In the world, the eyes tired of colours

thinking colours were tiring

But when my Beloved’s full colours shone

I realised what eyes were made for

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Holi originated in Braj, the land of Krishna’a lilas, and remains a crucial festival in the region. It is actually observed over 40 days, starting on Basant Panchami, when Banke Bihari is offered the first colours of the season. The original Holi was played with flowers, as a playful mark of love between Radha and Krishna. Traditional celebrations involve the festival moving from Krishna’s ancestral village, Nandgaon, to Radha’s village Barsana and erupting all over Braj in a joyous rapture of water and colour.

From the Silence of Winter to the Spring of Love

The silent seeds, long-rested in the dark Stillness

Begin to feel a warmth as something Unknown stirs

With the promise of a fragrance, vaguely sensed

The flower of love begins to bloom

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What is Holi’s deeper significance? In nature, it signifies the advent of spring and the renewal and joy it brings. To the spiritual heart, it signifies the arrival of love or bhakti inside Stillness and Silence. Holi arrives on the full moon after the Amavasya immediately following Mahashivratri. Mahashivratri is the union of Shiva-Shakti and the Amavasya the next day symbolises the dissolution of the ego into pure consciousness, Shiva. The next two weeks, then, may be viewed as the bridge to rasa, to bhakti and love. It is also the period during which (specifically the 8 days before Holi, Holashtak) that the great devotee Prahlad endured the most difficult tests of his devotion at the hands of his demonic father, culminating in the incident of Holika burning in the fire (Holika Dahan).

Holi, the Festival of Love

This period then, moving into spring after Shiva’s night of Awakening, highlights how the Nirguna is also Saguna, the Alakh Niranjan also explodes with colour and fragrance. As the Saint Gyaneshwar had sung many centuries ago,

तुज सगुण म्हणों की निर्गुण रे !

सगुण निर्गुण एकु गोविंदु रे !!

 ‘Should I call you Saguna or Nirguna? Saguna or Nirguna, You are still only the One Govinda’.

The colours really represent the variety of bhavas that are like the fragrant, colourful flowers that the original Holi was played with (phoolon ki Holi); flowers of love. The ego had applied its own colourings to life and when the veil of Maya lifts, Krishna, as the Thakur ji of Braj, may apply His colours, using His Yoga-Maya to draw us into deeper states of ecstasy and devotion. To understand Holi, then, we must understand something about Krishna, specifically, the Thakurji of Braj and to understand Him, we have to be advised a little, about rasa and lila and the Rasiya orchestrating the whole affair.

Braj ke Thakur: Master of hearts

The Lord who steals every ‘mine’. Goes about extracting it from every hiding place we may be sheltering it. His aim? To gather up all that possessiveness and take it for Himself, using it to create a blissful closeness with Him. A relationship is formed based on a personal bhava. Braj is all about this unabashed familiarity and intimacy with the Lord of the Universe. He is treated as their own most adorable child, their own best friend or their own irresistible lover. Braj women even today will go and sing songs to Him in the temple that say, ‘/we know all about You, don’ṭ go around acting all high and mighty/ We know how your sister ran away with your best friend [referencing Arjun and Subhadra], /your close friend (Draupadi) had five husbands /we know all about You….’** Even while He lifted Govardhan in His Giridhari lila, the Braj people didn’ṭ think that He is God or anything every special but instead teased and joked with Him while He was performing the miracle.

Saguna Brahman: Braj Ras Rahasya

Braj-vasis have a special right to forget that He is God and replace reverence with familiarity (actually, He forgets that He is God, so that He can taste the more intimate play of love). It is not simply a culture, it is a purity and innocence of heart. Truly, Braj-vaas is to live in this state of intimacy with God; or, as I see it, when you become personal with Him, He calls you to Braj.

Where the lofty Upanishads declare Brahman as raso vai sah (That/He is filled with rasa/sweetness), the Brajvasis playfully tease Thakurji as ‘Rasiya’, the lover, even singing songs on Holi like ‘let’s make a woman out of this Rasiya’ (meaning, let’s douse Him with colour so He looks like a colourful woman, turning the tables on Him, the one who teases and plays with the women (gopis) of Braj) to which Thakurji obliges. A reversal in which the Lord at whose feet the universe comes to surrender, is Himself surrendering at the hands of love.

This Saguna aspect of the Infinite Reality has been uniquely unravelled in Bharat to great depths. This was the only place where we brought God to first-name basis with ourselves, laughing, loving, playing, dancing, crying and arguing with Him. The Saguna Brahman becomes unraveled through a love filled with rasa (sweetness), expressed in personal terms (bhava). Saguna is not a lower rung to Nirguna, for those who can’t grasp the jnana. Saguna is in fact the level after Nirguna because it extends the knowing of the jnani further and further, until knowing becomes loving. You know Him more and more, through love and loving. Braj shows how to make Him your own in love, not unlike the jnana path of making the Upanishadic understanding your own, not leaving them as scripture. Where the yogi searches for His omnipresence in the play of life, here Thakurji comes Himself to meet you wherever you are, in your own bhava to prove that He is never apart.

The great sages uncovered the aspect where He is the one more eager to surrender, our desire to surrender is only a reflection. At the Banke Bihari temple in Vrindavan (Krishna’s form as the intimate Beloved as revealed to Swami Haridas Thakur), the darshan is given in a most peculiar way – the curtain covering the deity is only removed for some seconds at a time. The feeling here is that the Rasiya form here, falls in love too easily, as would the devotees and gazing at each other for too long may either become too intense for both or He might go off with a loving devotee (as legend goes has happened in the past). Braj saints revealed the most loving aspects of Saguna Brahman, His Sweetness and how willing He is to give Himself in love.

In the lilas, the gopis are regularly advised to stay away from Krishna (who, mind you, is Para Brahman) or He will bewitch their mind and make them continuously think of Him. States of high dhyana and samadhi, so easily given away through feelings of closeness and intimacy – that is Krishna. And the real Holi is the invitation to become coloured by Him – Krishnamayam. Just as the jnana yoga Bhramara-kita nyaya where the Bhramara (wasp) captures a kita (caterpillar) and the latter, out of fear and constant meditation on the wasp, eventually becomes the wasp (the principle: you become what you meditate on), Krishna captures the heart and colours it with Himself, making the soul completely His. When the consciousness becomes coloured with Him, that is Krishna consciousness.

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Just look at the Lord of the Universe

All dressed up in colourful flowers and bows

Wearing gems in His hair and clinking bracelets

Flute in hand, feet ringing with anklets

More concerned about who is thinking of Him with Love

Than about the cosmos keeping time, I’m sure

More interested in making loving eyes

To capture new hearts and gather more tastes

Than in balancing duality or the gunas and states

Stealing glances, His main occupation

Birthing worlds, only a side-affair

That’s our Lord who goes by His first Names

Choosing you over all the worlds

Perhaps hoping you might do the same

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** See more of these songs/stories: https://youtu.be/W2nYh9d-XgE?si=ddS1T1LXFnepBEMU