The Rāsa Dance: Introduction
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they were fully freed from the reaction of  karma  by constant meditation on Krṣṇa. Their severe painful yearnings caused by their not being able to see Krṣṇa freed them from all sinful reactions, and their ecstacy of transcendental love for Krṣṇa in His absence was transcendental to all their reactions of material pious activities. The conditioned soul is subjected to birth and death, either by pious or sinful activities, but the  gopīs  who began to meditate on Krṣṇa transcended both positions and became purified and thus elevated to the status of the  gopīs  already expanded by His pleasure potency. All the  gopīs  who concentrated their minds on Krṣṇa in the spirit of paramour love became fully uncontaminated from all the fruitive reactions of material nature, and some of them immediately gave up their material bodies developed under the three modes of material nature.
Mahārāja Parīkṣit heard Śukadeva Gosvāmī explain the situation of the  gopīs  who assembled with Krṣṇa in the  rāsa  dance. When he heard that some of the  gopīs , simply by concentrating on Krṣṇa as their paramour, became freed from all contamination of material birth and death, he said, “The  gopīs  did not know that Krṣṇa is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. They accepted Him as a beautiful boy and considered Him to be their paramour. So how was it possible for them to get freed from the material condition just by thinking of a paramour?” One should consider here that Krṣṇa and ordinary living beings are qualitatively one. The ordinary living beings, being part and parcel of Krṣṇa, are also Brahman, but Krṣṇa is the Supreme—Parabrahman. The question is, if it is possible for the devotee to get free from the material, contaminated stage simply by thinking of Krṣṇa, then why not others who are also thinking of someone? If one is thinking of a husband or son, or if anyone at all is thinking of another living entity, since all living entities are also Brahman, then why are they not all freed from the contaminated stage of material nature? This is a very intelligent question, because the atheists are always imitating Krṣṇa. In these days of Kaliyuga, there are many rascals who think themselves to be as great as Krṣṇa and who cheat people into believing that thinking of them is as good as thinking of Lord Krṣṇa. Parīkṣit Mahārāja, apprehending the dangerous condition of blind followers of demonic imitators, therefore asked this question, and fortunately it is recorded in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  to warn innocent people that thinking of an ordinary man and thinking of Krṣṇa are not the same.
Actually, even thinking of the demigods cannot compare with thinking of Krṣṇa. It is also warned in  Vaiṣṇava Tantra  that one who puts Viṣṇu, Nārāyaṇa, or Krṣṇa on the same level of the demigods is called  pāsaṇda , or