Krishna is a law unto himself and does not reveal his secret easily except to those whom he has chosen for his own mysterious reasons. That is why his divine play and mysterious ways are difficult to understand. As for the stories of his Lila during earthly embodiment as recounted in the Bhagwat Purana, they are the expression of Rishis with a profound occult knowledge. People see in these stories what they themselves are. The unripe unchaste mind misses the deep significance of these stories, especially those of Radha and Krishna and the other Gopas and Gopis and sees in it nothing more than playful vital fantasies justifying a flirtatious life. But the ripe and mature soul sees in them the symbol of the soul abandoning all for the love of God shedding all its attires and robes and coverings of ignorance in a love constituted of a total self-abandonment and giving of oneself to the Divine.
Here are some aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo on the subject along with two short remarks of the Mother (in cursive):
464—God has so arranged life that the world is the soul’s husband; Krishna its divine paramour. We owe a debt of service to the world and are bound to it by a law, a compelling opinion, and a common experience of pain and pleasure, but our heart’s worship and our free and secret joy are for our Lover.
465—The joy of God is secret and wonderful; it is a mystery and a rapture at which common sense makes mouths of mockery; but the soul that has once tasted it, can never renounce, whatever worldly disrepute, torture and affliction it may bring us.
For the moment, the world still seems to be in contradiction with the pure and luminous divine joy; but a day will come when the world too will manifest this joy. This is what we must prepare it for.
482—The seeker after divine knowledge finds in the description of Krishna stealing the robes of the Gopis one of the deepest parables of God’s ways with the soul, the devotee a perfect rendering in divine act of his heart’s mystic experiences, the prurient and the Puritan (two faces of one temperament) only a lustful story. Men bring what they have in themselves and see it reflected in the Scripture.
483—My lover took away my robe of sin and I let it fall, rejoicing; then he plucked at my robe of virtue, but I was ashamed and alarmed and prevented him. It was not till he wrested it from me by force that I saw how my soul had been hidden from me.
Let us drop our robe of virtue so that we may be ready for the Truth. [CWM 10:340-346]
