Chapter Three: The Madhura Disposition in India's Inner (Esoteric) Religious Disciplines

—is therefore highest of all, because an infinite ocean of transcendent divine love surges within. Sahajiyas do not accept a deity or God existing beyond the human. Nor do they worship Radha and Krishna as a goddess and god. They hold that Radha and Krishna can be realised only within the human body.

Seen with divine vision, form and essential nature possess such an intimate, undivided unity that they cannot be separated. When this vision opens, no distinction remains between human and divine. Essential nature pervades form just as fragrance pervades a flower. Essential nature is attained through form; form—the human body—is therefore worthy of worship.

A person is always tormented by some love without understanding why the burning exists or for whom. This burning and longing are for Premā, the heart's queen and life of one's life. Through divine love man and woman attain divinity, yet it is through human love that sacred love arises between them and they realise their Krishnahood and Radhahood.

Rati and rasa

Only love accompanied by superimposition grants entry into Vrindavan. Worship of form alone, without superimposing essential nature upon it, leads directly to hell. A practitioner of sahaja is not an ordinary person of rasa, nor merely a person of passion. The practitioner becomes a person not born from a womb, then successively attains the conditions of the innate person and eternal person.

An ordinary woman likewise cannot enter this practice. Entry becomes possible only upon attaining Radhahood through “special rati.” A man who has attained pure rasa enters through his Krishnahood; a woman who has attained pure rati enters through her Radhahood.

In the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, Sri Jiva Goswami recognises three forms of rati: competent, harmonious, and ordinary. In competent rati, the heroine joins the hero solely to give him happiness. Through complete self-giving she seeks to bestow supreme bliss upon her beloved; Radha is its highest example. In harmonious rati, beloved and lover desire one another's happiness equally, as with Rukmini. In ordinary rati, the heroine joins the hero out of desire for her own happiness, as with Kubja.

Sahajiyas accept this classification and hold competent rati alone worthy of innate practice.

Perfection of love

Sahajiya practice prescribes very severe rules and difficult disciplines for perfecting love. To realise genuine love, the practitioner must become a corpse: every lower tendency and animal disposition within must be destroyed at the root, so divine tendencies and feelings can impart their full colour. Form must be saturated with the radiance and savour of essential nature. In short, the man must relinquish pride in masculinity and recover his true feminine—