Krishna's Predecessor: Rama
IN the myths and legends contained in versions of the
Ramayana (the life story of Rama and Sity), it is clear that the conciousness of the avatar was not contained in a single body. As the story goes, a divine being appeared before a woman named Kausalya carrying a ball of divine substance that contained the entire consciousness and energy of the coming avatar. The being broke the ball in half, and handed a piece to Kausalya, who consumed it and bore a son, Rama. The remaining portion was broken into more pieces and distributed to Kausalya's sisters. One of the resulting quarters was consumed and Rama's brother Lakshmana was born. The remaining quarter was again broken, and brothers Bharata and Shatrugna were each born of an eighth. WHile the entire original ball f divine substance was the energy of the avatar of Vishnu, that energy manifested among several bodies who shared a common consiousness.
Sita, Rama's shakti as Lakshmi incarnate, became Rama's wife. She was discovered one day in a furrow of a field in a neighboring kingdom (Sita in fact meants "one who was found in a furrow"). Thus the entire avatar was Rama, Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrugna, and all thair wifes or shaktis. Foremost among the shaktis, however was the comparable Sita.
As you can see, from the standpoint of divine ones and their stories, "one body/one consciousness" is not the rule. For them, whatever drama transpired among the brothers and their families, all were in perfect communion at all times.
The part of Rama's story that most pertains to our discussion of love between Krishna and Radha took place as Rama, wandering in exile, searched for Sita, who had been kidnapped. (This episode was foretold by Saraswati at the time of Gayatri's marriage to Brahma.) The same evil rulers who kidnapped Sita, the demon king Ravana, who had also driven many highly advanced sages into the forest, where they now hid. No fewer than sixteen thousand sages, many of them very near to the divine goal of spiritual liberation, were living in small hermitages hidden among the jungle thickets. Rama knew that the sages were hiding there and intentionally sought them out, though he appeared to find them quite by accident.
Meeting Rama, the sages were astonished to discover that they felt an actual physical attraction for him. After a lifetime of ascetism, they were unaccustomed to such urges and did not understand what they were experiencing. Rama explained to them that long-suppresse
d desires were manifesting because they were every close to liberation. THese very last desires must be confronted and somehow completed before they could escape the bondage of karma. Because the Avatar Rama was able to move his consciousness backward and forward in the streams of time, he knew where he had been before, and where he would be in lifetimes to come. Rama told the sages that his spiritual job in his present life forbade him from fulfilling their desires. In this life he was the faithlful and loving husband, ruler and spiritual teacher, with perfect behaviour in every way. However, he consoled them, in his next incarnation, he would fulfill their desires, one of their last prior to liberation.
Fulfiling their last desire just as he had promised, in his incarnation as Krishna, he granted them ecstatic union, then liberated them. Of course, he did not tell them that in order to fulfill those desires, they would be born as milkmaids, but from the playful standpoint of Krishna, that would have spoiled everything. There is speculation as to whether Krishna actually made love with the gopis physically, or simply satisfied their desire for union in a metaphysical, spiritual sense. It doesn't matter. He satisfied their hearts' longing while they were still on the physical plane and that satisfaction fulfilled their karma so that they could then be liberated.
This act of love by Krishna is a spiritual love, a transcendental love, even though it played out on the physical plane. The power of that love is Lakshmi, manifesting this time through compassionate lovemaking, in whatever form between Krishna and the gopi-sages. As his shakti, Lakshmi provided Krishna with a never ending flow of love that easily fulfilled and liberated the sixteen thousand sages, creating rumour, gossip, and a questionable reputation for Krishna in the process. Nonetheless, the power of love provided by Lakshmi through Krishna was unambiguous in its perfect divine purpose. The Sanskrit word for this divine love is Prema.
Prema
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