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Begin with the fragrance, for it reaches you before anything else. Picture the Rāsa-maṇḍala already perfumed: the maidservants are strewing paṭavāsa, sweet fragrant powder, across the whole dancing-circle, and the air thickens with it until the night-grove is one breath of sweetness. And it is not only the kiṅkarīs. Overhead the very goddesses of the sky, leaning astonished from their celestial chariots, let fall flowers and fragrant dust upon the dancers below. The whole quarter of heaven empties its sweetness into this circle. Prasṛmara: it spreads, it extends, it flies outward. And here the one word folds two beauties together, for the masters of the tradition tell us, on the authority of the Śabda-Ratnāvalī, that paṭavāsa means not only the fragrant powder but also the silken sārī itself, paṭamayaṁ śāṭī. So when you breathe prasṛmara-paṭavāse you cannot tell whether it is the perfume that streams wide or the silk, and that is exactly right: as Śrī Rādhā turns, the fragrance and the flying cloth are one shimmering thing wrapped about Her, and the eye gives up choosing and simply surrenders. When the gopīs revolve so swiftly, the cloth itself lifts and sails horizontally about their waists, a banner of pure motion, a flag of joy turning in the dance.

And as She turns, see what opens: prema-sīmā-vikāse, love unfolding to its very boundary. O Radhe, this is no small tenderness. The tradition names it plainly: this is Your mādana-mahābhāva, the topmost crest of love, the loving genius with which You, helped by Your dear sakhīs, delight Madhusūdana past all His remembering. The Rāsa is Your festival before it is anyone else's, the great festival of Rādhikā's loving expertise. Śrī Śuka Muni cannot stop singing it across the Bhāgavata, how expert the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa are in loving each other. Here love has reached its own horizon and is blossoming at the very edge of the possible, and there is nowhere further to go.

Madhura-madhura-hāse: sweet, sweet smiling. O Radhe, Your smile rings around the circle and it is answered, smile for smile, jest for jest. There were smiles, Śrī Śuka Muni sings, sa smitair bhrū-vilāsaiḥ, and there was play with the eyebrows, and with these alone the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa enchanted one another. There is no laughter anywhere like the laughter of the Rāsa-circle: it is a festival of ecstasy, laughter soaked in emotion, laughter that is itself a caress. Hear how the word doubles, madhura-madhura, sweet and then sweeter, because to say it once is not enough.

Divya-bhūṣā-vilāse: now the very jewels begin to play. Śrī Rādhā and the sakhīs wear no earthly gold; these are transcendental, divya ornaments. The great poet Karṇapūra fixes it for us in the Ānanda-Vṛndāvana-Campū, that whatever falls into the ocean of sweetness becomes wholly sweet, mādhurya-sindhum adhi yasya bhaven nipātas tat kevalaṁ madhurimānam urīkaroti, so that even Her bangles and bells, fallen into Her, have turned entirely into mādhurya. The whole circle fills with their divine jingling: the swinging earrings keeping time, the jewelled bangles swaying on the wrists, the anklets answering the feet. And one sakhī, overcome, clutches another's arm and cries: O sakhi, look, look how Murāri, the teacher of every dancing art, dances the lovely Hallīṣaka with Rādhā, Her earrings swinging along; His jewelled bangles sway without ceasing, His sprout-soft hands and restless eyes move with the rhythm, and at the beauty of His gestures the moon forgets to travel across the sky, and even the eternal mystic Lord Śiva stands stunned and motionless with wonder. This is the dust that has stopped the heavens. Śrī Śuka Muni sings it in the Bhāgavata, kṛṣṇa-vikrīḍitaṁ vīkṣya vyamuhyan khecara-striyaḥ, kāmārditāḥ śaśāṅkaś ca sagaṇo vismito 'bhavat: when the goddesses of the sky beheld Kṛṣṇa's Rāsa they were bewildered with longing, and the moon too with all his retinue was astonished. And the Vaiṣṇava-Toṣaṇī-ṭīkā is careful to guard it: kāmena bhagavad-viṣayakena pīḍitāḥ satyo vyamuhyan, their bewilderment was no base desire but the pure intoxication of love for the Lord Himself.

And now the touch. Hold your breath here. Pulakita-dayitāṁse saṁbalad-bāhu-pāśe. As they dance, Priyā and Priyatama keep their arms upon each other's shoulders, anyonya-baddha-bāhubhiḥ, says the Śrīmad Bhāgavata, arms bound to arms. Śrī Rādhā lays Her soft, rope-like arm, bāhu-pāśa, the very noose of love, across the shoulder of Her Beloved, and that shoulder breaks at once into gooseflesh of ecstasy, pulakita, every hair erect with the joy of Her touch. And His arm, encircling Her, sets Her shoulder thrilling in the same instant. Mahābhāva's shoulder, Rādhā's, is studded with horripilation where ānanda-maya's arm, Kṛṣṇa's, has come to rest, and ānanda-maya's shoulder thrills where mahābhāva's arm has come; love touching love, and each set trembling by the other. There is no untangling who began it. The arms are entwined, the thrill is shared, the two are one motion in the turning of the circle.

That is the dance the kiṅkarī longs to enter. And mark how she longs to enter it: not to be embraced, not to be the one whose shoulder thrills, but to wait at the rim of all this sweetness and serve. Karhi rādhām upāse: when, oh when, will I worship, will I attend, will I do the smallest service for Śrī Rādhā in the very midst of this? The whole verse is one ache pressed into a single question. Not when will I taste it, but when will I be allowed near enough to tend it.

This is how lovely the Rāsa-līlā is. There is no end to its loveliness, for it is born wholly of pure godly love, and even the Supreme Absolute Truth goes mad in relishing it. Kṛṣṇa Himself confesses, nāhi jāne smṛte rāse mano me kīdṛśaṁ bhavet, I do not remember what My own mind became during the Rāsa. If the very Lord of the dance cannot hold the memory of His own heart in that hour, what wonder that a servant should stand at the edge of the grove, hands folded, eyes wet, asking only: when, when will I be let in to serve?