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Episodes from Wisdom of the Sages
No Monopoly on God | Exclusivism and the God Who Withdraws
The moment you think your group owns God is the moment He begins to slip away.understood this. When Bill Wilson, founder of AA and a devout Christian, wrote the program that would help millions get sober, he kept it simple: we have no monopoly on God. We merely have an approach that worked for us. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha bring that insight into conversation to it's esoteric pinnacle: the Rāsa Līlā — where the moment the gopīs feel proud of their closeness to Krishna, he disappears. Not as punishment but as mercy. In union you se...
Nothing Compares 2 U | The Gopīs' Message of Surrender
William James — the father of American psychology — spent years studying mystical and religious experiences across every tradition. What he found surprised him. When a person is seized by something bigger than themselves, suffering loses its sting, death loses its victory, and everything is swallowed up in a higher denomination. Nothing compares. The gopīs of Vrindavan knew this. Raghunath and Kaustubha arrive at the apex of the Rāsa Līlā — where the gopīs finally open their hearts completely. We have abandoned our families and our homes. We have no desire other than to serve you. Our hearts are burning...
Authority Descends from the Author | The Gopīs Reveal the Highest Dharma
The Vedic tradition lays out dharma with remarkable precision — the duties of a wife, a husband, a parent, a child, a citizen. The gopīs of Vrindavan take it deeper. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore the idea that authority is derived from the author of all existence. All the dharmas of this world, all the figures of authority in our lives, gain their legitimacy from the supreme source. And when the soul recognizes that source directly, then dharma goes beyond piety, to unveiling the purest nature of the self. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.31-35 ******************************************************************** L...
When Krishna Closes One Door He Opens Another / Q&A Vol. 295
Sometimes the thing that feels like a loss turns out to be the setup for something far better. In this special retreat Q&A from Super Soul Farm, Raghunath and Kaustubha share stories of how previous chapters in their own lives ended before the birth of the podcast. Both stories point to the same truth: when Krishna closes one door, he opens another. The episode also tackles one of the deepest questions in Vaishnava philosophy — where did we come from and why are we here? — with a humble, practical and reassuring answer. Plus Tulsi is taking over someone's Brooklyn gard...
1774: What is a Pure Devotee? / Q&A Vol. 294
Recorded live at the Wisdom of the Sages retreat at SuperSoul Farm, this Q&A episode opens with a question that sits at the heart of bhakti — what does it actually mean to be a pure devotee? From there, Raghunath and Kaustubha move through honest questions from the room: how to begin worshiping Tulsi Devi and the deities at home, how a bhakta thinks about hunting and the stewardship of animals, and how to hold firm boundaries with people whose behavior we can't condone without slipping into condemnation. Threaded through it all is a recurring theme — that behind every warp...
Let Your FOMO Be for the Divine | Saint Augustine and the Gopīs
There is a restlessness in the human heart that nothing in this world can satisfy. Saint Augustine called it the clue to our true nature — we were made for God, and until we find that, the searching never stops. Every object has its dharma, its purpose. The sages of the Bhakti yoga tradition say the dharma of the soul is divine love. It's what we're made for. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that human restlessness alongside the Srimad Bhagavatam's Rāsa Līlā — where the gopīs of Vrindavan surrender to the calling of what they were made for...
Everyone Worships Something | Free Will and the Object of Our Affection
Everyone worships something. The rock star, the ideology, the bottle of wine, the beautiful person across the room. Dostoevsky identified it as an incessant, painful longing: so long as man remains free, he strives for nothing so persistently as to find someone worthy of complete surrender. We have free will — and where we invest our affection becomes our most important choice. In this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that longing alongside the Vedic text's most sacred passage — where the gopi girls of Vrindavan invest everything in the very source of rasa itself. Srimad Bhagavatam 10.29.12-19 ******************************************************************** <...
The Weakness of Willpower & The Power of Attention
Willpower is fundamentally the wrong tool for inner transformation. French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil argued that attention — not discipline or force of will — is the true engine of inner change. Raghunath and Kaustubha bring this insight into conversation with the Gopīs of Vṛndāvana, whose loving meditation on Kṛṣṇa accomplished what no effort of will could. The Bhagavad-gītā's method of inner transformation is simple: turn your attention toward Kṛṣṇa. And the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam promises that faithfully hearing about the Gopīs' love for Him is itself enough to conquer material lust, the deepest disease of the...
The Mind of the Buddha, The Mind of the Gopī
Buddhism and Bhaktivedanta share a lot of common ground. Both embrace the same radical insight — that the mind is the architect of our experience, and that what we feed it determines the life we live. But in this episode Raghunath and Kaustubha explore where Bhakti takes it one step further. Buddhism negates the names and forms of matter, freeing the mind from attachment, pointing toward liberation. Bhakti provides the positive side. Not just improved wellbeing. Not just liberation. The prema prayojana — the full awakening of divine love. The Srimad Bhagavatam shows us what that looks like through the gopis – always...
Answer the Call of the Heart | The Bhaktivedanta Path of Renunciation
Life is kind of empty if there is not something so meaningful and beautiful that we feel a calling to give everything out of love. We spend our lives looking for that higher cause — or feeling empty if we haven't found it. The total giving of the self is what Thomas Merton calls a blind spiritual instinct. And when you actually follow it, people may think you've gone crazy. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore that calling alongside Krishna's flute-song call of love to the gopis, instigating a "terrible act of thievery" by stealing their sobriety, shyness, fear and discrimination. Through th...
From Beauty to Absolute Beauty | Plato, Krishna and the Rāsa Dance
Most people think of God simply as a witness or facilitator of their own romantic affairs. The Bhaktivedanta tradition reveals that the conjugal love experienced by human beings is a mere reflection of a spiritual reality in which the same love exists in an absolute, pristine state. So we don't need to turn away from beauty and love in this world. We just need to see the source and origin behind it. Raghunath and Kaustubha explore Plato's ladder of beauty alongside the bhakti path — and find they are pointing in the same direction. Every spark of beauty in this wo...
Entering the Rāsa Dance with the Eye of Love
Every love story ever told — the Song of Solomon, Layla and Majnun, the Bollywood heroine running toward her true love — is a shadow of this. The desire for intimacy with the divine is the deepest longing in the human heart. And after six and a half years of reading through the Srimad Bhagavatam, Raghunath and Kaustubha have arrived at its most sacred passage — the Rāsa Līlā. The essence of the essence of the essence. Five chapters describing Krishna's circle dance with the gopis, considered the pinnacle of all Vedic literature and the ultimate expression of divine love. But this...