Lord Balarama's Bewilderment

Nityananda Gauranga Hare Krishna!

Dear Guruji and devotees please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Sri Sri Guru and Gauranga!

When Krishna is Hare (Radha) Krishna He manifests His loving pastimes with Srimati Radharani. When Hare Krishna is Lord Gauranga He gives Their supreme love to everybody. As Nityananda Balarama Lord Gaura Krishna manifests the conditions and environments to display all He is including His own transcendental Forms. Krishna as well as Radha and Balarama are causeless and eternally exist simultaneously. They are one and simultaneously They are different in order to exhibit the variegations of the spiritual and material creation. This is a mystery that can be understood by the devotees of Lord Gaura Krishna because only they are subject to His unlimited mercy and are enabled to understand what is beyond the conditioned state of comprehension.

When I was reading in the tenth Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam about �Brahma stealing the Boys and the Calves� I was struck with wonder on many levels. Although fascinated by this mysterious story I couldn�t grasp any of its most wonderful nectar contained in this breathtaking pastime. So I read it again and again praying to the Lord to grant me just a drop. I have discovered and learned that I need to stop, stand still, and contemplate just one verse or a couple of verses until They start to reveal themselves. Really the nectar is everywhere and by the mercy of the Lord even through a quarter sloka the entire Vedic conclusion can be revealed to us. I rush too fast. What�s next? What is around the next corner? And while I am seeking for more nectar I discard the nectar that I just have stepped over. How ungrateful! I have to stop and contemplate what is here and now, dive into it, deeper and deeper and beg Lord Gaura Krishna to reveal what is there. And sometimes the Mantrarajas and the Maha Mantra Themselves will unlock the slokas and reveal an unknown dept that lies beyond the mundane comprehension and almost inexpressible in our limited words and understanding capacity. But allow me to try it anyway because its nectar is too sweet not to be shared.

Although Lord Brahma is a very exalted personality he is �ambho janma jani� meaning one who is born from a lotus. This indicates that he has a material birth and is under the influence of material nature. Lord Brahma had just observed the activities of Lord Krishna and His childhood pastime of killing and delivering the Anghasura demon. Lord Brahma was impressed with how little Krishna had handled the angry brother of Putana and Bakasura and now he wanted to show of some of his own mystical powers. Although Lord Brahma�s mystical power is compared as the light of a glowworm trying to show of in the sunlight of Lord Krishna�s mystical power, Lord Gaura Krishna in His unlimited mercy plays along and in such a magnitude that it even bewildered Lord Balarama. But before we talk about that we have to understand that it was not really Brahma�s power of illusion at work. Lord Brahma being influenced by the material nature doesn�t have any power over the eternally liberated intimate friends of Lord Sri Krishna, neither over the calves they were herding. Lord Sri Krishna Who is in the heart of everyone knew about Lord Brahma�s intentions and He deceived Brahma already before he stole the boys and calves. With His yogamaya He had hidden the boys and calves and mahamaya had instantly produced exact replicas of the boys and calves for Brahma to steal. The real boys and calves were never stolen, the same as the real Sita was never in the hands of Ravana.

Then for the pleasure of Lord Brahma and for the pleasure of the mothers of the calves and the mothers of the boys Sri Krishna expanded Himself in the thousands of boys and the millions of calves. Each boy and each calf was an exact replica possessing all their individual characteristics. Although appearing as the calves and boys who took of in the morning to the pasturing grounds and forests of Vrindavan each individual came back in the late afternoon non-different from Krishna Himself and all the boys and calves went to their mothers as usual. Nobody noticed the difference except for one: the mothers of the calves and boys were more than ever overflowed with love for their offspring. Rivers of milk were flowing spontaneous from their breasts and their parental affection was so heightened that it felt as if they were feeding, caressing and loving Lord Sri Krishna Himself. Before the mothers had always secretly loved Krishna more than their own sons. In fact they yearned and dreamed to feed little Krishna from their own breasts. But now, for some reason, that same intense affection was there for their sons and all mothers were affected to them the same as they were affected to Krishna. Their inner ambition was to have Krishna as their own son and now the Lord fulfilled that aspiration. And He, being one in different forms drank with great pleasure the rivers of nectar of the mothers whose milk was saturated with their prema. Who can comprehend the waves of the ever increasing love that were expanding the parental affection of His intimate devotees, the elderly gopis and gopas?

Of course Lord Brahma was baffled when he saw this amazing pastime of Lord Sri Krishna and his prayers following the events are famous for all of eternity. But what puzzled me the most in this whole event was that even Lord Balarama, the first expansion of the Lord Who is non-different from the Lord except His complexion, was also bewildered for almost a full year. The day of the killing of the Anghasura demon and of Brahma stealing the calves and boys was Balarama�s birthday and he had stayed home for His birthday rites. So He was not directly present when this all happened however we all know that His many expansions are omnipresent. For instance being a form of Lord Baladeva, Sri Vrndavana-dhama is completely spiritual, fully cognizant and saturated with unlimited prema for Sri Krishna. The spiritual lotus of Vraja-dhama fully cooperates with Krishna's desire for pastimes by expanding and contracting to facilitate His transcendental movements. Within a short time, for example, Krishna can traverse the distance between Nandagrama and Vamsivata where He meets nightly with Radharani. Lord Balarama fully accommodates all the necessary features of Sri Krishna's mind-pleasing pastimes. Also in His expansion as Maha Vishnu He is the cause of mahamaya that created the duplicates of the boys and calves even before Brahma stole them. In His expansion as Paramatma He is situated in everybody�s heart. So you would think that Lord Balarama Who is identical to the Lord, Who is the container and facilitator in which all of Lord Sri Krishna�s pastimes take place, could tell that all the boys and calves that came home that night were nothing else than expansions of Lord Sri Krishna Himself. But He didn�t. For almost a full year Lord Balarama was also bewildered by the yogamaya of Lord Sri Krishna. It was only a few days before the end of a full year that Lord Sri Krishna gradually took of four layers of yogamaya in order to fully reveal to Lord Balarama what was actually going on and to allow Him to experience from the point of view of a devotee. This is most significant because all Lord Nityananda Balarama does and is in essence is one unlimited ocean of service to Lord Gaura Krishna. Their love is incomparable and Lord Nityananda Balarama is the foremost devotee of the Lord. He is the Guru of all guru�s and He is the only gateway through which we can enter into the loving mysteries of Lord Gaura Krishna.

This pastime is a deep mystery and glimpses of its reality are making you mad with love. You can ask yourself why would the Lord even want to bewilder Lord Balarama? According to Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura Krishna wanted to avoid that Balarama would suffer any separation from Sridama and His other friends for a period of a year. It also indicates that although all Vishnu expansions are normally coming from Lord Balarama the Vishnu expansions shown to Lord Brahma in the form of the boys and calves were direct expansions of Lord Sri Krishna. During that year Lord Balarama did not appear in any expanded form and He was covered by the yogamaya of Lord Gaura Krishna. This signifies how powerful the Lord�s yogamaya is that He can even bewilder His first expansion! But there is a deeper reason why Lord Sri Krishna bewildered Lord Balarama and with him Lord Brahma and the gopas and the gopis and the cows. The Lord applied this pastime on such a wide scale to increase His transcendental ocean of love on all fronts. Though Krishna is the supreme independent controller, and everyone from Brahma to even His personal expansions is dependent on Him, He is dependent on prema and controlled by prema. In other words prema is not depending on Him. Krishna cannot control or restrict prema. Sridhara Swami says: �This irregularity is difficult to prevent in Krishna.� Such uncontrollable prema was in the hearts of the mothers towards Krishna in the form of their sons. Thus Krishna in the form of their sons forgot His power as the Lord. He assumed the role of their sons and remained dependent to them. This love is Krishna�s ornament. Visvanatha Cakravarta Thakura says: �As the living entity�s dependence on maya is the cause of his sorrow, so Krishna�s dependence on prema is the cause of ever-increasing bliss.�

This is such an incredible realization. It is so easy to read over it, to digest it on the surface without relishing the nectar it contains. Here we should stop, and dive deeper and deeper in what is right here in front of us. It was the last subject Srila Prabhupada translated and then he gave up his body. Sri Krishna is the controller of everything and everybody but He Himself is controlled by prema. In order to unlimitedly expand prema for Himself He covered His first expansion Lord Balarama with His yogamaya so Lord Balarama could fully relish the oceans of love as His servant and friend. This is such an unfathomable gift of Lord Krishna that the thousands of mouths of Lord Ananta Sesa are not enough to sing the unlimited glories of the Lord. The love of Lord Gaura Krishna is so immeasurable that He gives the unlimited increase of that love in the hands of His devotees in such a way that He makes Himself fully dependant on that love. When you are able to stop right here and now and beg the Lord to reveal just a drop of this mystery you will experience the indescribable. When you start to experience the Maha Mantra in the Mantrarajas and the Mantrarajas in the Maha Mantra, when only a few words of the scriptures open doors to incommunicable depths, when you can�t sleep because you are so restless due to your realizations, then you know that you are turning into a madman and that your feelings are untamable. Then you will also know that becoming this kind of madman is the most desirable state of being you can wish for. But in all your ecstasy you can never forget that this is only possible by the causeless mercy of the Lord and the guru and that humbleness is the only state of mind that gives you the most chance to remain on the receiving end of that mercy.

Your servant,

Hadai Nityananda dasa

Nitai Gaura Hari Haribol!

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