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Picture a soul standing at the crossroads where every path the scriptures ever charted comes together, and watch him turn, one by one, away from each of them. Not in pride. In love. He has tasted something, O seeker, and the taste has spoiled him for everything else. This is the voice we are given here: the voice of Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda Sarasvatī, speaking not from a settled height but in the ache of separation from Śrī Rādhārāṇī, his words rising out of viraha like a reviving elixir poured for every sādhaka who would come after. The tradition tells us these are his utterances in sādhaka-consciousness, and in them the inner beauty of his bhajana lies bare. He is declaring his ananya, his one-pointed fixation: his mind will not leave the lotus feet of Śrī Rādhā, and this, he shows us, is how the life of sādhana should naturally look. The heart that has cherished even a single drop of this savour can lay down everything in the world, the way a child sets aside a pebble when a jewel is pressed into its palm.

Begin where he begins, with the world of the senses. Hear how the word breaks from him: alaṁ, enough. "Enough of viṣaya-vārtā": enough even of talk about sense objects. He does not merely call it tiresome. He calls it "naraka-koṭi-vībhatsayā": disgusting as ten million hells. O seeker, feel the violence in that and understand where it comes from. It is not the recoil of a frightened ascetic clenching his teeth against desire. It is the natural revulsion of a heart that has held something sweeter. The yogīs, the tradition reminds us, must climb to such freedom rung by aching rung. Maharṣi Patañjali names four stages in the renunciation of sense pleasure: yatamāna, vyatireka, ekendriya, and at the summit vaśīkāra, full mastery where the senses no longer pull at all, reached only after long and arduous practice. But this the devotee never has to strive for separately. Mahāprabhu's own teaching is recalled here, that jñāna and vairāgya are never limbs of devotion; they walk behind Kṛṣṇa's devotee on their own, the way servants follow their master uninvited. When the Lord's sweetness is relished even slightly through hearing and chanting, that vaśīkāra the yogīs sweat lifetimes to reach awakens in an instant.

The Gītā itself is set into this devotion, where the Lord says: "viṣayā vinivartante nirāhārasya dehinaḥ, rasa-varjaṁ raso'py asya paraṁ dṛṣṭvā nivartante": the man who merely fasts from sense objects may turn from the objects, yet the inner thirst for their relish remains, until the Supreme is seen. Viśvanātha Cakravartī fixes the meaning: "paraṁ paramātmānaṁ dṛṣṭvā": when the Paramātmā is beheld, the longing for sense objects truly ends. That, the tradition says, is the yogī's way. The devotee's way is gentler and surer: he meets the Lord by savouring His sweetness, for without that savour you may stand face-to-face with the Lord and still not be face-to-face with Him at all. Śrī Kṛṣṇa is sweetness itself, and that sweetness pours out in His names, His forms, His attributes, His pastimes; and the heart that drinks there finds every sense object turned despicable as millions of hells.

Remember how the Bhāgavata sings the renunciation of Rājarṣi Bharata: "yo dustyajād āra-sutān suhṛd rājyaṁ hṛdi spṛśaḥ, jahau yuvaiva malavad uttama-śloka-lālasaḥ": though still young, he cast off wife and son and friends and kingdom, things hard to give up, as a body is glad to be rid of its waste, because he longed for the Lord who is praised by the best of verses. Viśvanātha Cakravartī, in his Sārārtha-Darśinī, unfolds the image: as it is blissful to be rid of waste and miserable to be unable, and one is disgusted even by its memory, so Bharata regarded all he renounced; and this marks his renunciation off from the jñānī's and the yogī's, for his was born of yearning for Śrī Govinda, the abode of sweet names and forms and pastimes. Just so here. Śrīpāda had already turned from the senses in his life as a sannyāsī; and on top of that he had reached the very nectar-ocean of Śrī Rādhā, the rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi, by the grace of Śrīman Mahāprabhu, and diving in, his body and mind and life-airs had become wholly nectarean. That sense objects should taste to him like ten million hells, then, speaks for itself.

Now watch the friendly voices crowd around him, each holding out a nobler road, and watch him decline them one by one with the same tender finality. Someone says: very well, if the senses disgust you, then study the Veda and Vedānta; surely there is bliss in the holy texts. And he answers, "vṛthā śruti-kathā-śramaḥ": what a waste of labor it is to discuss them. The Vedas hold their elaborate karma-kāṇḍa and jñāna-kāṇḍa, but to the pure devotee, the tradition sings with Ṭhākura Mahāśaya, this is "kevala viṣera bhāṇḍa": only a storehouse of scorching poison; and so the devotee keeps far even from those still attached to it. Narottama Dāsa's Prema-Bhakti-Candrikā gives the heart of it: people pursue jñāna and karma because they do not know bhakti-yoga, and so are ignorant in a hundred ways; knowing the highest truth, the devotees do not lend an ear to their talk, for loving devotion is the very life of the devotees, and how sweet are the pastimes of Śrī Hari, who pervades the universe and gives His orders even to Brahmā and Śiva.

And as for all the Lord's own topics gathered in the scriptures, the Bhāgavata, the ripened fruit of the Vedānta tree, whispers to give up even the straining after that knowledge. Brahmā prays to Kṛṣṇa: "jñāne prayāsam udapāsya namanta eva jīvanti san-mukharitam bhavadīya-vārtām, sthāne sthitāḥ śruti-gataṁ tanu-vāṅ-manobhir ye prāyaśo'jita jito'py asi tais tri-lokyām": O invincible One, those who lay aside even the slightest endeavour to comprehend Your position and prowess and glory, and simply live among Your devotees, hearing from their mouths of Your names and forms and attributes and pastimes, worshiping these with body and word and mind, conquer the very You whom none in the three worlds can conquer. So even gathering all the book-knowledge of the Lord's glories is a waste of time; the treasure is not on the page. Again the Prema-Bhakti-Candrikā: "veda vidhi agocara, ratana vediropara, sevo niti kiśora kiśorī": serve, day upon day, the adolescent boy and girl of Vraja seated upon their jewelled altar, who are not to be found in the pages of the Vedas. And mark, O seeker, this is no unlettered man dismissing what he never grasped. The tradition keeps it vividly: while Śrīpāda was lost in the mellows of Veda and Vedānta, Śrīman Mahāprabhu, the very embodiment of the Vedas, made these things plain to him, and by His grace his mind and heart sank into great Rādhā-rasa. He is the Vedāntika Śiromaṇi, the crown-jewel among the wise in Vedānta; and from such a mouth "vṛthā śruti-kathā-śramaḥ" carries a weight it never could from one who has never even heard the Vedas. He speaks the way only one who has reached the far shore can say the boat is no longer needed.

Then the voices press harder. If discussing the Vedas is wasted labor, will you not at least accept liberation, the very crown the Vedas hold out as the goal? And here he speaks the most extraordinary word of the whole verse: "bata vibhemi kaivalyataḥ": alas, I am afraid of oneness with the Absolute. He who once held liberation as the highest prize now dreads it, having tasted the relish of bhajana; for to a devotee, liberation too is a dreadful thing. Raghunātha Dāsa Gosvāmī cries out in his Manaḥ-Śikṣā: "kathā mukti-vyāghrā na śṛṇu kila sarvātma-gilanīḥ": O mind, do not listen to the words of the tigress liberation, for she will swallow your whole self. To drown in kaivalya, formless and nameless, is to lose the very I who adores and the form that is adored, and what lover could call that freedom? That Śrīpāda has come to dread it is again the fruit of Mahāprabhu's grace. The tradition keeps the memory of Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya, the great teacher of merging, who once seated Mahāprabhu before him to instruct Him in the muktivāda of Vedānta, yet by His grace came to change a śloka that held the word mukti and set bhakti in its place. Asked why, he confessed: liberation is not the fruit of devotion at all but a punishment for those averse to the Lord; sāyujya-mukti is the sentence of the blasphemer and of those slain by Him in battle, never the devotee's reward; for when a devotee so much as hears the word mukti, his heart fills with hate and dread, and he would sooner walk into hell than merge and lose the self that can love; but the word bhakti fills him with joy. No one, he said, can recognize a touchstone until it touches iron and turns it to gold.

And so they make their last appeal, the gentlest and most flattering. Even Śukadeva, they remind him, the son of Vyāsa, was once a brahmavādī muni, until the rasa of devotion seized him and he grew unmadā, drunk, beside himself in the worship of the Supreme Lord. Surely you too are caught up in that grand madness for the Supreme? Hear how he answers, with a love so narrow it has become infinite: "pareśa-bhajanonmadā yadi śukādayaḥ kiṁ tataḥ." Let Śukadeva and his kind grow drunk on the worship of the Supreme Lord as much as their hearts desire; it is glorious, let them have it; but what is all of that to me? For me there is one ocean only, and it has a name, and the name is Rādhikā, and the ocean is the nectar of Her lotus feet: "paraṁ tu mama rādhikā-pada-rase mano majjatu." Let my mind sink, let it drown, let it never come up for air. Not the cosmic Lord in His majesty; not even the great worship that maddens Śuka and the foremost of sages; Her feet, only Her feet.

O Rādhe, see what You have done to one who tasted You. You have made the world a thing of hells, the scriptures a thing of empty noise, liberation a thing of terror, and even the high worship of Your own beloved Kṛṣṇa in His vast Lordliness a thing he can smile at and set gently aside, because You have given him something more intimate still: the rasa that gathers at the edge of Your feet, the single sweetness that has unmade every other sweetness. The tradition presses the image upon us in Narottama Dāsa's song: "maranda bhramara yeno, cakora candrikā teno, pativratā-janera yeno pati, anyatra nā cole mana, yeno daridrera hema, eimata premabhakti rīti": the devotee thinks of no one but the Lord, as the bee is buried in honey, the cakora-bird drinks only moonlight, the chaste wife knows only her husband, the poor man's whole mind clings to his gold; such are the ways of prema-bhakti. So is this heart. The chaste wife parted from her husband is so wholly fixed on him that she does not know how the day passes or how the night passes; just so the devotee finds the whole world emptied out in separation from the beloved deity, and one altar alone is lit. How then could the mind ever wander to another object?

This, the tradition tells us, is how the life of bhajana looks when it is true. Listen at the last to the song the tradition lays in Śrī Prabodhānanda's own mouth: the disgusting rasa of evil sense-pleasure brings only endless hells, so what need have we of it; never discuss or hear the topics of the Vedas, for that toil is futile; within the mind he has resolved to cast off liberation, the very cause of dread, and he cannot be drawn even to the way Śuka and the foremost of munis grow ecstatic in the worship of the Supreme. And then the cry his whole life has narrowed to: "rādhā pada-rase nimagana": my mind and all my senses are sunk in the nectar of Śrī Rādhā's lotus feet; and "rādhā pada-sevānanda, ei to prāṇera nivedana": the bliss of serving Śrī Rādhā's lotus feet, this alone is my heart's craving, this alone the prayer of my life.