"Welcome, ye great ones! What good can I do for you? Are all safe in Vraja? Tell me the object of your coming here. The night is fearful and wild animals are treading around. Go back to Vraja. This is not the place for women. You have got your mothers, fathers, sons, brothers and husbands. They are searching you. Do not cause pain to anybody. What more, you have now seen this forest adorned with flowers and illumined by the tender rays of the full moon, where the trees and their tender branches, gently moved by the breeze from the Yamuna, stand in all their splendour. Now go back, O virtuous girls, speedily to your house and look after your husbands. The calves and your children are weeping. Go and let them have their drink. If you have come here, forced by your love for me, it is only meet and proper, for all people have their love for me. Devotion to husband is the one great religion for women. They should seek the well-being of their friends and bring up their children. The husband may be wicked, old, diseased or poor. But those who wish for higher Lokas should not give up their husbands. The connection with one who is not the husband is disreputable and unbecoming. You may bear love for me in other ways than by such a near approach. Therefore go back to your houses."
The Gopis were struck dumb for a time. They were overcome with sorrow. They had given up everything for the sake of Krishna and they could ill bear to hear these harsh words. At last they broke forth: "O Lord, it is not for Thee to utter these unkind words. We have given up all objects and sought Thy feet. O Thou, difficult to be reached, do not forsake us but please think of even as the First Purusha thinks of those that seek Moksha. Thou speakest, O Love, of our duties to husbands, sons, and friends as if Thou art a religious teacher, but Thou art Thyself the goal of those religious injunctions. So let them rest in Thee. Thou art the greatest friend of all beings, for Thou art verily their own Self. What do we care for husbands or sons, sources of misery as they are; we are attached to Thee, the constant source of happiness." In these words the Gopis expressed their deepest affection for Lord Krishna. We find in the Gopis complete self-surrender (Atma-Nivedan) in its true sense. They cared not even for their lives. How could they care then for their relatives, friends and cattle?
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