An objection. Take pūrva-rāga and the other kinds of separation — going a short way off, being out with the cows. Everyone tastes those with pleasure: devotees still practising, perfected devotees, the companions in the līlā, the gopīs, Kṛṣṇa himself. And the reason is plain: in each of those cases both parties are still there — the one who loves and the one who is loved.

But this Mathurā separation, the one classed as a journey very far off, is simply unbearable — because Kṛṣṇa left Vraja altogether. That is why he now says 'prokteyam'.

This Mathurā separation just described holds only as the manifest līlā has it. In the unmanifest līlā a parting from Kṛṣṇa of that kind would never, at any time at all, befall the people of Vraja.

At the very hour when the Mathurā separation is running in the manifest līlā, in the unmanifest showing of Vṛndāvana Kṛṣṇa is carrying out the whole līlā — birth, childhood, everything, right up to the rāsa — in endless showings of himself at once.

The proof of that is the Skanda Purāṇa line quoted here: 'with calves and heifer-calves…'

In the same vein, a line of the Yāmala that the Bhāgavatāmṛta quotes.

The Kṛṣṇa born in the Yadu family is one. The one who is full and complete is beyond him. That one never leaves Vṛndāvana and goes anywhere.

That līlā comes in two kinds.

Manifest and unmanifest.

Of the two, the manifest one is the līlā that has come within reach of people in this world.

And that one comes only now and then, so it does not last.

The unmanifest one is the līlā that has passed out of their reach.

But one cannot say: 'only the unmanifest one is eternal, and it goes on in Śrī Vṛndāvana and places like it.'

Here is the first reason. Say that, and you have pinned impermanence on the manifest līlā — the one Śuka, Parāśara and Vyāsa themselves describe, in the Bhāgavata, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, the Harivaṁśa, the Padma Purāṇa. Then no argument at all is left for the unmanifest līlā, which only later writers describe.

And here is the second reason. If the manifest līlā does not last, the same reasoning makes the unmanifest one not last either. Then līlā as such turns out to be temporary. And at that point you have walked into the doctrine of people who face away from the Lord altogether.

In fact it is like this. One and the same set of pastimes — birth and all the rest. Shown to the people of the world out of mercy, they are called manifest. Screened off from those same eyes, they are called unmanifest. In what they themselves are, there is no difference between the two at all.

This very point is stated in the Laghu-bhāgavatāmṛta.

The pastime of his birth and the rest has no beginning, and it is astonishing. Kṛṣṇa may, for some reason of his own, bring it out into the open at some time.

Now he unfolds, with an eye on the Bhāgavatāmṛta, how the manifest līlā itself never stops.

Here is how. Vraja is one place, and yet it has endless showings of itself, just as the Lord does. The pastimes running in one of those showings are seen by people in this world. In the others they are not seen.

Take even the Kṛṣṇa standing in that one showing. His birth, his infancy, his paugaṇḍa and kaiśora years, his setting out for Mathurā — these come forth in order and are seen in some of the countless millions of universes, at some times. And the very same ones are not seen in others, at other times.

Take the sun. Standing in the circle of the sky, it has a rising, a forenoon, a midday, an afternoon — and these are seen in some regions of the earth and not in others. Map it: the sun is Kṛṣṇa; the regions are the universes; sunrise, noon and afternoon are his birth, his boyhood, his youth. Whether you see one of them depends on where you stand, not on the sun. But the illustration has a limit, and he states it in the same breath: for the sun itself, up there in the sky, sunrise is not a real thing and not a permanent one. It is only how the sun looks from a place on the ground.

Kṛṣṇa's birth and the rest, in the land of Vraja, are real and lasting — śruti and smṛti say so. That is where his case differs from the sun's.

Just as with the sun: take region and place into account, and sunrise is happening all the time.

And midday is always going on, and so with the rest.

It works the same way for Kṛṣṇa. Take the universes into account, and his birth is happening always, his infancy always, the killing of Baka and the other demons always, the departure for Mathurā always. So every one of the manifest pastimes never stops.

One more turn of the same illustration. The sun's rising, noon and the rest are tracked region by region, but only as far as a shadow-rod and a water-clock can reach. In the same way Kṛṣṇa's birth and the rest are tracked across the universes, right up to the end of Brahmā's day. And at the great dissolution, when no material universe is left, they go on in universes that yoga-māyā shapes and that are taken for material ones. So even the manifest līlā, the one the world can see, is manifest or unmanifest only relative to time and place. Uddhava's own words throw light on it: 'when the Kṛṣṇa-sun had set…'

The same holds for Mathurā and Dvārakā: they too have a manifest līlā.

And the showings of Vraja in which worldly people never see these pastimes at all — those are past counting.

And they do not run into one another.

Know them from the Bhāgavatāmṛta's line: 'the hill, the cowherd village, the woods and the rest have many forms.'

In those showings the companions too are endless — the king of Vraja and the rest, each with his own settled sense of who he is, and none of them running into the others. So Kṛṣṇa's birth, infancy, paugaṇḍa and kaiśora pastimes are separate in each showing. In one they follow one after another; in another the boyhood stage simply stays level. They do rise in sequence — and they stand perfectly still.

But in the unmanifest there is no setting out for Mathurā at all. In Mathurā's unmanifest showings Kṛṣṇa is always there already, companions and all, with the pastimes that belong to that place. There is nowhere for him to travel to.

As the Bhāgavatāmṛta puts it: 'there, going and coming happen only in the manifest līlā.'

'Going' is the journey away from Vraja to the city of Mathurā. 'Coming' is the return from Dvārakā after Dantavakra was killed. Both of those belong to the manifest līlā only, not to the unmanifest.

Going from the cowherd village out to the woods, and going from Mahāvana to Vṛndāvana — those do happen. Both of those places are inside Vraja.

Someone may argue: the Mathurā separation happens in the manifest showing and not in the unmanifest one, so being unmanifest must be the higher state. That must not be said.

The answer: it is in the Mathurā separation and nowhere else that the laments, the madness and the Song to the Bee come out into the open. Those are mahā-bhāva itself turned into speech, and just for that reason they are joy at its outermost limit.

That is exactly why even Uddhava, when he saw how high such love stands in the women of Vraja, said with astonishment that they stand above Lakṣmī and all the rest. In the Tenth Canto: 'Ah, might I be one who has the dust of these women's feet.' And: 'This favour, my friend, was not for Śrī, whose love for him never lets up.'

Nor may one grant that the rasa of separation is less than the rasa of union. Here is why. The two lovers have rati, prema, sneha and the rest as their standing mood. Remembering each other flashes up vividly; the vibhāvas do their work; and embracing, kissing, coming together happen in the mind, through the eyes, in the body. Far from being less, it hands over a wonder with no limit to it. Separation is union heaped up.

As people who have tasted it themselves said in the Padyāvalī.

Given the choice between meeting and separation, separation is the better one here — not meeting with him. In meeting, he is just one. In separation, all three worlds are made of him.

Someone may argue: when the inner flash and the appearing break off, the pain of separation is unbearable, so at that point it is no longer rasa. That must not be said.

The answer: this pain is a particular working of the hlādinī and saṁvit powers, so it is not made of matter at all. Pain though it is, it is itself made of joy.

As for the full reasoned treatment of this, the crown-jewel of authors will give it himself, in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi.

Work it out the same way for those whose mood is dāsya, sakhya or vātsalya: how separation and meeting rank against each other there.