What Is RaasLeela? What does lord Shri Krishna do in Raasleela?

What People don’t know about Raasleela?

First we should know about what is actually called Raasleela.

Raas leela, the joyful dance of Krishna and the gopis has been immortalized in legend. But what is its significance, and why was even Shiva, the Mahadeva, attracted to it?

When at eight years of age, (Please keep in your mind always that Lord Shri Krishna was just eight years of age.) Krishna moved from Gokula to Vrindhavan, he became immensely popular among the village folk. It was at the time of the Holi festival, just after spring when everything is in full bloom. On a certain evening, a full moon-day the boys and girls of the village gathered on the banks of river Yamuna. They started playing and having fun throwing water and sand at each other. After some time, the play broke into a dance. 

And they danced and danced because they were in such an exuberant and joyful state. But slowly, one by one, the clumsier ones dropped off. When Krishna saw this, he took out his flute and started to play. His play was so enchanting that everyone gathered around him and once again swayed, for almost half the night.

This is the first incident of Raas Leela, where a simple joyful mingling of people rose to a transcendental state. Though the word “raas” literally means “juice” but it actually indicates the passion. So this was the Dance-Of-Passion. The fragrance of this dance spread, people came to know that on full moon nights at midnight, this dance would happene, and the number of those participants increased.

Does Lord Shiva taking part in Raas Leela?

When people fall in love, they dance. If they get ecstatic, they dance. If they get angry, they dance. So being the Lord of Dance, Nataraja Shiva was very amused that this little boy, his devotee, was taking people to transcendental states simply by dancing and blowing upon his flute. He wanted to witness this which is going to happen on the banks of Yamuna river.

So it is said that Lord Shiva walked all the way from Himalayas to the banks of river Yamuna. And it is also said that Lord Shiva has also assumed the form of a women as only women were allowed to Raasleela.(Since Lord Krishna is the ultimate masculine-the purusha among the purushas, every male or female come under ultimate feminine part of the universe.) So Lord Shiva has to take the form of a women to witness Raasleela, The DIVINE DANCE OF ECSTACY.

So, it is clear now that Raasleela, the Divine Ecstatic Dance is gifted by Lord Krishna to the Human world to easily experience the Divine trance.(And it’s nothing to do with sex, as most of the present day people are thinking).