This is my latest work for the collection ” In search of the Golden Vyūha” . These are works are visual abstraction of scriptural concepts established in Vaiṣṇava Śāstra. The background to this piece is presented in the following two excerpts. As an visual artist who create images I found these passages pose as a challenge to my process pushing my practice deeper into what it means to portray a divine and transcendental subject within a artistic context.
The emancipation of attaining Vaikuṇṭha, and general religiosity, gain and desire, have their appropriate situation in Gokula in their original seed form. The Vedas are also present, ever singing the Glories of the Lord of Gokula. The ten spears of dissuasion fan out in ten directions to arrest those persons who, without the Grace of Krishna, attempt to approach or associate with Goloka through contemplation. The vainglorious on the path of meditation and knowledge-cum-renunciation ( yoga, jñāna) who attempt to approach Goloka are thwarted, being pierced by those ten spears. Nirvvāṇa or ‘self-annihilation’ reaches its acme in the plane of Brahman: that plan is only the outer covering of Goloka, in the form of those sharp spears.
From the meaning of śūla or spear is derived triśūla or trident: the trident symbolises the divisions of the triple worldly qualities ( rajas, tamas, sattva) and the threefold aspects of time, or past, present and future. The yogīs on the path of eightfold mysticism or the jñānīs of liberationist in the monism of non-differentiative Brahman who rashly approach Goloka are summarily cut asunder by those tridents which are situated in the ten directions, and they plunge down into the abyss of hopelessness
~ Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākur – Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā – Purpot verse 5
Question: In Śrī Brahma-saṁhitā it is described that Śrī Śrī Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa are seated on a divine throne, and the whorl of the lotus flower upon which They are seated is described as a hexagonalfigure. What is the meaning of this hexagonal figure and how can this be drawn?
Śrīla Bhakti Rakṣak Śrīdar Dev-Goswāmī Mahārāj: I am sorry, but we are not to enter into the discuśion of such higher and subtle position of the līlā of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. That is not to be brought into public, and that is the distinction between the Gauḍīya Maṭh and the sahajiyā section. The sahajiyās are trying to imitate all these things, but we have no faith in imitation. The higher līlā will come in an individual case, and it will awaken in an irresistible way. When the programme of the sādhana stage is finished it will come automatically, spontaneously. We are believers in that, and not to know the form already and then we will reach there—that is not the policy accepted by Guru Mahārāj, Prabhupād:
pūjala rāga-patha gaurava-bhaṅge.
Śrīla Bhaktivinod Ṭhākur also said, “Stick to the rulings of the class you are fit for, then you will see automatically.”
yathā yathā gaura-padāravinde
vindeta bhaktiṁ kṛta-puṇya-rāśiḥ
tathā tathotsarpati hṛdy akasmād
rādhā-padāmbhoja-sudhāmbu-rāśiḥ
~ Śrī Chaitanya-chandrāmṛta: 88
Strictly stick to Gaura-līlā, Mahāprabhu, and you will find automatically within your heart that Rādhā-rasasudhānidhi is flowing. Don’t attempt directly to have it. It will come automatically, spontaneously. Not intellectually you shall approach that, for that will give you a bad prejudice. Not only that, but it will be harmful prejudice and you will have to expend more energy to do away with that layer of misunderstanding.
So our Śrīla Prabhupād did not allow these things.
Do your duty in your plane, according to what you deserve, and that will come naturally. That is his instruction all through, not only temporarily, but all through.
Don’t go to be a disbeliever and be very eager to see the final result. Don’t do like that, for then you will get māyā instead of Yogamāyā.
He knows it fully well, She knows it fully well, when you are to be taken in to the confidential area, and that cannot be acquired by any other thing but His sweet will—the flow of Her sweet will, or His sweet will.
Try to have the natural thing, not any thing of imitation or any reflection. Reflection and shadow, these two kinds of misconceptions may come there.
In Harināma also it has been stated like that. Reflection and shadow, both are misguiding. And we are to cross that. On our way that sort of temptation may come, but we must not think that everything will come within the fist of our intellect.
