A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

462 THE SAGES OF INDIA.doubts may exist even as to whether that prophet existed or not. But here, I challenge any one to showwhether these things, these ideals work for worrf sake,love for love s sake, duty for duty s sake, were notoriginal ideas with Krishna, and as such there musthave been some one with whom these ideas originated.They could not have been borrowed from anybody else,they were not floating about the atmosphere whenKrishna was born. But the Lord Krishna was the firstpreacher of this ;his disciple Vyasa took it up andpreached it unto mankind. This is the highestidea t6picture.The highest thing we can get out of him isOopi-Janavallava, the shepherd of Brindavan. When thatmadness comes in your brain, when you understand the Blessed Gopis, then you will understand what love is. When thewhole world will vanish, when all other considerations willhave died out, when you will become pure-hearted with noother aim, not even the search after truth, then and thenalone will rush before you the madness of that love thestrength and the power of the infinite love which theGopis had, that love for love s sake. That is the goal.When you have got that you have got everything.To come down to the lower stratum, Krishna thepreacher of the Gita. Aye, there is an attempt in Indianow which is like putting the cart before the horse. Manyof our people think that Krishna as the lover of the Gopisis rather something uncanny, and the Europeans do notlike it much. Dr. So-and-so does not like it. Certainlythen, the Gopis have to go. Without the sanction ofEuropeans how can Krishna live ? He cannot. In theMahabharata there is no mention of the Gopis except inone or two places, and not very remarkable places.In theprayer of Draupadi there is mention of a Brindavan life