ssness of womanly modesty. Leaving their garments on
the bank they had plunged into the river. The child of six saw this with
the eye of insight, and He gathered up their cloths and climbed up a
tree near by, carrying them with Him, and threw them round His own
shoulders and waited to see what would chance. The water was bitterly
cold and the Gopis were shivering; but they did not like to come out of
it before the clear steady eyes of the child. And He called them to come
and get the garments they had thrown off; and as they hesitated, the
baby lips told them that they had sinned against God by immodestly
casting aside the garments that should have been worn, and must
therefore expiate their sin by coming and taking from His hands that
which they had cast aside. They came and worshipped, and He gave them
back their robes. An immoral story, with a child of six as the central
figure! It is spoken of as though he were a full grown man, insulting
the modesty of women. The Gopis were Rishis, and the Lord, the
Supreme, as a babe is teaching them a lesson. But there is more than
that; there is a profound occult lesson below the story--a story
repeated over and over again in different forms--and it is this: that
when the soul is approaching the supreme Lord at one great stage of
initiation, it has to pass through a great ordeal; stripped of
everything on which it has hitherto relied, stripped of everything that
is not of its inner Self, deprived of all external aid, of all external
protection, of all external covering, the soul itself, in its own
inherent life, must stand naked and alone with nothing to rely on, save
the life of the Self within it. If it flinches before the ordeal, if it
clings to anything to which hitherto it has looked for help, if in that
supreme hour it cries out for friend or helper, nay even for the Guru
himself, the soul fails in that ordeal. Naked and alone it must go
forth, with absolutely none to aid it save the divinity within itself.
And it is that nakedness of the soul as it approaches the supreme goal,
that is told of in that story of Shri Krishna, the child, and
the Gopis, the nakedness of life before the One who gave it. You find
many another similar allegory. When the Lord comes in the Kalki, the
tenth, Avatara, He fights on the battlefield and is overcome. He uses
all His weapons; every weapon fails Him; and it is not till He casts
every weapon aside and fights with His naked hands, that He conq