Someone may say that the Lord’s pastimes are manifestations of material illusion and they only appear to be spiritual under the influence of devotion to the Lord. But that is not true. The Lord’s pastimes are spiritual. The foolish with skill in jñāna or yoga cannot know the transcendental nature of the forms, names and activities of the Lord, who is playing like an actor in a drama. Nor can they express such things, neither in their speculations nor in their words. The Absolute Truth is beyond the expression of one’s mind and speech.
Someone may say that the Lord’s pastimes are manifestations of material illusion and they only appear to be spiritual under the influence of devotion to the Lord. But that is not true. The Lord’s pastimes are spiritual. The foolish with skill in jñāna or yoga cannot know the transcendental nature of the forms, names and activities of the Lord, who is playing like an actor in a drama. Nor can they express such things, neither in their speculations nor in their words. The Absolute Truth is beyond the expression of one’s mind and speech.
To the layman the Lord and His activities are mysterious. The fruitive workers have no information of the Absolute Truth, and the mental speculators try to know Him by their own minds. And for all these men, the Lord is a mystery. Being deceived by the jugglery of the Lord, the non devotees remain always in ignorance. The mental speculators are a little more progressive than the fruitive workers, but because they are also within the grip of illusion, they take it for granted that anything which has a form, name and activities is but a product of material energy. Thus in ignorance they think that the Supreme is formless, nameless and inactive. The ignorant men consider the Lord simply as one of the great personalities of the world, and are thus misled by illusion. The person ignorant of drama cannot understand the names and forms indicated by the actor thru theatrical gestures of the hands and poetic words indicating the moon or the lotus. Thus he does not appreciate the drama and says there is no rasa. The person in knowledge directly experiences rasa, which pervades all his senses and heart.