--> Skip to main content


There Is Only One Purusha – Story Meera Bai – Rupa Goswami

When the poet saint Meera Bai visited Vrindavan, she sought a meeting with Rupa Goswami, one of the famous ‘six goswamis’ of Vrindavan. Rupa Goswami was a strict follower of Vaishnava principles. As a renunciant he was not supposed to hold conversation with women, and he made this known to Mirabai. Meera Bai, of course, was no ordinary woman. She sent back word to the Goswami: “I thought there was only one purusha, male, in Vrindavan — indeed, the whole universe — Krishna.” This was the ultimate Vaishnava realization. Rupa Goswami could not but welcome Mirabai with all cordiality.

Was Rupa Goswami being given a lesson in Vaishnava theology? That seems hardly likely. As a leader of the Vaishnava movement of Sri Chaitanya, he was also an adept in raganuga-bhakti, the devotion which imitates the highest manifestations of love, ragatmika-bhakti, seen in the inhabitants of Braja of Krishna’s time.

According to the Vaishnava teachers ‘if you want to see that wonderful divine romance between Radha and Krishna in the abode of your consciousness, you must first make your body, mind, and speech free from lust, then learn to perform selfless service by following the example of any one of Radha’s companions. Then you will realize that Vrindavan, the playground of Krishna, is ever established in your heart and that divine play is continually enacted there.’