Srila Gurudeva:
paritranaya sadhunam vinasaya ca duskrtam
dharma-samsthapanarthaya sambhavami yuge yuge
Bhagavad-Gita 4.8
[To protect My unalloyed devotees, to annihilate the wicked and to firmly establish religion, I appear in every age.]
What dharma is He coming to establish? First you may say that He came to establish varnasrama-dharma. But what is the life and soul of varnasrama-dharma? Atma-dharma. If there is no atma-dharma, then the duties to parents, duties to husband, duties to children, duty to society and countrymen and to the world, if there is no atma-dharma then all of these duties are bogus. The whole Mahabharata was fought only to re-establish atma-dharma. But what is atma-dharma?
“Eho bahya (go further), eho bahya, eho haya (this is all right).” Then comes, “eho uttama (this is very good), eho uttama, eho sarvottama (this is the best).” Then comes sakhya-rasa, then vatsalya, then gopi-prema, and then Radha-prema comes. Krsna has come only to taste these things, what only Srimati Radhika can taste, and to sprinkle a particle of that gopi-prema to the world. The mood of Caitanya Mahaprabhu or Krsna was to taste the mood of Radha and to sprinkle the mood of the gopis to the world. But there are so many kinds of gopis. We cannot taste as Lalita and Visakha do. We can only taste the mood of the maidservants of the sakhis like Lalita, Visakha and all others.
So the mood of the gopis here means those gopis like Rupa Manjari. He came to sprinkle this mood. We are only able to serve like Rupa Manjari, Rati Manjari, or Rupa Gosvami. Krsna has come only for this and Caitanya Mahaprabhu again very mercifully came to establish all these things. One thing you should know is that Krsna came in the womb of Devaki but not like general, worldly people do. How did He come in the womb of Devaki? Vasudeva or Nanda Baba did not give birth to Krsna. Krsna mercifully descended in the womb of Yasoda or Devaki through mantras. Because mantra and Krsna is the same. There is no difference at all.
Vasudeva gave a mantra to Devaki and like a seed, Krsna went in the womb of Devaki. Nanda Baba in the same way said that, “Today a very beautiful boy came in my heart and I am giving Him to you.” She took Him and that same day she became pregnant. So it was not like an ordinary conception of any child. You should know about bhakti. We cannot achieve bhakti by the practice of any sadhana. Bhakti will descend in the heart. What is bhakti? Bhakti is the svarupa-sakti, especially the essence of both the hladini and samvit-sakti which is Krsna Himself or Srimati Radhika.
Bhakti is non-different from the svarupa-sakti. “Sva-bhakti sriyam.” Sva means Krsna. Bhakti means Radhika. So love and affection for Krsna, this is sva-bhakti. Then ‘sriyam’ means Her beauty. What is Her beauty? Rupa Manjari and all others. Bhakti can come if she will see that you are qualified, that you are pure. Otherwise she will not come.
[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on April 27th, 1998, France, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 27]