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Begin with the grove, for the grove is half the secret. Not a wide field, not an open glade where any wandering eye might fall, but a small hidden hollow deep within the vines, a nibhṛta mañju kuñja, a lonely lovely arbour, lovely precisely because it is concealed. The southern breeze comes up soft and slips between the leaves, carrying the fragrance of flowers inside, and the bumblebees grow drunk on that scent and forget their wandering, and somewhere overhead the cuckoos let fall the fifth note again and again, that ache of a sound that is half longing and half fulfillment. The walls of this bower are living vines, and within them, the tradition tells us, hang pictures that quicken the heart, images of love that stir love, so that the very air of the place leans toward union. This is no ordinary thicket. It is a jewelled temple grown of leaf and blossom, a maṇimaya śrī mandire, a niñkuja-mandira, a sanctuary made for one purpose only: the meeting of the two.

Now look who is there. A young blue effulgence and a young gold effulgence, nīla and pīta, Śyāma and Śrī Rādhā, drawn together by mahā-madana-vega: the great surging force of love that lifts Them past all measure. And see how it moves, this love. It does not rush all at once and spend itself. It comes anukramāt, gradually, by turns, one wave and then another, each cresting higher than the last. One moment He is the bold one, ardent, leading; the next moment She rises and He yields, the amorous force passing back and forth between Them like a single breath drawn through two bodies. Vicitra-rati-vikrama, the wondrous prowess of Their love, is not the prowess of conquest. It is the prowess of two who each live only to delight the other, so that the leading and the following are themselves a kind of giving, an offering laid down again and again at the feet of the beloved.

And here is the heart of it, the thing the maidservant peering through the gaps in the vines can scarcely believe she is seeing. They forget themselves. Lost on the rising waves of Their own pastime, rasamayī Rādhā and the king of all rasikas, the rasarāja, no longer know where one ends and the other begins. In that sweet forgetting Śyāma takes up Her blue sārī and wraps it about Himself, and Rādhikā, just as unknowing, draws on His yellow dhotī: vinimayan nīla-pītaṁ paṭam, the garments exchanged without a thought, without a plan, simply because in the depth of union neither remembers which body is whose. The cloth is navam, new; it is kim api, indescribable; and it changes owners while no one is watching. Aho! cries the heart at the sight. And then the wonder turns and completes itself: the blue light is robed in gold and the gold light is robed in blue, and the two effulgences, mingled, mitho militam, blaze up as one impossible radiance, pīta-nīlaṁ mahaḥ, a yellow-and-blue glory that no word can hold. Jayati, it says. All glory, all victory to that meeting light, for in this mingling the two lights rise to the very summit of all that is.

O wind from the south, you knew before we did what fragrance you were carrying into that grove. O cuckoo, your fifth note was Their music. O hidden bower, you alone were trusted to hold Them. And O Prāṇeśvarī, O Rādhe, when even You forget Yourself in love, when even You no longer know whose cloth lies against Your skin, what hope have we of measuring this sweetness? We can only stand at the vine and weep.

But understand what this exchange is, lest the eye mistake it. The tradition is exact here, and tender. Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, that when a couple see and embrace each other favourably, each one solely for the other's pleasure, this is sambhoga, the union of lovers, and it is the very opposite of grasping. Then Viśvanātha Cakravartī gives a homely, holy comparison: it is like the devotee honouring mahā-prasāda. The devotee seems to be eating, seems to be the one enjoying, yet truly he is serving, receiving the remnants of what the Lord has already relished, made glad because the Lord is glad, his own pleasure born entirely of knowing that the Beloved is pleased. Just so, in this grove, Rādhā is happy only because Kṛṣṇa is happy, and Kṛṣṇa is happy only because Rādhā is happy, and the joy goes round and round between Them, each pouring into the other, neither keeping anything back. The exchange of garments is the visible sign of this invisible truth: in such love there is no longer a separate "mine." His becomes Hers, Hers becomes His, and the self is so fully given that the very clothes change owners without anyone noticing. No wonder the maidservants float in an ocean of rasa when they behold it.

And who is it that sees this, and how does she come to be allowed near? Not by force, never by force. Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, the tradition tells us, does not enter this grove as himself. He enters in his kiṅkarī rūpa, his form as a maidservant, and only in that loving identity does he look through the holes in the vines to drink the sweetness within, and to reveal it, the pastime of Nanda's son and Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, the very source of all rasa, in transcendental revelation. This is the law of the inner garden, the heartbeat of the practice. The scriptures say of worship, nādevo devam arcayet and devo bhūtvā devaṁ yajet: one cannot worship the divine without first, by grace, becoming fit to stand in the divine presence, becoming as a god to approach God; and so they prescribe bhūta-śuddhi, the assumption of a spiritual identity. Jīva Gosvāmī teaches it in the Bhakti-sandarbha, that those for whom the Lord's service is life's highest aim should dwell upon themselves as an associate of the Lord, possessed of a spiritual body fit for that service, and that this very meditation is their bhūta-śuddhi, most favourable to the service. And the Bhāgavata itself promises, in the prayer to Urukrama, that whatever form the devotee lovingly meditates upon, in keeping with his own heart, the Lord will grant him that very siddha-deha; Viśvanātha, drawing it out, marvels: aho, this is how the Lord is subdued by His own devotees. So the maidservant earns her place at the vine not by climbing but by becoming small, by wanting nothing for herself except to fan Them, to bring Them water, to watch over Their joy and be glad in it. That, and only that, opens the gaps in the leaves.

So let us stay there with her, at the edge of the bower, not stepping in. Let us watch the blue light wrapped in gold and the gold light wrapped in blue, two who have forgotten Their own names in the rush of love, and let our hearts float, as the maidservants' hearts float, on this ocean of rasa. We came hoping only to serve. To see this much is already more than we deserved, and it is given, freely, to the heart that asks for nothing but to serve.