Spiritual lust and material lust are as completely different as gold and iron

Expressions researched:
"Spiritual lust and material lust are as completely different as gold and iron" |"spiritual lust and the material lust" |"difference between material lust and Krsna's loving affairs with the gopis"

SB Canto 5

Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura has commented in this connection that the word ādi means ādi-rasa, the original lusty feeling, which is born from the Supreme. However, spiritual lust and material lust are as completely different as gold and iron.

SB 5.25.5, Purport: When males and females touch each other's bodies, their lusty desires naturally awaken. It appears from this verse that there are similar sensations in spiritual bodies. Both Lord Ananta and the women giving Him pleasure had spiritual bodies. Thus all sensations originally exist in the spiritual body. This is confirmed in the Vedānta-sūtra: janmādy asya yataḥ [SB 1.1.1]. Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura has commented in this connection that the word ādi means ādi-rasa, the original lusty feeling, which is born from the Supreme. However, spiritual lust and material lust are as completely different as gold and iron. Only one who is very highly elevated in spiritual realization can understand the lusty feelings exchanged between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, or between Kṛṣṇa and the damsels of Vraja. Therefore, unless one is very experienced and advanced in spiritual realization, he is forbidden to discuss the lusty feelings of Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs. However, if one is a sincere and pure devotee, the material lust in his heart is completely vanquished as he discusses the lusty feelings between the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa, and he makes quick progress in spiritual life.

Narada-bhakti-sutra (sutras 1 to 8 only)

As there is a difference between iron and gold, so there is a difference between material lust and Kṛṣṇa's loving affairs with the gopīs.

Narada Bhakti Sutra 7, Tanslation and Purport: There is no question of lust in the execution of pure devotional service, because in it all material activities are renounced.

In pure devotional service there is no question of sense gratification. Some people mistake the loving affairs between Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs (cowherd girls) for activities of ordinary sense gratification, but these affairs are not lustful because there is no material contamination. As Rūpa Gosvāmī states in his Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu (1.2.285),

premaiva gopa-rāmāṇāṁ kāma ity agamat prathām

ity uddhavādayo 'py etaṁ vāñchanti bhagavat-priyāḥ

"Although the dealings of the gopīs with Kṛṣṇa are wrongly celebrated by many as lust, great sages and saintly persons like Uddhava hanker for such loving affairs with Kṛṣṇa." Śrīla Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, the author of Caitanya-caritāmṛta, has therefore said,

kāma, prema,-doṅhākāra vibhinna lakṣaṇa

lauha āra hema yaiche svarūpe vilakṣaṇa

"As there is a difference between iron and gold, so there is a difference between material lust and Kṛṣṇa's loving affairs with the gopīs" (Cc. Ādi 4.164). Although such loving affairs may sometimes resemble material lust, the difference is as follows:

ātmendriya-prīti-vāñchā-tāre bali 'kāma'

kṛṣṇendriya-prīti-icchā dhare 'prema' nāma

"The desire to satisfy one's own senses is called lust, while the desire to satisfy the senses of Kṛṣṇa is called prema, love of God" (Cc. Ādi 4.165).

The impersonalists cannot understand the principle of satisfying Kṛṣṇa's senses because they reject the Personality of Godhead. Thus they think God has no senses and therefore no sense satisfaction. But the devotees simply want to satisfy the senses of the Supreme Lord, and so they take part in the pure activities of love of Godhead. There is no question of lust in that category of pure transcendental love.

Lust leads to fruitive activity for sense gratification. There are different kinds of duties for the human being, such as political obligations, performance of Vedic rituals, obligations for maintaining the body, and social formalities and conventions, but all such activities are directed toward satisfying one's own senses. The gopīs, however, simply wanted to satisfy Kṛṣṇa's senses, and thus they completely gave up the conventional path of social restriction, not caring for their relatives or the chastisement of their husbands. They gave up everything for the satisfaction of Kṛṣṇa, showing their strong attachment to Kṛṣṇa to be as spotless as washed white cloth.

It is said that when conjugal affection between a lover and beloved comes to the point of being destroyed and yet is not destroyed, such a relationship is pure love, or prema. In the material world it is not possible to find this kind of love, for it exists only between Kṛṣṇa and His intimate devotees, such as the gopīs. The sentiment between the gopīs and Kṛṣṇa was so strong that it could not be destroyed under any circumstances. Kṛṣṇa praises the gopīs' pure love in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (10.32.22):

na pāraye 'haṁ niravadya-saṁyujāṁ

sva-sādhu-kṛtyaṁ vibudhāyuṣāpi vaḥ

yā mābhajan durjaya-geha-śṛṅkhalāḥ

saṁvṛścya tad vaḥ pratiyātu sādhunā

"My dear gopīs, I am not able to repay My debt for your spotless service, even within a lifetime of Brahmā. Your connection with Me is beyond reproach. You have worshiped Me, cutting off all domestic ties, which are difficult to break. Therefore please let your own glorious deeds be your compensation."

Srimad-Bhagavatam Lectures

"All that glitters is not gold." So we should not mistake. Therefore one who cannot distinguish the spiritual lust and the material lust, they should avoid very strictly.

Lecture on SB 7.9.1 -- Mayapur, February 10, 1977: Anything, bad or good, they are coming from Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, ahaṁ sarvasya prabhavo mattaḥ sarvaṁ pravartate [Bg. 10.8]. Ahaṁ-sarvasya prabhavaḥ: "I am the origin of everything." So anything coming from Kṛṣṇa, how it can be bad? It cannot be bad. Absolute. Kṛṣṇa says personally, and Vedānta says, janmādy asya yataḥ: [SB 1.1.1] "Absolute Truth is that from where everything is coming." So the lust is also coming from Kṛṣṇa. We find lusty desire among the gopīs, among Kṛṣṇa. But Kṛṣṇa Caitanya Mahāprabhu recommends, ramya kācid upāsana vrajavadhū kalpitā: "There is no better mode of worship than it was conceived by the vrajavadhū, damsels of Vraja, Vṛndāvana, parakīya-rasa." But in the material world Caitanya Mahāprabhu was so strict about woman that once upon a time there was singing of woman in the Jagannātha temple, and Caitanya Mahāprabhu was running fast: "Oh, how nice singing is going on in the temple. Let Me go and hear." Then Govinda, His personal servant, checked Him: "My dear Sir, this singing is done by woman." "Oh? It is woman? Govinda, you have saved My life." Just see. And the same Caitanya Mahāprabhu has recommended about the gopīs who loved Kṛṣṇa as paramour: ramya kācid upāsana vrajavadhū-vargabhir ya kalpitā. Just see the distinction. The same business is there, but it is all spiritual.

Therefore Absolute, everything is variegated, blissful. They do not understand. The sahajiyā means the blissful dealings, transcendental, spiritual dealings of gopīs and Kṛṣṇa, they take it as material. Therefore they are condemned. They are... It looks similar, but it is not the same, thing. One is gold; one is iron. A polished iron, a golden thing, golden color, does not mean it is gold. "All that glitters is not gold." So we should not mistake. Therefore one who cannot distinguish the spiritual lust and the material lust, they should avoid very strictly. They have no spiritual realization. Therefore Caitanya Mahāprabhu has strictly avoided. In His kīrtana He never described the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa, His dealings with gopīs. That we mark in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Eighteen years He lived in Jagannātha Purī. Every night there was kīrtana, but there was no līlā-kīrtana you'll find, no līlā-kīrtana. Hare Kṛṣṇa, that's all. No līlā. But does it mean that Caitanya Mahāprabhu avoided līlā-kīrtana? No. He enjoyed it with very, very confidential devotees like Rāmānanda Rāya, Svarūpa Dāmodara, like that. Not for the... Because so long we are in the lower stage of devotion we shall misunderstand. They are doing that. You'll find that the rascals who have no idea about Kṛṣṇa, they are very much fond of painting Kṛṣṇa's picture dealings with the gopīs, because they take it that it is just like we deal with young men or woman, it is something like that. So that is a great mistake. They should not. Then they will become sahajiyā. Very strictly prohibited. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam Śukadeva Gosvāmī has warned that one should not even dream like that, that "Kṛṣṇa's dealing with gopīs is just like our dealing with woman." No. It ms completely different. Therefore we have to understand Kṛṣṇa. Vyāsadeva has devoted nine cantos to understand Kṛṣṇa, and then, in the Tenth Canto, he has put the gopīs' dealings with Kṛṣṇa. That is also beginning from twenty-ninth chapter.

So we should always know this, that lust is coming from Kṛṣṇa, but His lust, this lusty desire, and our lusty desire in the material world, they are not the same. So Narottama dāsa Ṭhākura advises, kāmaḥ kṛṣṇa-kārmārpaṇe. We have got lusty desires, but it should be utilized for Kṛṣṇa.