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Begin inside the kuñja, in the still hour after the testing is over. The little maidservant has stood her trial of love and passed it; the bhāva-parīkṣa is behind her, and yet her heart asked for nothing for itself. When Śyāma turned to reward her, she did not reach toward nearness to Him. She reached toward the two of Them together. "Śyāma, You can bless this poor maidservant by wanting only her life. Let my wage be this alone: the savour of Your sweet meeting with Priyājī, and some small fitting service I may do in that hour. Let me be set afloat on an ocean of bliss by witnessing Your embrace of one another. Bless me so." How incomparable is the beauty of a dāsī's heart. It does not ask to be loved; it asks to wait upon the loving. That is the soil this verse grows from, and unless you stand in that soil, the wonder it praises stays only a word.

Now the Yugala have granted her wish, and the vilāsa begins. In the abode of union, the great ocean of Kṛṣṇa's lāvaṇya draws up the ocean of Śrīmatī's lāvaṇya as the moon lifts the tide, and at once the impossible happens. In the Śrīmad Bhāgavata, Govinda Himself is named lāvaṇya-sāra, the very essence and distillate of all beauty, the standard against which loveliness is measured. Yet here that essence of beauty stands astonished. The measure is itself out-measured. O Rādhe, what manner of elegance is Yours, that the source of all elegance forgets Himself before it? The maidservant cannot find a single word equal to these two oceans. She gives up the search and simply gasps: lāvaṇyaṁ paramādbhutam. Her loveliness is the supreme wonder. There is nothing more to say, because there is nothing else of its kind.

Why does even Govinda lose Himself here? Because She is varatanu, of the most excellent form, and that form is not made of flesh as we know flesh. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta sings that Rādhā's very svarūpa is the blazing cintāmaṇi jewel of mahābhāva: mahābhāva-cintāmaṇi rādhāra svarūpa. Her body is condensed highest love taken on shape. So when Govinda's fish-like eyes go swimming in the ocean of Her beauty, the maidservant, watching, feels her own life suddenly worth having been lived. To have been born only to see this, she thinks, is enough; the whole of existence has paid for itself in this one glance.

The vilāsa deepens, and the maidservant slips out of the bower. She will not stay to be seen; she goes and finds the little gaps in the leaves and peeps through the foliage, the way only a servant who wants nothing for herself dares to relish such sweetness. And there she watches the second wonder unfold: rati-kalā-cāturya, Rādhā's cleverness in the arts of love. O the astonishment of it. Śyāmasundara is the teacher of every rasika art; He is the master from whom all skill in delight descends. And He is defeated. He stands stunned, not knowing what to do, beaten at His own lovegame by the deftness of this girl. In the Vidagdha-Mādhava, Vṛndādevī once cried it aloud: cikrīḍa yā rajasi rañjita-sūtra-nāddha-gokarṇa-mātra-cikura nava-viddha-karṇā: how amazing, from whom did this Rādhā learn such arts? Only a short while ago She was still a child playing in the dust with Her girlfriends, red ribbons in Her hair, Her earlobes newly pierced, and now, from no teacher anyone can name, She has gathered such mastery that She conquers the unconquerable, defeats Ajita Himself. The maidservant, watching her Svāminī triumph, floats out into a shoreless sea of pride. My Mistress has won. She has fulfilled longings that Śyāma could not so much as imagine.

And the victory shows on Her body as light. So happy is Śrīmatī, knowing She has satisfied what even Her Beloved could not picture, that Her golden lustre seems to gush out of Her limbs and pour into the grove. The maidservant names this third wonder: kāntiḥ kāpi mahādbhutā, a lustre beyond any reckoning, an indescribable radiance of Her excellent form. Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes the fine difference: śobhaiva kāntir ākhyāta manmathāpyāyanojjvalā: when the limbs grow more splendid from absorption in love's play, that heightened radiance is called kānti, the glow that amorousness alone can light. This is not the steady beauty of rest; it is beauty caught fire by union. Seeing it, Kṛṣṇa once turned to His friend Subala and confessed: prakṛti-madhura-mūrtir bāḍham atrāpy udañcat: O Friend, this Rādhā is the very form of natural sweetness, and now She is embraced besides by the fresh stripe of youthful grace, and even that is not all, for I see Her beauty increase by the very playing of love, and so She maddens Me and seizes My heart away. The thief of all hearts stands here, robbed.

Then, without warning, the mood turns. In the lap of Her Beloved, with His arm around Her, Śrīmatī enters prema-vaicittya, that strangest and tenderest of all loves, in which the heart feels separation from the lover even while it sits upon him. Her intelligence has grown so fine, so subtle, that She can feel the vilāsa, the loveplay itself, and yet no longer feel the vilāsī, the one who plays it. "O Mohana, where are You?" She begins to weep, holding Him and missing Him in the same breath. "Where is that enjoyer whose enjoying is so beautiful?" Nāgararāja is struck silent; He has never seen a sweetness like this. And to escape the fire of a separation suffered inside union itself, Śrīmatī becomes līlāmayī: She takes up the imitation of Her Beloved. This is the fourth wonder, līlā-gati, the marvellous course of Her play, the play of Her very gait. Līlā, the tradition teaches, is just this: priyānukaraṇaṁ līlā ramyair veśa-kriyādibhiḥ: to imitate the beloved's lovely dress and ways. So Rādhā becomes Kṛṣṇa to hold Kṛṣṇa near. Śrī Rati Mañjarī once saw it and told her friends: mṛgamada-kṛta-carcā pīta-kauśeya-vāsā: Rādhā has anointed Herself with musk so Her gold takes on His dark hue; She has put on a yellow silken cloth; She has bound a crown of peacock feathers in Her hair; She holds Her shoulders in His crooked threefold bend and lifts a flute to Her lips and sounds it. May that Rādhā, dressed as Madhuripu, guard us all. And this is only one wave. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta reminds us: kṣaṇe kṣaṇe uṭhe premāra taraṅga ananta; jīva chāra kāhā tāra pāibeka anta: moment after moment endless waves of love keep rising in Her, and what poor small soul could ever find their shore?

The sakhīs step softly back into the bower, and the prema-vaicittya breaks; Śrīmatī sees Her Nāgara before Her again, real and present, and now a new mellow rises, the parihāsa-rasa, the rasa of laughter. Śyāma, bold, begins telling the sakhīs of Rādhikā's skill in love, and at His teasing Her glances come. O these glances, the fifth wonder and the deepest: dṛg-bhaṅgī adbhutādbhutatamā, the bend of the eye that is more wonderful than wonderful, wonderful past the very superlative of wonder. For these sidelong looks carry everything at once, bashfulness and a flash of anger and joy and pride all braided in a single slant of the eyes, and the Nāgara Himself drowns in the adbhuta-rasa, the mellow of wonder, that they pour out. And last, soft as the others are blazing, comes the smile, smitaṁ cādbhutam, the quiet wonder of Her gentle smile, Her manda muskān, mild where all the rest is dazzling, and no less a marvel for being still.

Why does all of this gather under the one word, wonder? Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī gives the reason, and it is the secret of the whole verse: apriyādeḥ kriyā kuryan nālaukikyāpi vismayam: where there is no love, even the most extraordinary deed stirs no astonishment in the heart; but where there is love, even a drop of the ordinary becomes a flood of wonder. How much more, then, in one who loves Kṛṣṇa, whose pastimes are themselves the most extraordinary of all. And how much more again, beyond all reckoning, for one who loves Rādhā, for it is She who astonishes even Kṛṣṇa with Her form and Her qualities and Her play. And the tradition seals it: rase sāraś camatkāro yaṁ vinā na raso rasaḥ: astonishment, the catch of the breath, is the very marrow of rasa; without that camatkāra rasa is no longer rasa at all. Wonder is what feeds every mellow and makes it worth the tasting. So the verse names Her again and again the wondrous one, until the names run together and become a single ache. And then, having stacked wonder upon wonder until the heart can hold no more, the prayer falls: sā rādhādbhuta-mūrtir adbhuta-rasaṁ dāsyaṁ kadā dāsyati. She who is wonder taken on a body, when, O when, will She bless me with the wonderful flavour of Her service? Not Her beauty for the having. Not Her nearness for the keeping. Only the service of the wonder. Only to be allowed, like that little maidservant at the leaf-gaps, to do some small thing in the hour of Their joy and be set afloat forever.