Radharani (for Book Distribution Seminar)
by Aisvarya Prabhu
Yesterday Parama Karuna, Mathuradhis and I were at a mall in San Jose reading about Radharani in the Nectar of Devotion. Srila Prabhupada (and Srila Rupa Goswami) was talking about how devotional service is greater than Krsna because it attracts Him and that the symbol of devotional service in the highest degree is Radharani.
So when we were about to distribute books again Parama turned to me and said, “Isn’t it amazing that no one here has heard of Srimati Radharani?!” Around us was the mayhem and madness of last minute shoppers bustling and jostling for last minute Christmas presents in their last minute nightmare before the clock struck twelve and the gifts they forgot to get turn them into pumpkins. It was obvious that the Hladini Shakti was not foremost on their minds.
But then Mathuradhis met a couple who were more thoughtful. They bought a book from him and went on their way. I saw them walk past me with the book in their hands and mused that I had wanted to stop them a few minutes before they met Mathura. Somehow I had missed the opportunity but Krsna hadn’t.
I guess this couple wanted to know more because moments later they were standing next to me discussing between themselves the pictures in that book. So I poked my head into their conversation and asked if they understood those pictures. A conversation ensued.
We covered the usual topics of karma and reincarnation and what Christmas means to a monk but then the girl asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. The book they had only had pictures like changing bodies, karma and such. There were no pictures of the Spiritual World but our conversation had led me past the demigods to the real Boss, the real CEO in the sky, Krsna and His eternal abode of Goloka Vrndavan. And this lady, Sally, suddenly asked me out of the blue, “Who’s the Girl [with Krsna]?”
It seems like the secret is out. Is it really that no one knows about the real CEO in Vrndavan, Radharani? Where did Sally find out?
We may think that our efforts to give some knowledge in this world are in vein that no one really reads the books let alone understands them. We may pacify ourselves by reading the Nectar of Devotion and learning that the devotional service we are performing is attracting Krsna and therefore any other result is irrelevant. But it seems that there is some tangible result as one person yesterday inquired into Someone that even we the ones who have the most faith in trying to preach to a forgetful society may not have realized was out there preaching with us.
