Raasleela, the dance of celebration

Health and Happiness 

To understand Gita, let us understand Krishna.

To understand Raasleela, the celebration, we must understand the life of Krishna, a complete miniature of this celebrating universe. Let us raise our eyes and look at whatever happening all around this vast universe of ours. It is all celebration, whether it is clouds gliding on heavens or rivers rushing towards the seas or seeds on their way to becoming flowers and fruits or bees humming or birds singing on their wings or love between people. It is all panorama of play and dance and celebration.

Raasleela has a universal meaning; it has a cosmic connotation and significance. The meeting of the opposite energies is the corner stone of all creation, of the universe. Even to construct a house, we place opposite kind of bricks on the arch to uphold the whole building. The whole play of creation, at every level of life, begins when energy becomes divided into two opposite parts. Raas, the dance of celebration, is the most profound attribute of the mighty stream of creation. And the creation in itself is the interplay of polar opposites-thesis and antithesis. It epitomizes the everlasting drama of making and unmaking of universe. It gives us the glimpse of that divine dance and that immense orchestra.

It is for this reason Krishna’s Maha Raas ceases to have a sexual connotation. Not that it prohibits any sexual interpretation, but for certain, sex has been left far behind. In reality, if we try and understand, Krishna does not dance as mere Krishna. He represents the gopis (the cow herd girls of mathura), the whole of male element in creation, known in sanskrit as Purusha. And similarly the gopis represent the entire female element, prakruti. The maharaas represents the combined dance of prakriti and purusha. To put it rightly, it is the dance of the male and female energies, of purusha and prakruti. It represents the mighty cosmic dance. Here, the dance is chosen as the medium. The medium of dance comes nearest to the mysterious, to the non dual, and to celebration. Nothing can express better than dance to laymen or to scholars alike. Dance is the most primitive form of gesture, language came much later. Dance, the gestures reaches the human mind deeper than any word can ever reach. Dance is more articulate than anything else. Man’s collective consciousness is well aware of this language, dance.

What we know as love between man and woman is nothing but the flow of yin and yang together. This love, if it is not personalized, can have great spiritual significance. The dance will continue . . .

Wishing you all good health and happiness,

Dr. Dwarakanath, 
Director, MITRAN foundation- the stress management people.