What is the need for marriage between devotees in Vaikuntha?

In the 15th chapter of the 3rd Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam (verses 20-23) it is mentioned that devotees of the Lord who have the form of the Lord  (verse 14) are accompanied by their consorts who are like the Goddess of Fortune (verse 21). What is the need for marriage between devotees in Vaikuntha?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Professor Tanmay Lele. In the 15th chapter, 3rd canto of Srimad Bhagavatam, verses 20-23, it is mentioned that the devotees of the Lord who have the form of the Lord are accompanied by their consorts, who are like the goddesses of fortune. What is the need for marriage between devotees and Vaikuntha? Answer, the material world is a reflection of the spiritual world.
And of course it is a perverted reflection. So just as we can see the clear sky in a river that is peaceful, but a river that is filled with stormy waves, will not just show the clear sky, but will show a distorted sky. And it may show many things which are not there in the sky also, many patterns and designs.
So like that, whatever we see in the material world is either a direct reflection or a perverted reflection of what is originally present in the spiritual world. So the question of what is the need for marriage between devotees and Vaikuntha? The point is that renunciation is required in this world for us to shake off our illusory attachments which are based on an illusory conception of the self as the body. So that is why the renunciation is essential, because renunciation helps us to focus our attention and our heart on Krishna.
And the relationships in this world distract us from that. So in Vaikuntha, where there are no impure desires, where there are no disharmonious souls who want to usurp the position of Krishna and become enjoyers themselves, the family relationships among devotees do not in any way distract them from the service to Krishna. So if we want to know what is the necessity, rather we need to ask the question, what is the deficiency of marriage? The deficiency of marriage is primarily the bodily consciousness that is created and the mental attachment that is created through a relationship that is often centered around sensual gratification.
When that is not absent, then there is no problem with marriage. Now, so that’s the, from the negative point of view, that there is no, if it is not distracting us from our relationship with Krishna, then there is no problem. And if we look at the description in Vaikuntha, it is very clearly mentioned that residents of Vaikuntha, they fly around in their Vaikuntha airplanes with their wives, but they are all absorbed in chanting the glories of the Lord.
And although their wives are beautiful, they are not distracted. And neither the, so all of them are pure devotees, and neither the husbands and wives, they are not distracted from Krishna towards each other. So what is the necessity? The necessity is basically variety in the spiritual world.
So Krishna has a complete society in the spiritual world, and in that society he has his relationships with his own devotees, and we shouldn’t think of the relationships between Krishna and his devotees to be just vertical. By vertical I mean that there is a relationship between Krishna and a devotee, and there is a relationship between Krishna and a devotee. So Krishna is God, so he is above, and we have a low.
Along with the vertical, there are horizontal relationships also. And this horizontal relationship between, means relationship between devotee and devotee. So all these relationships center on Krishna.
So just as we have relationships in this world, in various mellows, we have relationships of husband and wife, we have relationships of friends, we have relationships of elders and younger people, we have relationships in equals, so all these relationships that are there, they are originally present in the spiritual world. And all the relationships reinforce our relationship with Krishna in the spiritual world. So in the spiritual world, the mutual attraction doesn’t distract people from Krishna, it enhances the attraction to Krishna.
So because it enhances, it is actually adding to the rasa of the spiritual world. So naturally whenever we have relationship with Krishna, even in the material world, our relationship with Krishna is developed gradually through the relationship through devotees. So now we will have different kinds of relationship with devotees, some will be senior, some will be junior, some will be equals.
So similarly in the spiritual realm, there are different kinds of relationships. So to get a visual depiction of this, as I was talking about vertical and horizontal relationships. So the horizontal relationships in this world often pull us down and away from Krishna because they are based on bodily misidentification and they cause forgetfulness of Krishna and further the people with whom we are relating may not always be devotionally inclined and relating with them often challenges or disturbs their devotional service.
But if the horizontal relationships are between devotees, then actually the Srimad Bhagavatam says in the 11th canto that the greatest joy that can be had between two people in this world is often thought of as the joy of sex. But higher than that joy is the joy of two devotees relating with each other on a spiritual devotional level and talking about Krishna. Parasparanukatanam is considered to be the greatest joy in the material world.
So how does this joy come about? Because Krishna’s presence is manifest very intensely when two devotees are talking about him because their different mellows of relationship, their individual feelings, all of them come into the picture and both devotees get an enriched experience of Krishna by perceiving Krishna from the other person’s perspective as well as they are perceiving from one’s own perspective. Krishna Prabhupada writes, why Krishna consciousness is so exciting? He says because Krishna is unlimited. There are unlimited ways of perceiving Krishna and of course it doesn’t mean that somebody perceives Krishna as Kali and somebody as Durga and somebody as Shiva.
No, that means they perceive different qualities of Krishna, different aspects of his personality. So he says that although we know Krishna completely, the pure devotee knows Krishna never completely but adequately and although he knows Krishna still he keeps knowing Krishna more and more and this is how the sweetness of the relationship is constantly enhanced. In the Ramayana the search for Sita by Hanuman is called as Sundarkand and it is called Sundar because Hanumanji is doing a lot of beautiful adventures, playful and beautiful adventures but actually in the whole Ramayana Lord Ram is present least in an active way in the Sundarkand and yet the presence of Lord Ram is felt most intensely in the Sundarkand especially in the meeting between the servant, the topmost servant of the Lord Ram and the topmost devotee or the consult of Lord Ram.
So when Sita and Hanuman meet in their mutual talks the presence of Lord Ram is evoked most intensely. So similarly in the spiritual realm devotees relate with each other in different relationships but they are all Krishna centered and these relationships enrich their experiences and realizations of Krishna mutually. So these relationships are in one sense symbiotic for one’s devotion to Krishna.
So even the husband-wife relationship when it is centered on Krishna can become deeply enriching and it can, in fact it does in the spiritual realm. When we talk about can, the potentiality is there in the material world if both husband and wife are devotees but in the spiritual world potentiality is an actuality. So there because both are devotees and both perceive Krishna in their own ways and then they relate that perception of Krishna and they describe Krishna in a center, in a devotionally centered way.
So that relationship enriches their devotion to Krishna and whatever is favorable for enriching one’s devotion to Krishna is present in the spiritual world. So because these relationships also enrich the flavor of Krishna bhakti both for the devotees and for the Lord, the Lord likes to see how different devotees are reciprocating in different ways with each other and the devotee likes to know how different other devotees are relating with Krishna and so in this way it enhances the rasa for both the devotees and for the Lord and that’s