Character of One in Ecstatic Lone
14३
to merge into the existence of the Supreme Lord. They sometimes try to imitate a pure devotee's sentiment for visiting the holy places where Kṛṣṇa had His pastimes, but they simply have a view for salvation, and so their activities cannot be considered attachment.
It is said by Rūpa Gosvāmī that the attachment exhibited by pure devotees for Kṛṣṇa cannot possibly be perfected in the heart of fruitive workers ( karmīs ) or mental speculators because such attachment in pure Kṛṣṇa consciousness is very rare and not possible to achieve even for many liberated persons. As is stated in the  Bhagavad-gītā , liberation from material contamination is the stage at which devotional service can be achieved. For a person who simply wants to have liberation and to merge into the impersonal  brahma-jyoti , it is not possible to acquire attachment to Kṛṣṇa. This attachment is very confidentially kept by Kṛṣṇa and is only bestowed upon pure devotees. Even ordinary devotees cannot have such pure attachment for Kṛṣṇa. Therefore, how is it possible for success to be achieved by persons whose hearts are contaminated by the actions and reactions of fruitive activities and who are entangled by various types of mental speculation?
There are many so-called devotees who artificially think of Krṣṇa’s pastimes, which are known as  aṣṭa-kālika-līlā . Sometimes one may artificially imitate these, pretending that Krṣṇa is talking with him in the form of a boy, or else one may pretend that Rādhārāṇī and Krṣṇa both have come to him and are talking with him. Such characteristics are sometimes exhibited by the impersonalist class of men, and they may captivate some innocent persons who have no knowledge in the science of devotional service. However, as soon as an experienced devotee sees all of these caricatures, he can immediately evaluate such rascaldom. If such a pretender is sometimes seen possessing imitative attachment to Krṣṇa, that will not be accepted as real attachment. It may be said, however, that such attachment is like giving a future hope to the pretender, so that he may eventually rise onto the actual platform of pure devotional service.
This imitative attachment can be divided into two headings—namely, shadow attachment and  para  (transcendental) attachment. If someone, without undergoing the regulative principles of devotional