The following report is a preliminary social analysis of the so-called 'rasavada', a minor deviant Vaishnava sect, and is based on years of field studies in the holy land of Braj, India, including personal extended ritual participation and gleanings of insider information concerning the rasavada proclivities, and other unspecified baula-kama practices, and through observation in which various and sundry phrases were overheard at camp-meets.

Introduction

The bhakti prema (spontaneous devotional love) or bhakti devotional sect has been described in the Vedic literature as "the unbroken flow of hot oil being poured from one vessel to another." In fact, bhakti is a yoga - the culmination of meditation in which love seems to spontaneously overwhelm the sadhak with genuine feelings of ecstasy and bliss toward the Transcendental Person, the Purusha. To adepts of bhakti yoga, the meditative experience of unity conciousness is just like enjoying the divine nectar of heavenly ambrosia (ras).

The Nectar of Immortality

However, sometimes the term 'rasa' refers to certain base persons who merely imitate the moods of prema, love, for material gain or for personal enjoyment. Certain "rasiks" imagine that they feel the divine emotions of Bala Krishna, Gopala Krishna, or even Srimati Radharani herself. Yet, these rascally persons do not understand that the term 'rasa' means transcendental nectar, not in the sense of mundane enjoyment, but nectar in the sense of effortless, spontaneous transcendental devotional service.

These stubborn sense enjoyers and materialistic nihilists may have a talent for singing, dancing, acting, mood-making, and seducing women or men, and they may try to pass these proclivities off as spiritual accomplishments, and they may even dress like Sri Krishna or Srimati Radharani, but genuine devotees who practice true bhakti superconcious meditation, never confuse the spiriual life with intoxication and mundane eroticism.

The so-called ras-lila is a discredited deviant bhakti cult, where the proponents wear the red tilaka, and the neck beads, and the special shawl, and they obstain from the flesh foods. But, the prakriti-sahajiyas are counted out of the disciplic line of Sri Chaitanya, not because of their mundane titilations, but because of a subtle basic contamination in their sadhana: spouting out of the bijas on street corners, without intoning the mantra silently. Owing to this topsy-turvey psychic confabulation, the rasavadis imagine themselves more learned in the scriptures, by simply reading the puranas, than the original Vedic Rishis themselves!

Tantra - Shiva-Shakti Polarity Symbolism

The rasavadis are devotees of Sri Laksmi, but they impose upon Her the role of Radha, the free enjoyer, the married village cow-woman of Barsana, and they style Sri Krishna of Braj as the Lord Himself; a dark lusty village youth, with themselves as the village gopi girls, dancing the rasa-dance under the autumn moon. Some rasavadi sahjiya miscreants even claim that Sri Krishna's second wife, out of 16,000, (Visnupriya Devi) is actually the Goddess of Fortune Herself, who descends into existence as a formation-combination of male and female principles, purusha and prakriti. The rasiks believe that they can harmonize the two principles within themselves through 'divine-love' generation in the bodily union of man and woman through tantric yoga, which is identified as the mahabhava of Sri Shiva-Shakti.

The Gopi Cult of Radharasvahari

Based on the above gleanings, it is interesting to note the further metamorphosis of the rasavada sahajiya cult when it melds into the modified-dualistic, sociopathic Americano Hindu wannabe monks and nuns who imitate the confidential girlfriends of Srimati Radharani and Her pastimes, by dressing up as sari-bekhis, i.e., a man in womens clothing, who imagines himself to be the enjoyed of Sri Krishna. In the case of females of the rasavadi cult, since they are already dressed in saris, apparently, they must be serving the guru in other diverse and sundry ways.

Suffice it to say, without going into all the sordid details of their disgusting erotic practices, this rasa sect, if it were to be honored by such a title, encourages a person to release all inhibitions and to engage publicly in degraded acts of sheer lust and depravity. The rasik rascals even write books presenting their perverted views, and because of their talents, often cast a spell over the minds of young, impressionable people.

Notes:

In Braj, the holy land of bhakti yoga, such miscreants who imagine that Srimati Radharani is merely a physical object are termed bhogis, mood-makers, or babas, i.e., those who hanker after smooth things. Sahajiya (the way of natural and effortless effort, or the 'easy way' of Sahajiya, was the original bhakti movement, which came long before Chaitanya Bharati, the root guru of the Gaudiya sect. In a nutshell, here is the real history of the rasa sect:

Long ago in Bihar and Bengal, there was a group of accomplished adepts and yogis who discovered an intelligent way to self-realization through meditation and yoga. These were the early Buddhist 'Sahajiyas' who discovered an easy and effortless way to experience the transcendental ecstasy of divine love through yoga utilizing bija mantras and meditation. They wrote many songs in Bengali, called Caryapadas, expressing their philosophy in a mysterious language called sandhya-bhasa or twilight language.

The Sahajiya Buddhists abandoned ritualism, and the study of scriptures, and practiced a yoga of conciousness only, without symbols. They were especially noted for their bhajans, and were revered in the tantras as the Eighty-four Maha Siddhas.

Later, under the Sena kings, the miscreant Jayadeva composed the lusty 'Gita Govinda', a song extolling the amorous exploits of Srimati Radharani, which so excited the so-called 'Vaishnavas', who, in a fit of jealousy, began to immitate the Buddhists, and managed to overhear the phrasing of the holy bijas at yogic camp-meets, and not understanding them, twisted them into pop-tunes celebrating actual sexual acts among the demi-gods, women, and men, under an autumn moon.

Thus the Vaishnavas came to be called 'rasiks', as in the nectar of erotic ambrosia. The so-called rasiks then tried to reverse engineer the original Sahajiya Buddhist philosophical system, and turned it upside down, calling Sri Radha the 'active' female principle, and Krishna the 'static', in order to represent the highest state of bliss attained by man through maithuna, or tantric ritual coitus.

Then, in the thirteenth century, with the musclemen holocaust completed, the occupation of Bengal by sufis caused the remaining secret sahajiyas, now 'fallen' Buddhist 'vaishnavas', to adopt and absorb many elements of the sufi cult. The sufis were noted for announcing that they were Allah themselves, and were thus persecuted in many Arabic lands. In India, the Sufis flourished, and mixed up with the already mixed up Vaishnavas, who were confused between the remnant Saha Buddhs, the Mayavads of Shank, and the mystic Sufs of the Musslemans. This was all a holy mixed-up perversion of the true, spontaneous sankirtan movement of the original Sahajiya Buddhist meditating monks and nuns at Nalanda to say the least!

Sankirtan - The Rasa Dance

The remaining confused, mixed-up underground Sahajiya-Vaishnava cult members, having no leaders, since they had all been killed or forcibly converted to Islam by the My Mud of Gotcha, then decided to boldly celebrate their hearsay and mundane base literal sexual mysticism by hosting a great big show with song and dance in the streets of downtown Mayapur.

They would show the Moghs that at least they, the Vaishnavs, had control of at least their own private sex life fantasies! Then comes one Kesore Bhatta who, seeing the so-called 'sankirtan' with the two-steppin' whirling dervishes, goes into a profound trance-dissociation state, and two-steps all the way to Puri and into the sea never to be seen again. To top it all off this sense gratification philosophy, in the name of transcendental devotional service, was further corrupted by the miscreant 'caste goswamis' who churned their immature emotions into a state of sentimental ecstasy, and thus they confused further the difference between spirit and matter for the poor people.