
Chapter Five

SAKHI-BEKHI and CUDADHARI (Rasa-lila imitators)


"Only when one regains his original spiritual body can one enter into the
spiritual kingdom. As for as the rasa-lila pastimes of the Lord are concerned,
it is futile to attempt to imitate the Lord's dances within the material word.
One has to attain a spiritual body like the gopis to enter into the pastimes
of rasa-lila. Simply by artificially imitating Krsna's rasa-lila dance or
artificially thinking oneself as Krsna, and dressing oneself up as a sakhi,
one cannot enter into His rasa-lila dance." (C.C. Madhya 9.137, Purport)

The confidential gopis are called sakhis. The word bekhi is a corruption of
the Sanskrit word vesa, which means dress. A sakhi-bekhi is a person - often a
male, but sometimes females take part - who dresses up like a gopi and
imagines himself/herself as being enjoyed by Krsna.

Sakhi-bekhis imitate rasa-lila, sometime by dancing with a person dressed like
Krsna who wears a cuda, a crown of peacock feathers. This person is called
cudadhari. The philosophy of these two types of sahajiya apasampradayas is the
same; practically the only difference is that one group is dressed like gopis
and others dressed like Krsna.

Lord Caitanya taught, ekale isvara krsna, ara saba bhrtya - "The only
controller is Krsna, everyone else is His servant." (C.C. Adi 5.142) Each jiva
or individual spirit soul is a tiny sample of para-prakrti, the Lord's
sub-ordinate or female spiritual energy. But this sense of our "being female"
does not have anything to do with sexual gender. We have temporarily assumed a
male or female body as a result of past karma; the material covering does not
reflect the constitutional nature of the soul. Srimad Bhagavatam (Canto 4,
chapter 28) informs us that a soul is placed within a male body because of a
strong attraction to the masculine form that developed in a female body in the
previous life. Those who now have female bodies were males who were very
attached to females in their previous lives. This is all the result of
material lust.

The soul as a spiritual spark caught in the cycle of birth and death is
actually sexless. But according to the ecstasy of devotion most enjoyed by the
soul in relation to Krsna, the devotee's transcendental gender is revealed, as
seen in the spiritual bodies of Krsna's eternal associates. For instance,
matr-vatsalya (parental affection in the motherly mood) is feminine, and
pitr-vatsalya (parental affection in the fatherly mood) is masculine.
Madhurya-rasa is purely feminine. To become established in the latter mood of
love, one must develop the eleven sentiments of a gopi (name, form, age,
dress, the mood of a kept maidservant, and so on) under the direction of an
highly realized Vaisnava.

Even if one transcends the bodily conception and has understood Krsna and his
own svarupa in truth, he cannot fully participate (vastu or prapti-siddhi) in
the madhurya-rasa if even the slightest material attachment lingers in his
consciousness. This is explained at length in the purport to C.C. Madhya
8.139.

The prakrta-sahajiya contamination of the sakhi-bekhis and cudadharis is
grossly apparent. The sakhi-bekhis think that Krsna is pleased by seeing their
fleshy sack-bodies, full of bones, blood and stool, dressed up in saris,
decorated with nose-rings and ornaments, with hair done like women, with feet
painted red, with faces shaved twice daily, singing in high falsetto voices
and gesturing with women's mannerisms. The cudadharis similarly think that
Srimati Radharani will become attracted to their rotting material bodies
simply because they dress up like Krsna.

Lord Caitanya gave clear instructions to Sanatana Gosvami about how the
physical body of an advanced devotee is to be engaged in Krsna's service:
"There are two processes by which one may execute raganuga bhakti - external
and internal. When self-realized, the advanced devotee externally remains like
a neophyte and executes all the sastric injunctions, especially hearing and
chanting. However, within his mind, in his original purified self-realized
position, he serves Krsna in Vrndavana in his particular way. He serves Krsna
twenty-four hours, all day and night. The advanced devotee who is inclined to
spontaneous loving service should follow the activities of a particular
associate of Krsna in Vrndavana. He should execute service externally as a
regulative devotee as well as internally from his self-realized position. Thus
he should perform devotional service both externally and internally." (C.C.
Madhya 22.156-158) The sakhi-bekhis and cudadharis simply ignore these
directions.

Some of these sahajiyas argue that they are only following the example of Sri
Gadadhara dasa Thakura (who is different from Gadadhara Pandita of the Sri
Panca-Tattva), who once walked through town with a clay pot of Ganges water on
his head, calling out that he had yoghurt for sale and laughing loudly. The
imitators claim that they can visualize their internal spiritual form by such
external play-acting. But they overlook the fact that there is no instruction
from Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu or any acarya in the Gaudiya Vaisnava sampradaya
that directs the conditioned souls to awaken their love for Krsna through
speculative histrionics. As Srila Prabhupada said, "If you want to cook, then
you have to cook according to the method. You may have a pot and you may have
a flame, but if you don't cook according to the method, then you'll never get
the food." He was referring to a story of a cook who had placed the flame on
the floor and the pot near the ceiling. "If you want the result, you have to
follow the method" - bhakti-yoga as it is.

The sakhi-bekhi and cudadhari take Krsna and the gopis very cheaply; this is
due to the influence of impersonalism, by which they think they can become one
with the Lord and the gopis though some imaginative meditation. But if even
the goddess of fortune cannot enter into the rasa-lila in Her eternal
spiritual form, even after ages of austerity, how will it be accomplished by a
fool who merely dresses up his gross material body?

