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Picture the nikuñja at the deep of night, the leaves grown still, the moon caught in the lattice, and a small servant pressed to the carved window, scarcely breathing. She has taken the form the tradition gives her, the body of a mañjarī, and she looks through the latticed screen into a bower whose sweetness has no edge. Inside, the Yugala Kiśora have folded into one another until the world has fallen away. There is no grove now, no Vraja, no time, only the Two of Them and the slow tide of Their happiness, each so steeped in the other's joy that nothing else exists to be remembered.

And then, O heart, something quiet and enormous begins, the very thing the tradition lifts down from the shelf with hushed reverence: the roles begin to turn. He who is the hero softens, and She who is the beloved rises. Not by design, not as a clever pastime arranged for relish, but by a forgetting so complete that the sense of being lover or beloved simply slips its moorings. This is prema-vilāsa-vivarta, the spontaneous overturning of love. Mark the word spontaneous, O seeker, for everything depends on it. There is a turning of roles that is chosen on purpose, and it too is honey: as in Śrī Viśvanātha Cakravartī's Kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta, where in the Rāsa-dance Rādhā Herself lifts Kṛṣṇa's flute to Her own lips and summons Him and the gopīs, and they all come running at Her call. That exchange is sweet beyond telling. Yet it is done with intention, and so it cannot rightly be named prema-vilāsa-vivarta. This, in the bower, is no arrangement at all. This is the helpless, unbidden melting in which the grip on one's own self lets go, and the forgetfulness of roles ripens of itself into a feeling of Oneness. And this, the tradition declares, is avadhi, the very limit, the furthest shore of all the transcendental pastimes of Rādhā-Mādhava, beyond which love has nowhere left to go.

Hold the meaning of that Oneness tenderly, for it is so easily mistaken. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta Mahākāvya seals it: "premnā 'tikāṣṭhā pratipādanena dvayoḥ paraikyaṁ pratipādyavādīt": that the very climax of love establishes the supreme oneness of the Two. But this is not the oneness the jñānī seeks on the path of dry wisdom, no merging into formless light where the Lovers vanish. This is a oneness made wholly of loving feeling. So Śrīla Rāmānanda Rāya sang it: "na so ramaṇa na hāṁ ramaṇī": "He is not the lover and I am not the ladylove" (Caitanya-caritāmṛta, Madhya 8). The identities are not lost. Only the identification with one's own sex has disappeared, so that the man acts as woman and the woman as man, and yet through it all Rādhā is Rādhā and Mādhava is Mādhava, jewel and jewel, face and face, two hearts so drowned in one another that for one timeless breath the line between Them cannot be found.

So now She is risen, mahābhāva itself given a body, lying upon the form of Her dark Beloved, absorbed in the reversed delight, viparīta-vilāse nimagana. Her moon-face, candrānana, is slightly lowered, ānamra, and the veil rests upon Her head so that only a little of Her glance shines through, kiñcit, faint and splendid beneath the cloth. The slow luster of Her sidelong eyes moves like nectar, dṛg-apāṅga-cchaṭā mantharaṁ, slow and mind-stealing, and Madana Mohana, the enchanter of Cupid Himself, lies enchanted, mugdha, gazing up at Her. And see, O see, what the leading love has cost Her: in the abandon of it a soft cluster of curls, alaka-mañjarī, has tumbled loose and fallen like a bud across Her eyes, and it hides Her face from Him. The veil of Her own hair has come between His eyes and the moon He worships, and the One who enchants all cannot now see the face He longs for.

This is where the servant lives. This is her whole hope and her whole craft. Quiet as a thought, unseen, alakṣya, she slips into the kuñja. She does not interrupt; she does not announce; she comes only to serve the seeing. With the tips of her fingers, kara-ruhaiḥ, she lifts the fallen blossom of curls and draws it gently aside, unnīya, so that mahābhāva personified may look upon Her Lover again, so that nothing should stand between Their drinking of each other. And in that instant Rādhā startles. She had not known anyone was near. Her eyes fly open, wide and trembling, sa-cakita-ālokam, and that startled glance breaks across the dim grove like spilled nectar. Then She stares once more at Her Lover's face, and from those slow, mind-enchanting eyes the nectar of prema trickles, ḍhala ḍhala, the crown-jewel of all ladyloves, kāntā-śiromaṇi, undone with love; and who, O who, can ever tell that sweetness, ei mādhurī ke kore varṇana.

And the servant's longing is only this: kadā lokaye, when. When will I be there; when will these eyes be granted this one sight. Not to be seen, not to be thanked, not to be drawn into the play, only to be near enough to render this smallest service, to clear one fallen curl so that Love may look on Love. Blessed is this maidservant, the tradition cries, and blessed is her service, for she has won the vision of the most beautiful of all transcendental pastimes. Blessed her hands, blessed her hiding place at the lattice, blessed the night that let her in. For she has tasted what the rasikas keep folded away in silence; not everything of these pastimes can be set upon the page, and the sweet inmost details are understood only by those whose hearts have ripened into this love. To float forever in that ocean, wholly spent in the service of the divine adolescent Couple of Vraja, is the mañjarī's only heaven, and she asks for no other.

O wind of Vṛndāvana, carry this prayer. O Rādhe of the lowered face, ānamrānanā, dearmost beloved of Kṛṣṇa, Śrī-Lālajī the crown-jewel of heroes; I lay this longing of mine at Your feet. When will my fingers be allowed to lift Your fallen curl, when will my startled-eyed Mistress turn those wide bright eyes a hair's breadth in my direction, when will I stand inside this scene, not as one who grasps but as one who serves. Śrī Prabodhānanda himself set down nothing but this same ache when he sang, "When will I too see this form with startled eyes?"; and at his feet his hidden daughters take up the same cry, kadā lokaye, when, when.