Tadatmya (Oneness of Heart)

Bhurijana dāsa: Dhanurdhara Mahārāja and I were not here the last time you spoke, but we listened to the tape.

Śrīpāda Dhanurdhara Mahārāja: But we couldn’t understand from the tape what you were doing. We couldn’t understand your hand-motions.

Śrīpāda Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja: The māñjarīs.

Śrīpāda Dhanurdhara Mahārāja: It was about the māñjarīs. You said, “It is like this.”

Śrīla Bhaktivedānta Nārāyaṇa Gosvāmī Mahārāja: Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja can describe more than I.

Śrīpāda Dhanurdhara Mahārāja: He already told us, but we want to hear it from your realizations.

Śrīpāda Tamāla Kṛṣṇa Mahārāja: You told us that what you were saying was not in any book.

Burijana dāsa: My understanding from that example was that the heart of Rūpa Māñjarī is so dedicated to Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī that she feels everything Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī feels. I also understood by your statement at the end that one must be dedicated to his guru in the same way. Without surrender and without giving one’s heart to the guru, it doesn’t work, especially in rāgānuga.

Śrīla Bhaktivedānta Nārāyaṇa Gosvāmī Mahārāja: This surrender and complete dedication of the heart to guru is called tadatmya (oneness of heart) in Sanskrit. When an iron rod is placed in fire, the qualities of the fire enter the iron. When fire permeates an iron rod it is the fire that burns other objects; it is not that the iron rod burns other objects; the iron rod may ‘consider,’ “I am fire,” in the sense that the qualities of the iron have become one with the qualities of the fire; it now does the work of fire.

Similarly Śrī Rūpa Māñjarī and all the other māñjarīs are tadatmika (one in heart) with Rādhā, so the action of Rādhā becomes the action of all the māñjarīs. In other words, whatever She realizes is also realized by every māñjarī; nothing is hidden from them. Some things may be hidden from Her sakhīs, but not from Her māñjarīs.