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Hare Krsna

Please accept my humble obeisance. All glories to Srila Prabhupada

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Rupa Goswami came on the order of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to rejuvenate and re-excavate the land of Vrindavan. The Six Goswamis were engaged in the service of Lord Chaitanya for preaching work.

Whatever we are preaching now, it is based on the principles laid down by the Six Goswamis. Narottama Das Thakur has sung,

rupa-raghunatha-pade ha-ibe akuti

kabe hama bujhaba se yugala-piriti

The loving affairs of Radha and Krishna are not ordinary material things as we conceive. Generally, people are very much interested in paintings of Radha-Krishna's love. These pictures are very popular because they think, "Krishna is like us. He is after young girls, so he's a great support for us. We are also after young girls. And just as Krishna has done, we are also doing that."

But Krishna's affairs are different. It is not so easy to understand the loving affairs of Radha and Krishna. It is meant for the spiritually most advanced. That is not an ordinary thing. Not only the loving affairs of Krishna and Radharani, but everything about them is not material. They are all spiritual. It has nothing to do with matter.

How these affairs are spiritual, that we have to understand through the teachings of Rupa Goswami's Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, Nectar of Devotion. Without reading all these books, Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu, Bhagavad-gita, if we jump over to the tenth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam to understand Radha-Krishna, that is not good, and therefore it is not effective.

You'll find in The Nectar of Devotion that so many Vedic literatures are quoted. So, sastra-vidhi is required.

Then we'll be fixed up. Vidhi-bhakti is very important, then raga-bhakti, then prema-bhakti. So we should not imitate prema-bhakti without going through vidhi-bhakti. Just like we rise early in the morning, perform mangala-arati, all regulative principles, then wash the temple, dishes, and then dress the deities, then again arati, then class. This is because we have not yet awakened our natural love for Krishna. So it requires the compulsory practice of this vidhi-bhakti. Vidhi-bhakti means that one has to follow the injunction of the sastras and the order of spiritual master. Not that we act whimsically.

— Lecture in Vrindavan. 9 December 1975.