Divine Love
After leaving Indore at 16,
Kripalu Maharaj retreated into the dense jungles of
Chitakroot and there repeatedly entered the highest state
of ecstasy of Divine love.
After word spread of this individual who laughed freely,
and swayed and danced in ecstasy while uttering ‘Krishna,
Krishna,’ people took to calling him Paramhansji, in honor
of his persistent Raha Krishna love, which in Sanskrit is
called Mahkrya Bhao Bhakti. He would remain in this state
for days on end, and those lucky enough to encounter his
presence during this time were blessed with witnessing one
of the most sublime levels of spiritual rapture known to
humanity.
He remained in this state and lived in the nearby jungles
for nearly two years.
In 1940, Kripalu Maharaj came to Vrindavan and began
visiting the houses of his devotees for satsang, the
sitting meditation. At this time, he also travelled to the
houses in Agra, Mathura and Allahabad, and he began to
honor requests by his followers to speak on the philosophy
of Bhakti.
Word spread quickly
about the young saint who was wholly devoted to God’s love
and who radiated divine consciousness of the highest love,
and people began to seek him out and invite him to visit
their homes that they might experience this love directly
and participate in the divine consciousness through his
presence, and become more holy and more enlightened
themselves.
It was common for him to be so enraptured that he lost all
awareness of his surroundings and was totally oblivious to
the passage of time and the need for food and water. People
took care to feed him and to clothe him and offer him
shelter in their homes. In these all consuming ecstatic
states, it was common for him to simply get up and go from
one home to another, or from one village or town without
regard for what he was wearing or how long he had been in
any one place.
These actions permitted many people to express kindness and
compassion for him and to witness firsthand the
manifestation of all-loving divine consciousness, the state
known in Sanskrit as Samadhi.
Being so totally absorbed in divine ecstasy of the Radha
Bhao made it to communicate directly with others or to
discourse on the nature of Bhakti, so he graciously agreed
to temper his ecstatic state somewhat and to accept the
invitation of his devotees to come into their homes and to
lead sessions of satsang, (silent, sitting meditation), and
sankirtan (chanting).
At this time, in
addition to the satsang and sankirtan, he began to sing the
leela pad, which describes the loving history of Radha and
Krishna.
These sessions of sankirtan involved ecstatic chanting of
Hare Ram, and, during moments of extreme ecstasy Hare Bol.
Historically, these states of Radha Krishna were first
revealed by Chaitanya Mahaprabhuji some 5,000 years ago.
These sessions of satsang and sankirtan evolved to the
point where, in 1942, Kripalu Maharaj returned to Mahu and
began to hold prolonged sessions of sankirtan that
regularly stretched on for days and even weeks. One session
that was scheduled for two weeks ended up stretching into
four months.