 123)

(iii) The PsychologicaI Aspect of the Sadhana of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas

(A) The Ideal of Love

The psychological aspect of the Sahaja sadhana of the Vaishnavas grew mainly with the philosophy of Radha and Krishna and the eternal love between them in the land of eternity. It is, therefore, necessary, first of all, to elucidate the philosophy of Radha Krishna and their eternal love as conceived by the Vaishnavas.

According to the philosophical and theological works of Bengal Vaishnavism (popularly known as Gaudiya Vaishnavism) Radha is nothing but the transfiguration of the infinite potency of love contained in the very nature of Krishna. The ultimate Being, it is held, may be conceived in three of its states, either as the unqualified Brahman, or as the Paramatman, the indwelling principle of all beings, or as the Bhagavan, the active and qualified God.

Krishna as Bhagavan possesses three powers, viz., svarupa shakti, i.e., the power which He possessses by virtue of His ultimate nature; jiva shakti or the power through which all the beings are produced (also known as the tatastha shakti, the accidental power), and the Maya shakti, through which evolves the inaterial world. This svarupa shakti of the Lord has again three attributes, viz., the attribute of existence (sat), the attribute of pure consciousness (cit) and the attribute of bliss (ananda). The potency of the three attributes acts like three powers, in the nature of God, which are known as sandhini (the power of existence), samvit (the power of consciousness) and hladini (the power of bliss which is of the nature of infinite love). The transfiguration of this power of bliss or love is Radha, and as such the very being of Radha is already involved in the very nature of Krishna and the two are one and the same in the ultimate principle.

Why then the apparent separation of Radha from Krishna? It is for the self-realisation of Krishna. God has within His nature two aspects, the enjoyer and the enjoyed, and without the reality of the enjoyed He cannot even realise His own nature as the enjoyer. Radha represents the eternal enjoyed, while Krishna is the eternal enjoyer, and the enjoyed and the enjoyer being co-relative: (page 124) the reality of the one involves the reality of the other; or, in other words Radha as true eternal enjoyed is as much real as Krishna the eternal enjoyer. This inseparable relation between the two is the eternal love-dalliance of Krishna with Radha, and as Radha is eternally realising the value of her whole being with reference to her relation to the eternal enjoyer Krishna, Krishna too is eternally enjoying Radha to realise the infinite potency of love and bliss that is in him. This mutual relation of love is the secret of the whole drama enacted in the eternal land of Vrindavan. This eternal sport (lila) or love-dalliance of Radha and Krishna does not presuppose any kind of shortcoming or imperfection in the nature of the ultimate reality; it follows from the very nature of the ultimate reality as such.

This relation of eternal love between Radha and Krishna has been conceived and expressed in the Vaishnava theology and literature anthropomorphically through analogies of human love. So, to understand the nature of this divine love, human love has been analysed psychologically into all its varieties and niceties to the minutest details, and it has been found on analysis that divine love can be expressed only through the analogy of the most intense and the most romantic and unconventional love that exists between a man and a woman who become bound together by the ideal of love for love’s sake. Post-nuptial love is not the highest ideal of love so far as the intensity of emotion is concerned, for long association and acquaintance devour the strange mystery, which is the salt of love, and social convention and legal compulsion take away much from the passion in it and thus make it commonplace and attenuated. The highest ideal of human love, which is the most intense, is the love that exists most privately between couples who are absolutely free in their love from any consideration of loss and gain, who defy society and transgress the law and make love the be-all and end-all of life. This is the ideal of parakiya love, which is the best human analogy for divine love. It is because of this theological ideal that in none of the legends of Radha Krishna is Radha depicted as the (page 125) wife of Krishna. She is generally depicted as the wife of another cowherd, or as a maid just attaining the prime of youth.

Sri Chaitanya, as he has been docetically conceived by his followers, combined in him the enjoyer and the enjoyed, and it has been said that he was of the ultimate nature of Krishna hallowed with the lustre of the supreme emotion of Radha. This speaks of the religious attitude of Chaitanya. Though he himself became often conscious of his true self as none but Krishna, his dominating religious attitude was Radha bhava or the love attitude of Radha towards Krishna. This Radha bhava, or the religious attitude of the devotee towards God as the attitude of the most unconventional romantic love of a woman towards her beloved, may be recognised as the fundamental tone of the religion preached by Chaitanya, not so much by sermons and teachings as by his tears and frequent love trances.

The religious attitude of the Vaishnava poets of Bengal, as represented in the innumerable love lyrics composed by them, was not, however, exactly the same as that of Chaitanya. The attitude of the Vaishnava poets was sakhi bhava rather than Radha bhava. Sri Chaitanya placed himself in the position of Radha and longed with all the tormenting pangs of heart for union with his beloved Krishna ; but the Vaishnava poets, headed by Jayadeva, Chandi Das and Vidyapati, placed thensselves, rather in the position of the Sakhis, or the female companions of Radha and Krishna, who never longed for their own union with Krishna, but ever longed for the opportunity of witnessing from a distance the eternal love-making of Radha and Krishna in the supranatural land of Vrindavan (aprAkRta-vRndAvana). This eternal lila is the eternal truth, and, therefore, it is this eternal lila -- the playful love-making of Radha and Krishna, which the Vaishnava poets desired to enjoy. If we analyse the Gita-govinda of Jayadeva, we shall find not even a single statement which shows the poet's desire to have union with Krishna as Radha had, he only sings praises of the lila of Radha and Krishna and hankers after chance just to have a peep into the divine lila, and this peep into the divine (page 126) lila is the highest spiritual gain which these poets could think of. The exclamation -- "Glorious be the secret dalliances of Radha and Krishna on the bank of the Jumna" sounds the key-note of the Vaishnava attitude of Jayadeva. The same is the attitude of Chandi Das and Vidyapati, who were absorbed in the lila of Radha-Krishna who indulged themselves in making comments on the lila and longed to have the chance to stand by when Radha and Krishna were united in their love.

It is to be noted that in the religious discourse, which took place between Sri Chaitanya and Ray Ramananda, the latter stressed sakhi bhava as the best means for realising divine love. The theological explanation of this sakhi bhava is not far to seek. The general Vaishnava view is that the jiva, being the tatastha shakti of Krishna is, after all, a prakriti and its pride as being the purusha (purushabhimana) must be removed before it can be permitted to have its proper place in the eternal region of svarupa shakti, and even then only as a Sakhi, rather than as Radha, and never as Krishna.

To put the poetical utterances of the Vaishnava poets in a clear theological form we should say that, according to them, the absolute reality has from the very beginning divided itself for the sake of self-realisation into two counterparts as the enjoyer and the enjoyed, or as Krishna and Radha; these Krishna and Radha are not mere abstract notions, neither are they purely legendary figures invented through the imagination of the poets, they are concrete in their divine form and represent the original concrete type of the two aspects of the nature of the absolute as the lover and the beloved having their eternal dalliances in the supra-(page 127) natural land of Vrindavan. The historical personages of Radha and Krishna as the cowherd boy and the cowherd girl in the geographical area of Vrindavan are but the temporal manifestation of the eternal type, a condescension of the supra-natural in the natural form so as to help man to understand the eternal in terms of the temporal. The Vaishnava poets sang of the historical love-episodes of Radha and Krishna with the belief that corresponding to these love-episodes on earth there are the eternal love episodes of Radha-Krishna in the aprakrita or supra-natural Vrindavan and the historical episodes will enable them to form an idea of and to have a peep into the eternal episodes, the realisation of which is the summum bonum of the spiritual life.

We have seen that the religious approach of Sri Chaitanya, as depicted by Krishnadas Kaviraj in his work, the Caitanya-caritamrita, was somewhat different from that of the Vaishnava poets. The post-Chaitanya Vaishnava poets stuck mainly to the tradition of the pre-Chaitanya Vaishnava poets in their poetic treatment of the love-episodes of Radha and Krishna, and the Vaishnava Sahajiyas received their philosophy of Radha Krishna from these Vaishnava poets. The Sahajiyas believed in the eternal dalliances of Radha Krishna in the highest Spiritual land, but they further held that the eternal concrete spiritual type manifested itself not only in the historical personages of Radha and Krishna, but that it reveals itself in actual men and women themselves. Every man has within him the spiritual essence of Krishna, which is his svarupa (page 128) (real nature) associated with his lower existence, which is his physical form or rupa, and exactly in the same way every woman possesses within her a lower self associated with her physical existence, which is her rupa, but within this rupa resides the svarupa of the woman, which is her ultimate nature as Radha. It is none but Krishna and Radha who reside within men and women, and it is this Krishna and this Radha that are making dalliances as men and women. These rupa lila and svraupa lila of Radha Krishna have also been explained as the prakrita lila and aprakrita lila (i.e., sports in the natural plane and the supranatural plane).

This view of holding men and women to be nothing but physical manifestations of Radha and Krishna seems to have been inherited by the Vaishnava Sahajiyas from the earlier Tantric philosophy. In the Hindu Tantras, we have seen, all men and women have been held to be nothing but the incarnations of Shiva and Shakti manifested in the physical form, and in the Buddhist philosophy they have been spoken of as the embodiment of Upaya and Prajna respectively, and this philosophy has most probably influenced the Vaishnava Sahajiyas in their belief of men and women being Krishna and Radha in their svarupa. We have pointed out before that many of the Vaishnava Sahajiya texts are introduced in the form of the earlier Agamas and Nigamas, and in these texts Krishna and Radha have always been explained as nothing but the different forms of Shiva and Shakti, and we have also pointed out that Shiva has sometimes been described as practising the Sahaja sadhana with Shakti as Krishna with Radha.

Even in a popular Vaishnava text like the Brahma-samhita, which was brought by Sri Chaitanya himself from South India, the Tantric influence on Vaishnavism is palpable. In the fifth chapter (which only is available nowadays) of the Brahma-samhita we find that the lotus of thousand (page 129) petals in the cerebrum region is described as Gokula, the abode of Krishna. Within the lotus we find description also of the Tantric yantra (the physiological machinery through which truth is to be realised) as also of the kitaka (the wedge, the support). Shiva of the nature of the linga (the symbol of the male productive energy) is described as theLord Narayan and Shakti of the nature of the yoni (the symbol of the female productive energy) is described as Rama Devi (the consort of Narayana). Again, it has been said in the Hayasirsha-pancaratra, "Hari (the saviour) as the Paramatman is the Lord, Sri is called his power (shakti); goddess Sri is the Prakrti and Keshava is the Purusha; the goddess can never be without Vishnu and Hari (Vishnu) cannot be without the goddess, born in the lotus. It has also been said in the Vishnu purana, "The mother of the world is eternal and she remains inseparable with Vishnu; as Vishnu is all-permeating, so also is she."

It is very interesting to note in his connection that there is a small poetical work, entitled Sadhaka-ranjana, by Kamalakanta (who flourished in the first half of the nineteenth century) where the yogic Kula-kundalini shakti has been conceived exactly in the image of Radha; she is described in exactly the same way with the same imageries and even in the same diction as Radha is described in the Vaishnava literature. The rise of the shakti to meet Shiva in the Sahasrara has been sung as the coming out of Radha to meet her beloved in private. The (page 130) philosophical concepts of the pairs Shiva-Shakti and Krishna Radha were generally confused; and as a matter of fact, Purusha-Prakriti, Shiva-Shakti and Krishna-Radha mean all the same in popular theology. This fact has helped the development of the theological belief in the Vaishnava Sahajiya school that men and women are but the rupa of the svarupa as Krishna and Radha. But the important point to be remembered in this connection is that while in the Sahajiya sadhana the Krishnahood of man has been admitted it has never been admitted in the standard Vaishnava school under any circumstances.

According to the Vaishnava Sahajiyas the region of Sahaja is an ideal transcendental region and it is generally styled as the “land of eternity” (nitya deza)--this is the Nitya Vrindavan or the eternal Vrindavan as contrasted with the other two kinds of Vrindavan, viz., Mana- Vrindavan and Nava Vrindavan or Vana-Vrindavan. By Nava Vrindavan the Sahajiyas refer to the geographical Vrindavan) and by Mana-Vrindavan the Vrindavan of the mental plane of the Sadhaka, and the Nitya Vrindavan transcenda both. In this Nitya Vrindavan (also called the (page 131) gupta-candra-pura) resides Sahaja of the nature of pure love, which flows between Radha and Krishna in and through their eternal dalliances. This Sahaja as the Supreme Delight is the ultimate substance underlying the whole world and it can never be realised as such in the gross material world of ours. But how should the men and women of this world attain Sahaja? It is said in reply that there is a passage or transition from this world to the other, or rather this gross world can itself be transformed into the Nitya Vrindavan by the process of spiritual culture, and the principle of nescience, which is responsible for the grossness of the world can thus be removed. This removal of the fundamental principle of nescience and of the principle of grossness with it through a process of continual psychological discipline, is the primary requisite for Sahaja sadhana, and when this is effected, it is revealed to the Sadhaka that the difference between this world and that is more imaginary than real. At that moment there remains no distinction between our physical existence and our spiritual existence. It has been said in a poem ascribed to Chandi Das, "Great is the difference between this world and that, this is the truth known to all ordinary people; but there is a way of transition from the one to the other. Don't speak of it to anyone else." (page 132)

We have seen that Sahaja as the absolute reality of the nature of pure love involves within it two factors, i.e., the enjoyer and the enjoyed, represented in the Nitya-Vrindavan by Krishna and Radha. These principles of the enjoyer and the enjoyed are known in the Sahajiya school as the Purusha and the Prakriti, manifested on earth as the male and the female. It has been said in a song (ascribed to Chandi Das) -"There are two currents in the lake of love, which can be realised only by the rasikas (i.e., people versed in rasa). When the two currents remain united together in one, the rasika realises the truth of union."' (page 133)

Through man and woman flow these two currents of love, man and woman are, therefore, the gross manifestations of the same principies of which Krishna and Radha are the pure spiritual representations. Man and woman, in other words, are manifestations on earth of the eternal types that are enjoying each other in their eternal Vrindavan, and the bliss of intense love that Is enjoyed by man and woman through their mutual attachment even in the physical body is but a gross transformation of the eternal purest love that exists only in Vrindavan. Man and woman as the representatives of the two flows of love are known in the Sahajiya literature as Rasa (the ultimate emotion as the enjoyer) and Rati (i.e., the object of Rasa), or as Kama (the lover that attracts towards him the beloved) and Madana (the exciting cause of love in the lover).

In standard Vaishnavism also Krishna is known as Kama or Kandarpa, as he attracts the minds of all creatures towards him, while Radha is Madana or the object that renders pleasure to the enjoyer. Sahaja is the emotion of the pure love flowing between Rasa and Rati or Kama and Madana. For the realisation of this Sahaja nature, therefore, a particular pair of man and wornan should first of all realise their true self as Rasa and Rati or Krishna and Radha,--and it is only when such a realisation is perfect that they become entitled to realise the Sahaja through their intense mutual love. This realisation of the true nature of man as Krishna and that of wornan as Radha is technically known as the principie of Aropa or the attribution of divinity to man. Through continual psychological discipline man and woman (page 134) must first of all completely forget their lower animal-selves and attribute Krishnahood to man and Radhahood to woman. Through this process of attribution there will gradually dawn the realisation of the truc nature of the two as Krishna and Radha. When man and woman can thus realise themselves as Krishna and Radha in their true nature, the love that exists between them transcends the category of gross sensuality, it becomes love divine, and the realisation of such an emotion of love is realisation of the Sahaja.

(B) The Theory of Aropa
The above, in a nut-shell, is the fundamental basis of the religious creed of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas expressed in their lyrical poems and other prose and poetical works. The principle of Aropa is the most important in the process of Sahaja sadhana. We have seen that the Sahajiyas havc spoken of two aspects of man, viz., the aspect of physical existence which is the rupa and the aspect of spiritual existence (as Krishna or Radha as the case may be) which is the svarupa (i.e., “true spiritual self”). This svarupa must be attributed to and realised in the rupa to attain any kind of spiritual gain. But this Aropa of svarupa to rupa does not mean the negation of the rupa; it is rather the act of imbuing every atom of the rupa with the svarupa. The Sahajiyas are deadly against the principle of denying the value of life on earth and undervaluing our human love. The gross physical form with all its charm and beauty is as real as our spiritual existence, for it is the charm of physical beauty, the maddening passion we call human love that leads us gradually to a new region where we can find a glimpse of divine love. The spiritual existence (page 135) of man in divine love does not mean the negation of human love; it is this human love, beginning in the form of carnal desires and progressing gradually through a process of continual physical and psychological discipline towards an emotion of supreme bliss, boundless and unfathomable in extent and depth, that itself becomes the love divine, the highest spiritual gain. There is no categorical distinction in kind between human love and divine love; it is human love, transformed by strict physical and psychological discipline, that becomes divine. Divine love is rather an emergence from the carnal desires of man as the full blown lotus, with all its beauty and grandeur above the surface of water, is an emergence from the mud lying much below.

Here there is a difference of outlook among the Sahajiyas and the standard Vaishnavas of Bengal. Krishnadas Kaviraj has unambiguously declared in the Caitanya-caritamrita that kama (love in its grosser aspect) and prema (divine love) are charateristically distinct in their nature like iron and gold, and while the keynote of kama is the fulfilment of selfish desires, the keynote of prema is self-elimination and the fulfilment of the divine desires in and through our whole being. But the Sahajiyas, while agreeing to the latter part of the statement, do not agree to the former part of it. The same flow of emotion, they hold, that becomes kama in association with the selfish desires, transformed itself into prema when dissociated from such desires through physical and psychological discipline. Prema is but the purified form of kama, and as such the former has its origin in the latter. There cannot be prema without kama, and hence, prema cannot be attained through the absolute negation of kama; it is to be attained rather through the transformation of kama. The prema of the Sahajiyas is not the emotion of the most intense devotion of man towards God, it is the most intense emotion of love existing between Krishna and Radha residing as the svarupa in the rupa of every man
(page 136) and woman. It is from this point of view that Candi Das exclaimed, "Harken men, my brothers, man is the truth above all truths, there is nothing above that."

In another song of the Sahajiyas, we find, “Humanity is the essence of divinity, and man becomes God in the strength of love; man is the highest in the world, for it is only he who revels in supreme love. The religion of the Vaishnava Sahajiyis was thus a religion of humanity. The Sahajiyas have not gods or God other than man. Even Radha and Krishna are never regarded as deities to be worshiped, they represent principles to be realised in humanity. Humanity itself is thus viewed from a sublime perspective.

What is then the real significance of the Aropa of the Sahajiyas? It is nothing but viewing our whole being in all its physical, biological and psychological aspects from an ontological point of view. And when everything is thus viewed from the ontological perspective, human love acquires an ontological significance. This act of viewing all the gross realities of body and mind from the perspective of the eternal is what is meant by the mixing up of the rupa and the svarupa. When such an understanding dawns on man there remains to him no difference between the (page 137) rupa and the svarupa. The svarupa remains in the rupa just like the scent of flower permeating every atom of it. It is said in a song, “Many speak of svarupa, but it is
not the gross reality (of our sense perception). It is of the nature of the scent of the lotus. Who is the man capable of knowing it? If one worships this Svarupa, he will be able to discover the 'real man', but without the Aropa, one is bound to go to hell."

As the svarupa permeates the rupa, it is to be realised through the rupa. It is said in the Ratna-sara that one can atain the supra-natural land of Vraja only by loving and worshipping the human form. Man realises his ultimate nature as the pure emotion of love through his most beloved sweetheart. Man cannot realise his love-nature wihout being in relation to his sweetheart, it is through the touch of the sweetheart that the lamp is lit within. It is said in a poem of Chandi Das that man by himself can never realise his own grace and loveliness, it is for this reason that there is a continual burning within; he ponders within, but himself does not know what his heart wants and what makes him so uneasy! The inward longing is for the beloved, without whom there is the burning sensation in the heart that makes a man dead while living. This death in love is the most covetable death, and he who knows the real nature of this death accords to it the most hearty reception, and he is the only man who (page 138) really lives through his death in love. Through their terrestrial love, man and woman proceed towards their divine love. Through the love of body arises in man and woman pure love between their inner selves as Krishna and Radha. It is for this reason that it has been said in a song that the beloved is the pitcher to fetch water in from the lake of love. Again it has been said that as milk does not thicken without being boiled over the fire, so also the love of man does not become intense enough to be transformed into divine love without the woman of his heart, who serves as the oven to boil and thicken love.

(c ) The Stringency of Sahaja sadhana

As love with Aropa leads one to Vrindavan, love of the Rupa without the Aropa of the svarupa leads one nowhere but to hell. The Sahaja sadhaka must not be an ordinary man--the samanya manush who lives within the province of desires and instincts, or the man of passions (rager manush). (page 139) He must rise above the level of ordinary animal existence and become the man “unborn” (ayoni manush) and thence the sahaja manush or the "man eternal” (nityer manush). In the same way, Sahaja cannot be attained through the samanya rati, or the ordinary woman--it is to be attained through the visesa rati, or the extraordinary woman who has herself become of the nature of Radha. In the culture of love, the man of the physical body must be realised by the woman as the “eternal man,” i.e., the man as Rasa or Krishna; and similarly the woman of the physical body must be realised by the man as the “extraordinary woman,” i.e., the woman as pure Rati or Radha. When the samanya (ordinary) man or woman thus becomes transformed into the visesa (extraordinary), he or she becomes fit for undertaking the culture of supreme love.

In the Ujjvala-nilamani of Rupa Gosvami we find description of three kinds of Rati, viz., samartha, samanjasa and sadharani. Samartha rati is the woman who unites with the beloved with no selfish motive of self-satisfaction--the only desire in her is to give her beloved the highest satisfaction by complete self-surrender. Among the lady-loves of Krishna, Radha is the only example of samartha rati. The samanjasa rati, however, wishes to have equal share of enjoyment with the lover. Rukmini and others are example of this class. The sadharani rati or the most ordinary rati is the woman who is inspired in love-union only with the desire of (page 140) self-satisfaction, and Kubja represents a rati of this class. The Sahajiyas accepted this classification of ratis and according to them the samartha rati is the only rati suited for the culture of love.

The Sahajiyis lay stringent conditions regarding the practice of love. It has frequently been said that for the attainment of true love a man must become dead first of all--dead in the sense that the animal in him must be eradicated, giving scope for full play to the divine in him. In plainer words, his body and mind must be placed above even the possibility of susceptibility to the lower animal instincts and must be imbued through and through with the radiant glow of his svarupa. This strictness has also been frequently emphasised by the condition that a man must do completely away with his nature as a man and transform his nature to that of a woman before he takes the vow of love. Here also the emphasis is really on the total transformation of the ordinary attitude of man towards a woman.

The stringency of Sahaja-sadhana and the great danger sure to result from the slightest deviation have he repeatedly sung by the Sahajiya poets in enigmatic statements. The process of sadhana has frequently been compared to the process of diving deep in the ocean without getting wet in the least--or to the process of making the frog dance before the serpent, or to wreathe the peaks of Mount Sumeru with a piece of thread, or to bind the elephant with the help of the spider’s net.

This stringency in the Sahaja-sadhana leads to the importance of strict physical and mental discipline without (page 141) which it is simply disastrous to enter upon such a course of sadhana. It is for this reason that three stages have been marked in the course of sadhana, viz., pravartaka, or the stage of the beginner; sadhaka, i.e., an advanced stage, and siddha or the perfect stage.

Closely associated with these three stages of sadhana are the five ashrayas (refuges), viz., Nama (divine name), mantra, bhava (divine emotion), prema (love) and rasa (bliss). Nama and Mantra are associated with the stage of pravarta; bhava with the second stage of sadhaka and prema and rasa are associated with the third stage of siddha.

It has been repeatedly enjoined that the sadhana in company of a woman can be entered upon only in the sadhaka stage, and real love can be realised only in the perfect stage and never before. In the question of perfection, equal stress is laid on the perfection of body as on the perfection of mind, for the Sahaja can never be realised without a perfect body. Herein comes the question on kaya-sadhana or the culture of the body, which is very often stressed in the Sahajiya texts on practical sadhana. We have seen that this question of kaya-sadhana plays an important part in the sadhana of the Buddhist Sahajiyas, and the esoteric yogic practice of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas, being substantially the same, the question of kaya-sadhana is equally emphasised in the Vaishnava school.

Again we have seen that in all schools of esoteric yogic practice, the body has been held to be the abode of all truth. The same view is equally emphasised in the Vaishnava Sahajiya school. It is said in a song ascribed to Chandi Das that truth resides in the body. It is said in the Ratnasara that if one can realise the truth of the body (bhANDa) (page 142) one will be able to realise the truth of the universe (brahmANDa). The realisation of the truth of the body leads to the realisation of the truth of the self, and the truth of the self is the truth of Vrindavan. All truth of Krishna and Radha is to be known from one’s own body. In the Caitta-rupa-padma-mala we find that the caitta-rupa is the Sahaja-rupa and this caitta-rupa or sahaja-rupa resides in the different lotuses of the body.

The important point to be noticed in this connection is that as the psychological sadhana of love of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas gradually evolved from the psycho-physiogical yogic sadhana of the Tantrics and the Buddhist Sahajiyas, the culture of love of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas was always based on the psycho-physiological yogic sadhana. It is for this reason that in Sahajiya texts and songs we find hints on the yogic sadhani associated with the culture of love. Any attempt at the culture of love without being conversant with the secrets of yogic practices will lead not only to failure, but to extremely direful results. The ideal love of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas can be realised only in a perfectly purified body and mind, whence all the principles of defilement are absolutely eradicated. This state has been said te be the state of visuddha-sattva. By the purification of body and mind there is first the subsidance of the elements of tamas (inertia) and rajas (energy) and there is the predominance of the element of sattva (intelligence-stuff); but even above the state of sattva is the state of suddha-sattva (or pure intelligence-stuff); and by further purification suddha-sattva is transformed into visuddha-sattva. This state of visuddha sattva is a transcendental state where there is neither the natural nor the supranatural, and pure love is possible only in such a state. (page 143)

For the realisaton of the ultimate nature as pure love, the lover and the beloved must be identical physically, mentally and spiritually; they must be of one body, one mind and one soul. It has been said, "Do away with the idea of the two and be of one body, if you have the desire for real love; very difficult is this sadhana of love, says Dvija-Chandi Das.” “All the accessories of love--the separate existences of the lover and the beloved--must merge in a unique flow of love, then and then only will this sadhana be fulfilled.”

About the nature of this love it has enigmatically been said, “Love-making sits on love-making. And love (bhava) is over that; above that love resides a higher love, and over that remains what may be said to be the highest consummation. In love resides the thrill of joy, and over that thrill the flow, and there is the flow over the flow, and that bliss who should know?”

“There is the flower of the fruit, and the scent is over that. And on that scent are these letters three (i.e., pI, ri, ti = love; Skt. priti). What a great riddle it is to understand!"

Again, “There is the fruit over the flower, and over that is the wave, and there is wave above wave--who does this secret know?”

It is extremely difficult to follow these and many such other enigmatic descriptions of love closely and literally, and we doubt if every one of these statements can be explained rigorously. Such paradoxical statements were made only to emphasise the transcendental nature of the Sahaja love. It is said, “There is water on earth, and above that water rises the wave; love remains above that wave. Does anybody know anything about it?”

It is about this transcendental love that Chandi Das exclaimed, (page 144) "The love of the washerwoman is like tested gold; there is no tinge of sexuality in it."

Thus the sadhana of love of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas is a transcendence from the finite to the infinite--from the enjoyment of the external object to the realisation of the self which in its ultimate character is but of the nature of pure love. When real love dawns in the heart of the sadhaka, the beloved becomes to him a mere symbol for infinite love, the whole universe with all its grandeur and mystery contracts into the body of the sweetheart, not only that, she becomes a symbol for the supreme truth. In such a state of love did Chandi Das, the great lover, exclaim to his sweetheart Rami, the washerwoman : “Dearest Rami, O thou washerwoman, I knew thy feet to be a cool retreat and so I took shelter there. Thou art to me the revealer of the Veda ! Thou art to me the consort of the Saviour Lord Shiva ! Thou art the iris of my eyes ! My worship of love towards thee is my morning, noon-tide and evening services ! Thou art the necklace of my neck ! The body of the washerwoman is of the nature of the eternal maid Radha (kisori-svarupa); there is no scent of sensuality in it, the love of the washerwoman is tested gold, says Badu Chandi Das.”

Chandi Das says, in a similar song:

(iv) Sahaja realisation of the Self and the Not-Self

We have said that the final aim of the Vaishnava Sahajiyas through a culture of love is the realisation of the Sahaja nature, not only of the self, but all of the external objects, or in other words, of the world as a whole. The realisation of the Sahaja nature of the not-self, they contend, follows (page 145) from the realisation of the Sahaja nature of the self. The Sahaja (of the nature of supreme love) that underlies the self as its ultimate reality, underlies also the not-self, and both the self and the not-self are mere transformations of the same Sahaja, the plurality of objects with all their differences owes its origin only to the illusory nature of our sense-perceptions.

The duality of self and external objects is said to be due to a mere confusion of the senses, and it exists only as long as there is no attainment of self-knowledge. Tht senses are playing with the objects; but in reality the object and the self are one and the same in their ultimate. nature. When knowledge of the self dawns on man, any differentiation like this and that becomes impossible, and at that time there is not the least cognition of duality and the whole universe is realised as of the nature of the self. Thus it is contended that the realisation of the Sahaja-nature of the self as pure love automatically leads one also to the realisation of the ultimate nature of the external world.

In the Tantras we find that the world proceeded from the bliss which is the cessation of all duality and which is the nature of the ultimate reality. It has been said in the Upanishads, “Bliss (ananda) is to be known as Brahman, and from bliss proceeds all the objects, and through bliss they live and in bliss do they return and merge.”

We find an echo of the same truth in the utterances of the Sahajiyas, who say that all the beings are born in Sahaja, they live in Sahaja and again return to Sahaja. The Sahaja is the Rasa, the supreme emotion of love, the quintessence in every body. (page 146)

It is the primordial emotion; it is kama and from kama proceeds everything. There is sometimes the tendency of explaining the two aspects of Sahaja (i.e., Rasa and Rati) under the imagery of the seed and the ovum and the cosmos as following from their union, just as it is explained in the texts of the Tantric and the Buddhist Sahajiya schools. Both the self and the not-self being thus the product of Sahaja are homogeneous in their ultimate nature and it is, therefore, that the realisation of the nature of the self through the culture of love leads also to the realisation of the ultimate nature of the not-self.

Thanks for posting this, Jagat. Who better than you to do this? Should I post some of my MM Basu translations? Or would it be too much of a shock for the troops?

Not at all. I would welcome it.

I think it is necessary to let everyone know what is really meant when talking about Sahajiyaism. Boogey-man understandings will get you nowhere. Understand your enemy, and he may cease being an enemy.

I posted this in part because I think certain terms should be understood--like Aropa, pravartaka, sadhaka, siddha, svarupa, rupa, etc., as they are used by the Sahajiyas. I was going to put the footnotes in, but they really scan badly. The main body of the text was within reason, but the Bengali transliteration is just a jumble.

I'd like to see your interpretation of where Sahajiyaism stands in relation to orthodox theology. Dasgupta here says on the one hand that the Sahajiyas represent the combination of a timeless sexo-yogic cult with the neo-Vaishnava philosophy, just as the Buddhist Sahajiyas or Hindu tantrics combined it with their own metaphysics.

But then he goes on to outline a theology that seems quite removed from theistic bhakti, one that sounds almost too close to Baul philosophy. I like the humanistic dimension of Sahajiyaism--sarvopari mAnuSya sattva, tAra upare nAi.

I think this is an appealing element of their doctrine, and I even hear some devotees getting a whiff of it when they insist on "personalism": i.e., a personalist theology must imply a personalist humanism. In other words, the so-called religion of love gets messed up when we emphasize vidhi at the expense of human relations. Vidhi wants human beings to fit into rigid categories; raga knows that human emotion is like liquid that oozes through vidhi's cracks at every moment. And then says, "Go with the flow!"

In terms of the relation with orthodoxy, Sahajiyas insist on diksha in a traditional line, and before entering the sadhaka stage, one must have become thoroughly imbued with the orthodox doctrines in what they call the pravartaka stage. Clearly this would indicate that there is no compromise on the question of the Supreme Truth as theistic. Nor, I would add, on the concepts of manjari bhava, etc. (Though admittedly I can't say I have seen this explained anywhere.)

My instinct tells me that Dasgupta's interpretation of Aropa, svarupa and rupa, are somewhat askew, no matter how closely they follow genuine Sahajiya texts, because the paribhashas (or axiomatic truths) of theistic bhakti as described by the Goswamis are the undercurrent or the fundament on which all the rest is built. In other words, that theistic theology must be taken as a permanent presence, not as something to be superseded.

I would love to hear it. Nitai are you still here? Jagat any other info?

Maybe start out with jolt light?