138 Sri Caitanya-caritamrta (Antya-lila, Ch. 5

person; kahe—describes; sune—hears; kariyd visvasa—with great faith; hrt-
roga—the disease of the heart; kima—lust; tanra—of him; tat-kale—at that time;
haya ksaya—becomes nullified; tina-guma—of the three modes of material
nature; ksobha—agitation; nahe—is not; mahd-dhira—very sober; haya—be-
comes.

TRANSLATION

“(When one hears or describes with great faith the pastimes of Lord Krsna,
such as His rasa dance with the gopis, the disease of lusty desires in his heart
and the agitation caused by the three modes of material nature are im-
mediately nullified, and he becomes sober and silent.

PURPORT

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvatt Thakura comments in this connection, “Any per-
son seriously inclined to hear about the pastimes of Krsna’s rasa dance, as men-
tioned in Srimad-Bhagavatam, with great faith and a transcendental, spiritually in-
spired mind, is immediately freed from the natural lusty desires found within the
heart of a materialistic man.”

When a pure Vaisnava speaks on Srimad-Bhagavatam and another pure
Vaisnava hears Srimad-Bhagavatam from such a realized soul, both of them live in
the transcendental world, where the contamination of the modes of material
nature cannot touch them. Freed from the contamination of the modes of nature,
the speaker and hearer are fixed in a transcendental mentality, knowing that their
position on the transcendental platform is to serve the Supreme Lord. The class
known as prakrta-sahajiya, who consider the transcendental pastimes of Lord
Krsna something like the behavior between a man and a woman in the material
field, artificially think that hearing the rasa-lila will help them by diminishing the
lusty desires of their diseased hearts. But because they do not follow the regula-
tive principles but instead violate even ordinary morals, their contemplation of
rasa-lild is a futile attempt, which sometimes results in their imitating the dealings
of the gopis and Lord Krsna. To forbid such habits of the prakrta-sahajiyas, Sri
Caitanya Mahaprabhu has excluded their material intelligence by using the word
visvasa (“faith”). In Srimad-Bhagavatam (10.33.31), Stila Sukadeva Gosvami says:

naitat samdacarej jatu
manasdapi hy anisvarah

vinasyaty dcaran maudhyad
yathé rudro ‘bdhijarn visam

“Certainly one who is not the Supreme Personality of Godhead should never,
even within his mind, imitate the activities of the transcendental rasa-lila of Krsna.
If out of ignorance one does so, he will be destroyed, just as if he were to imitate
Lord Siva, who drank poison produced from the ocean.”
