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Picture it. Past the bright clearings of Vṛndāvana, where the cane bends low and the grove keeps its own hush, there is a bower the whole of creation circles and never enters. Something abides there, vañjula mañju kuñje, in the cane-grove called lovely, and only the faintest whisper escapes of it: paramaṁ rahasyam, some supreme secret. It does not parade itself. It does not announce. It waits in the green dusk for the one who is fit to come.

And see who is turned back at the edge. Not the small, not the careless, but the very crown of the worlds. Nārada, whose vīṇā has sung the Name across every sphere. Brahmā, aja, the unborn architect of all that is. Īśa, Lord Śiva, lord of yogīs, drunk on the Name himself. Śukadeva, who poured out the Bhāgavata from his own pure mouth. Agamya they are called, unreachable: these four cannot perceive what hides in the cane. If greatness could buy entry, they would already be inside. They are not.

So who is the secret? The tradition lifts the veil only enough to name Her: Vṛṣabhānu-nandinī, the daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, Śrī Rādhā, the most coveted treasure of Kṛṣṇa's own heart. She is the one expert at stealing every heart that exists, and, wonder of wonders, She steals the heart of the very one who steals all hearts. Kṛṣṇa-ceto-haraṇaika-vijña: She alone knows this art. The thief of the three worlds is Himself robbed in the grove, and the robber is Rādhā.

Hear how a sakhī once told it, in the old song of Vidyāpati that the tradition keeps beside this verse. All Vraja weeps for Kṛṣṇa, she says, yet He is absorbed in You, O Rādhe, as the cātaka thirsts only for the raincloud and the cakora gazes only at the moon. When He remembers how You spread out Your hair, the veil slipping to cover only half Your breast, He is thrown into agitation. He grips my hand when He sees Your smile flash its teeth. Your unseen glance enters His heart, and when I look again You have already taken Him onto Your lap. O Sundarī, Vidyāpati sings, You are the puppet of His heart, and He is an empty body. This is the secret in the cane: not that Kṛṣṇa is loved, but that Kṛṣṇa is captured, and that Rādhā holds the string.

Then comes the hard and tender question. If Nārada, Brahmā, Śiva and Śuka are so high, why are they shut out? The old teachers answer without flinching. These are great souls, yes, but they still stand in male devotee-consciousness, and more than that, they still worship Kṛṣṇa from across a distance, in awe and reverence, in the mood of His majesty. That stance, however pure, cannot walk into the most private love of the grove. Aiśvarya bows at the gate; it does not pass through it. To enter, one must lay down the male way of seeing altogether and take on the heart of a gopī, and more precisely the heart of a mañjarī, a young maidservant who lives only to wait upon this love. The tradition does not say this once and move on; it returns to it, unfolding the same exclusion in the commentaries on verses 4, 41 and 73 of this very book, so that no one can mistake it.

And then, into that locked grove, mercy. For all the highest beings are turned away, the tradition adds a note that breaks the heart open with hope: in this age of Kali, even the most fallen souls can be let into the secrets of mañjarī-bhāva by the causeless mercy of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Prabodhānanda himself sings it in the Caitanya Candrāmṛta: on whose ear had the wondrous words "love of Kṛṣṇa" ever fallen? Who had known the glories of the Name? Who had entered the great sweetnesses of Vṛndāvana's forests? Who had understood Śrī Rādhā, who is the very limit of the wonderful sweetness of pure love? Only Caitanya-candra revealed all this, he is most merciful. The moon that the great sages could not climb to has come down of itself and laid its light on the lowest.

So Prabodhānanda sings again, naming Her plainly: most beautiful Śrī Rādhikā, kuñjeśvarī, the playful and enchanting queen of the bowers, steals Govinda's heart in the brightly shining cane-grove of beautiful Vṛndāvana. And blessed, he says, blessed are the maidservants, the kiṅkarīs, for they alone can behold the intimate pastimes that are not perceived even by Brahmā, Śiva, Nārada or Śuka. What is closed to the architect of worlds is open to the girl who carries Rādhā's water. The door is not rank. The door is service.