Thakur Haranath – The Prem Avatar of Sri Krishna

By, Kenneth Grant, London

An Avatar, though appearing in human form and seeming to possess human attributes is not a human entity at all but a divine one. The body which forms the shrine of Krishna at any particular time is not made of flesh and blood but of pure Prem or divine love, crystallized as a body or focus for its transcendental activities. Such a body is the natural expression of Lord Krishna’s divine love, and it crystallizes periodically as tears crystallize in the eyes of a devotee, who is bathed in divine ecstasy, and for similar reasons.

The Prem Bhav or highest emotion of divine love is exalted in the devotee of Krishna and transforms his physical body through the purifying lustre of tears which he sheds, owing to the absence of the Beloved. Gradually the physical body undergoes a transformation until it loses its physical characteristics and becomes a body of Prem. When this occurs the devotee becomes what is known as a Gopi, an intimate devotee (antaranga) of Lord Krishna, able, by virtue of this body of Prem to enter the rarified region of divine love which is the kingdom of Krishna, Vrindavan.

The Lord and His Name are not 2 separate things, but one only, and that he, who takes any divine Name will be merged with its vibration, will be absorbed in the current of divine ecstasy which its repetition engenders, and caught up as it were in a vast wave of sweetness, mounting to the most exalted form of heavenly love.

The world is unreal as world, but real as the solidified love of the Lord, which again is identical with Atman. The world cannot be said to exist apart from Radha, or Haranath apart from Kusuma. Of all objects Krishna is the form while Radha is the expression. The mingling and mixing of these 2 have decked the universe in all its beauty.

A man possessing much gold is a wealthy man, but before he may purchase anything he must first change some of the gold into current coinage then he may obtain the object of his choice immediately, Similarly, Krishna’s Name is as pure gold, wealth in an absolute sense. By transmuting it into current coinage, by altering its vibration to “KusumaHaranath”, it achieves everything immediately. In effect there is no more powerful Mantra in this Kali Age than the divine Name of “KusumaHaranath”.

Krishna can be had for nothing by worshipping Radha. This perpetual hide and seek is the lila of the Lord, an activity, in which He ever indulges to His great delight and to the great joy of all who have realized Him.

Lord Haranath showed us that by remembering Krishna constantly we shall finally overcome the tendency of the mind to identify itself with the external world and the objects within it, thus turning it inward to contemplate the true form of the universe, which is consciousness (Krishna)

“Even the attainment of Nirvana is no better than a piece of mere glass before Name”

Collected from : “Divine Pen” (July 1991)