Passionate and erotic

Radha looks toward Krishn who has just come home after spending time with the gopis. His lips are smudged with black, tell-tale signs of his having kissed the kohl-lined eyes of gopis during ras lila. Jayadeva’s Gita Govindam is an erotic, poetic account of the love that Krishn had for the ‘brides of Braj’, the gopis, and vice versa, and his most beloved Radharani, who is believed to be none other than Krishn in another form.

Hence, you find paintings wherein Krishn is dressed as Radha and Radha is dressed as Krishn, a kind of metaphor signifying the divine and ecstatic union of self and Self, jivatma and Paramatma. All the physical depictions of ras lila, the dance of Krishn and the gopis, are symbolic of the dance of the soul and the Supersoul, the jivatma and Paramatma, in a sensuous courtship that culminates in Divine Oneness.

This kind of depiction is also to be found in the Sufi dance of the dervishes, the Sama, where the seeker surrenders to the Divine while engaging in swirling, sensuous movements with one hand raised above, pointing to the Divine, and the other, pointing to the ground. The whirling movements are basically a form of meditation, as is the flirtatious ras lila – it is dhikr, fervent reaching out, that leads to communion with the Supreme.

Call the culmination a kind of mental explosion that dissolves the ego; it signifies complete surrender, and pure ecstasy.