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Begin with the light itself. Not lamplight, not the moon laid across the Yamunā, not even the gold of the rising sun over Barsānā. Picture instead a radiance with no shape you could draw and no edge you could trace, a glow that simply is, soft and unbearably tender, and feel how the heart leans toward it before the mind can name it. The tradition names it only haltingly, jyotiḥ kiñcana: "some light," "a certain light," as if those who have seen it must lower their words and confess defeat. It cannot be measured. It cannot be dimmed. It only shines, and where it shines it sweetens, for it is sprinkling something as it shines, siñcad: it is sprinkling the splendid amorous nectar, ujjvala-rasa, and it is the very source from which that rasa first dawns, the prāg-bhāva, the beginning-state of the most radiant love.

And it has a Name. O the wonder of it: this light is not nameless after all. It wears the supremely sweet Name, ati-madhuraṁ rādhābhidhānaṁ param, the Name Rādhā. Say it slowly and let the two syllables fall like nectar on the tongue: Rā, dhā. The Padma Purāṇa fixes it for us, abhinnatvāt nāma-nāminoḥ: there is no difference between the named and the Name. So when you speak Her Name you are not pointing at Her from across a distance; She is there, on the breath, on the lips, arriving. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī teaches in the same spirit, yat tattvaṁ śrī-vigraha-rūpeṇa cakṣur-ādāv udayate tad eva nāma-rūpeṇa vāg-ādāv iti sthitam: the Lord shows Himself to eyes anointed with the salve of love, and reveals Himself on tongues made of loving devotion in the form of His Name. So too Her self-luminous Name rises of its own accord, uninvited and unearned, on the tongues and in the hearts of the most fortunate, those whose eyes have been touched with that salve of prema.

Now look at who bows before this light. O the marvel of it. The maidens of Vraja, the līlā-kiśorīs, the playful adolescent girls whose every gesture is grace, whose laughter is the music of the bowers, whose loveliness is so original that millions upon millions of Lakṣmīs, the goddesses of fortune themselves, are left abashed and outshone, koṭi-lakṣmī-vilakṣa. Imagine it: in the very play of these girls the distinguishing marks of crores of Lakṣmīs come to shine and find their beauty, and yet beside the casual loveliness of a single Vraja maiden at play those same goddesses stand embarrassed. And these incomparable ones, these who eclipse all the fortunes of the worlds, turn and worship the Name Rādhā. They are the worshippers; Her Name is the worshipped, ārādhyam. What, then, can the rest of us say of how high this Name stands?

Why do even the gopīs worship Her Name? The masters of rasa-śāstra open the secret gently, for they tell us there are gradations in the love the consorts bear toward Kṛṣṇa. There is the ordinary love, sādhāraṇī rati, which the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi describes as not-very-deep, arising from directly seeing Hari, and the very abode of the desire for one's own enjoyment. It flared in Kubjā, who upon seeing Him at once thought: let me be united with this jewel of men, let me make Him who pleased me happy for a while with my service. There is also the reasonable, wifely love, samañjasā rati, which the same scripture describes as growing from hearing of the beloved's qualities, the lady thinking herself His wife, a love noble and true yet sometimes touched by the wish for personal happiness. It rose in Rukmiṇī and the queens of Dvārakā when Nārada and others sang His glories, and it could still whisper, "He gives more of His time to that queen who loves Him with finer skill; if only I loved with her expertise, I too could capture Him." When that thought enters, the love is mixed with self-desire and loses some of its depth. But there is one love that stands clear of both, the samarthā rati, the capable love, which the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi calls fully fused with rati itself, nothing but the pure ache to please Him in union, needing no first sight and no first hearing, making the lover forget honor and family and patience and her very self, never to be mixed with the faintest desire for her own pleasure. Iyam eva ratiḥ prauḍha-mahābhāva-daśāṁ vrajet: this love alone ripens into mahābhāva, and that one little word eva shuts the door, declaring such ripening unthinkable in the other two. This capable love, the masters say, is the exclusive treasure of the beautiful girls of Vraja; no other heart has held it, and this is precisely why their loveliness leaves the goddesses of fortune ashamed.

And here is the wonder that humbles even these wonders: even the holders of samarthā rati, even the crown of all lovers, worship the Name of Rādhā. For the tradition says plainly, vinā rādhā-prasādena kṛṣṇa-prāptir na jāyate: without Rādhā's mercy Kṛṣṇa is not attained. So the gopīs themselves chant Rādhā's Name to reach the dark jewel they love. Śrīpāda has already sung it in an earlier verse of this very garland, the ninety-fifth, yaj-jāpaḥ sakṛd eva gokula-pater ākarṣakas tat-kṣaṇāt: a single utterance of Her Name, and the Lord of Gokula is drawn to it that instant. And when they chant it, something tender happens that the tradition cannot keep silent about. Kṛṣṇa hears. He turns and asks, "Sakhi, who spoke the Name Rādhā? When I heard it My very life was soothed. How many names there are in Gokula, yet not one of them stirs My heart like this. What sweetness lives in this Name, that fills My ears and makes Her form crystallize within Me, until I feel I am dwelling in an ocean of nectar?" Yadunandana sings how He weeps to long to see Her with His own eyes. So this Name does not merely lift the chanter from danger as the name Nārāyaṇa once lifted fallen Ajāmila at the hour of death; this Name makes the Lord of Gokula Himself come running, ready to give Himself away to whoever has spoken it. And so, by worshiping Her Name, the gopīs become the very objects of Kṛṣṇa's complete love. Narottama Dāsa Ṭhākura laments for those who miss it, jaya jaya rādhā nāma, vṛndāvana yāra dhāma, kṛṣṇa-sukha-vilāsera nidhi: glory, glory to the Name of Rādhā that dwells in Vṛndāvana, the jewel of Kṛṣṇa's pastimes; fate has cheated me, he cries, by never letting my ears hear Her glory; for whoever keeps the company of Her devotees and hears Her rasa, Her līlā, Her love, attains Ghanaśyāma, while one set against this never reaches perfection.

Why is the Name so sweet? Because sweetness is the Lord's own nature, and His names are made of rasa. Yet a tongue gone yellow with jaundice cannot taste even rock-candy as sweet, and a heart polluted by aparādha cannot relish the nectar of the Name. Kṛṣṇa's Name is the sweetest name of God, and still Her sweet Name draws even Kṛṣṇa. The Rasa-sāgara presses the wandering soul with a piercing question: O My soul, life after life you have circled this world, you have tasted sugared grape-juice and thickened milk, you have risen to heaven and drunk its nectar, even the lips of celestial Rambhā; but tell Me truly, in all that endless wandering, did you ever once taste the sweetness that lives in pronouncing the two syllables Rā-dhā?

And so to the last marvel, the one the verse marks with its own breath of astonishment, aho. This light, this Name, this seed, does not stay aloof. The word prāg-bhāva means the seed, and as the whole towering tree sleeps folded inside one small seed, so the whole of mañjarī-bhāva sādhanā, the entire flowering of intimate loving service, lies folded within Her Name. And by a fortune that cannot be bought or contrived, bhūri-bhāgya-vibhavaiḥ, this seed-light takes hold, dṛḍhe cetasi, in the firm and ready heart of some rare soul, and there it stirs and unfolds and stretches open, jṛmbhate, like dawn spreading across a sky. Whose heart? Not the heart of the deeply learned, nor of the great ascetic, nor of anyone the world would point to. It says kasya api, some unnamed one, anyone at all upon whom the mercy of Rādhā's devoted servants has fallen, for Śrīpāda tells us this unlimited sweetness reveals itself automatically only in the hearts of those greatly fortunate souls who attain the mercy of the great ones dedicated to Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī's worship. That is the only doorway. In such a one, untraceable and unboasting, the light blossoms and pours its streams of ujjvala-rasa without end.