The Rasa Dance: Introduction 193

they were fully freed from the reaction of karma by constant meditation
on Krsna. Their severe painful yearnings caused by their not being able to
see Krsna freed them from all sinful reactions, and their ecstacy of tran-
scendental love for Krsna 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 gopis
who began to meditate on Krsna transcended both positions and became
purified and thus elevated to the status of the gopts already expanded by
His pleasure potency. All the gopts who concentrated their minds on
Krsna in the spirit of paramour love became fully uncontaminated from
all the fruitive reactions of material nature, and some of them imme-
diately gave up their material bodies developed under the three modes of
material nature.

Maharaja Pariksit heard Sukadeva Gosvami explain the situation of the
gopis who assembled with Krsna in the rasa dance. When he heard that
some of the gopis, simply by concentrating on Krsna as their paramour,
became freed from all contamination of material birth and death, he said,
“The gopis did not know that Krsna 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 Krsna and ordinary living beings are qualitatively one. The
ordinary living beings, being part and parcel of Krsna, are also Brahman,
but Krsna 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 Krsna, 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 ma-
terial nature? This is a very intelligent question, because the atheists
are always imitating Krsna. In these days of Kaliyuga, there are many
rascals whe think themselves to be as great as Krsna and who cheat people
into believing that thinking of them is as good as thinking of Lord Krsna.
Pariksit Maharaja, apprehending the dangerous condition of blind followers
of demonic imitators, therefore asked this question, and fortunately it is
recorded in the Srimad-Bhagavatam to warn innocent people that thinking
of an ordinary man and thinking of Krsna are not the same.

Actually, even thinking of the demigods cannot compare with thinking
of Krsna. It is also warned in Vaisnava Tantra that one who puts Visnu,
Narayana, or Krsna on the same level of the demigods is called pasanda, or
