Introduction 39

The Lord taught the Gosvami about devotional service, comparing it to
a creeper, and He advised him to protect the bhakti creeper most carefully
against the mad elephant offense against the pure devotees. In addition,
the creeper has to be protected from the desires of sense enjoyment,
monistic liberation and perfection of the hatha-yoga system. They are all
detrimental on the path of devotional service. Similarly, violence against
living beings, desire for worldly gain, worldly reception and worldly fame
are all detrimental to the progress of bhakti or Bhagavata-dharma.

Pure devotional service must be freed from all desires for sense gratifica-
tion, fruitive aspirations and culture of monistic knowledge. One must be
freed from all kinds of designations, and when one is thus converted into
transcendental purity, one can then serve the Lord by purified senses.

As long as there is the desire to enjoy sensually or to become one with
the Supreme or to possess the mystic powers, there is no question of
attaining the stage of pure devotional service.

Devotional service is conducted under two categories, namely primary
practice and spontaneous emotion. When one can rise up to the platform
of spontaneous emotion, he can make further progress by spiritual attach-
ment, feeling, love, and many higher stages of devotional life for which
there are no English words. We have tried to explain the science of
devotional service in our book The Nectar of Devotion based on the
authority of Bhakti-rasémrta-sindhu by Srila Ripa Gosvami.

Transcendental devotional service has five stages of reciprocation.

1. The self-realization stage just after liberation from the material
bondage is called the santa or neutral stage.

2. After that, when there is development of transcendental knowledge
of the Lord’s internal opulences, the devotee engages himself in the dasya
stage.

3. By further development of the dasya stage, a respectful fraternity
with the Lord develops, and above that a feeling of friendship on equal
terms becomes manifest. Both these stages are called sakhya stage, or
devotional service in friendship.

4. Above this there is the stage of paternal affection toward the Lord
and this is called the vatsalya stage.

5. And above this stage there is the stage of conjugal love, and this
stage is called the highest stage of love of God, although there is no
difference in quality in any of the above stages. The last stage of conjugal
love of God is called the madhurya stage.

Thus He instructed Ripa Gosvami in devotional science and deputed him
to Vrndavana to excavate the lost sites of the transcendental pastimes of
the Lord. After this, the Lord returned to Varanasi and delivered the
