356
The Nectar of Devotion
The same friend of Mother Yaśodā addressed Kṛṣṇa as follows: “My dear Mukunda, if Mother Yaśodā, the Queen of Gokula, is forced to stand on fire, but is allowed to see Your lotus face, then this fire will appear to her as the Himalayan Mountains: full of ice. In the same way, if she is allowed to stay in the ocean of nectar, but is not allowed to see the lotus face of Your Grace, then even this ocean of nectar will appear to her as an ocean of arsenic poison.” Let the anxiety of Mother Yaśodā of Braja, always expecting to see the lotus face of Kṛṣṇa, be glorified all over the universe!
A similar statement was given by Kuntīdevī to Akrūra: “My dear brother Akrūra, my nephew Mukunda is long absent from us. Will you kindly tell Him that His Aunt Kuntī is sitting amongst the enemy and would like to know when she will be able to see His lotus face again?”
In the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam , Tenth Canto, 46th Chapter, 2nd verse, there is this statement: “When Uddhava was present at Vṛndāvana and was narrating the activities of Kṛṣṇa in Dvārakā, Mother Yaśodā, while hearing this narration, began to pour milk from her breasts and shed tears from her eyes.” Another incident demonstrating Yaśodā’s extreme love for Kṛṣṇa occurred when Kṛṣṇa went to Mathurā, the kingdom of Kaṁsa. In separation from Kṛṣṇa, Mother Yaśodā was looking at Kṛṣṇa’s makeup utensils, and she fell down on the ground almost unconscious, with a great sound. When she was rolling over on the ground, there were many scratches on her body, and in that piteous condition she began to cry, “ O my dear son! My dear son! ” And she slapped her breasts with her two hands. This activity of Mother Yaśodā is explained by expert devotees as ecstatic love in separation. Sometimes there are many other symptoms, such as great anxiety, lamentation, frustration, being stunned, humility, restlessness, madness and illusion.
As far as Mother Yaśodā's anxieties are concerned, when Kṛṣṇa was out of the house in the pasturing ground, a devotee once told her, “Yaśodā, I think your movements have been slackened, and I see that you are full of anxieties. Your two eyes appear to be without any movement, and I feel in your breathing a kind of warmth which is bringing your breast milk to the boiling point. All these conditions prove that out of separation from your son you have a severe head-