From an ontological perspective, the following question suggests a crucial problem that appears in various religious cosmologies: how can a finite being have a relation with that which is non-finite? God, who is the supreme non-finite being, is, by definition, beyond the spatio-temporal realm; so, how can a relation be established between God and a finite being that is bound within the spatio-temporal realm? The two appear to be spatiotemporally immiscible. The non-finite being simply does not possess any finite properties, let alone spatio-temporal ones, through which a relation can be established with a finite being. Thus, it does not appear to be logically possible for the finite to have any relation with the non-finite.

This logical question can be recast from the perspective of devotional love between the finite devotee and the non-finite deity: how can the former have a meaningful relation with the latter? The ontological problem remains the same as before, since the devotee resides within the spatio-temporal realm but the divine entity is not bound to it. Yet, whilst this interaction cannot be readily spelled out with logical categories, the life of devotion in religious traditions such as Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism is based on some kind of interactive relation between a devotee and the supremely personal deity. This co-presence of divine presence and divine otherness can be characterised as the paradox of the ‘intimate stranger’ (Barua & Khalid, 2020, p. 7). Considering the non-finite Lord to be their true beloved, the devotee yearns for the Lord’s constant presence. Consumed by their devotional love, they seem to forget that the Lord can never be wholly bound to a finite lover. Thus, attempting to forge a relation between the finite and the non-finite, they become encircled by the paradox of the intimate stranger. On the one hand, as the devotee’s beloved, the non-finite Lord holds a deeply intimate place in the heart of the devotee, and the devotee too, through their fervent devotion, becomes dear to the Lord. Yet, on the other hand, the non-finite Lord, precisely by virtue of their non-finite plenitude, remains a stranger to the finite devotee, for the finite cannot comprehensively domesticate the non-finite.

In this article, I will be discussing, through the lens of this paradox, the experiences of the 16th-century Vaiśnava poet Mirabai. I will map out some contours of this interaction that seems to be conceptually impossible and yet animates the devotional life. I will explore how Mirabai seeks to transgress, through her poetic expressions alternating with joy and sorrow, the finite realm and somehow contain the divine non-finite reality, namely, Krishna.Footnote 1 As we will see, her attempts to generate a loving interaction and engage with Krishna, her non-finite beloved, often leads to the disappearance of Krishna. This encases her in a spiral of deep suffering and lament. However, it is precisely this agony that enables her to gradually withdraw herself from the finite world and, in turn, immerse herself devotionally in Krishna (Hillgardner, 2017, p. 90). I will explore, in the final section, the nature of Mirabai’s devotional victory, and how these moments of suffering, in the experience of separation from Krishna (viraha-bhakti), are yet charged with a liberating power. This spiritual telos allows for a deep devotional connection to be established between her finite self and Krishna, a connection that cannot be articulated straightforwardly on the logical plane.

In order to understand this devotional phenomenon, I will be examining some of the poetic compositions of Mirabai. Poetic compositions or narratives are not commonly used by philosophers to formulate or develop their arguments, rather, thought-experiments are conducted with ‘philosophical crash-dummies’ (Stump, 2010, p. 26). It is understandable that philosophers who work with logical tools of analysis may be disinclined to regard poetic compositions, which are rooted in the distinctive subjectivity of the composer, as epistemic sources. However, from the perspective of theological standpoints which maintain that there are aspects of human existence which cannot be straightforwardly analysed in logical space, precisely this subject-shaped dimension can be reformulated as the epistemic strength of poetic compositions. This is because the speaker, the poet, and the reader are able to place their own interpretations, shaped by their distinctive existential locations, upon a narrative ‘without any one necessarily invalidating the other’ (Chilton, 2020, p. 54). The existence of these mutually nonexclusive interpretations supports Eleonore Stump’s assertion that ‘there are things to know which can be known through narrative but which cannot be known as well, if at all, through the methods of analytic philosophy’ (Stump, 2010, p. 26). Whilst I will not seek to validate such bold claims in this article, I hope to show that Mirabai’s poetic narrative is able to provide some insight into the paradox of the intimate stranger.

‘There once was a princess…’.

The little that we know about Mirabai’s life comes from historical and hagiographical accounts. Official documents of the time indicate that Mirabai was born in Merta, sometime about 1498 (Varma, 1958, p. 576) (S.M.Pandey & Zide, 1965, p. 55), and was married into the royal family of Mewar, which is in the present-day Indian state of Rajasthan (Hawley, 2005, p. 92). Evocative accounts of Mirabai’s life can be found in hagiographical narratives, such as Priyadas’ commentary on Nabhadas’ Bhaktamāl, which is an 16th-century text describing the lives of various famous devotees from the Indian subcontinent. This commentary, titled Bhaktirasabodhinī, narrates how Mirabai, as a pawn in the powerful courts of Rajasthan, was strategically placed by her family in an arranged marriage with the prince of Mewar. However, Mirabai considered herself to be already wedded to Krishna, which infuriated her new family—so much so that they tried to have her killed (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 134) (Schelling, 2011, p. 138). Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna led her to seek satsang: the company of like-minded holy people (sādhus) and devotees. However, in the hagiographical account, Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan Kī Vārtā, we read that even in Braj and Dwarka, Mirabai continued to be maligned by members of the Vallabha tradition (sampradāya) (Mukta, 1994, p. 24). Purohit Ramdas, a notable figure in this sampradāya, vilified Mirabai as a rānd, (Mukta, 1994, p. 24) an extremely insulting term used to describe a widow. Being insulted in such a way despite her fervent devotional inclinations, Mirabai’s life is a fitting example of how patriarchal prejudices have led to female devotion to be devalued, portrayed as part of their societal disposition rather than as a rational exercise of their agential capacities (Anderson, 1998, p. 176).

Priyadas’ account of Mirabai’s life, distinctly Vaiśnava in taste, appears to provide the standard foundational structure upon which a majority of later narratives concerning Mirabai’s life are built (Martin, 2023, p. 69). Nancy Martin, however, saliently notes that alternate hagiographical literature, such as Prem Ambodh, paint a different, comparatively lesser known, picture of Mirabai as the wife of Giridhar, who, unbeknownst to Mirabai, is the divine Lord that she has been longing for (Ibid, p. 60). In Prem Ambodh, Mirabai’s ‘victory’ is characterised as an understanding of the true divine identity of her husband. Nagridas’ hagiography, Padaprasangmala, does not mention Mirabai’s husband, instead focusing on the harassment incurred upon her by her brother-in law after she refuses to immolate herself in her husband’s funeral pyre (Ibid, p. 75). Such discrepancies in hagiographical literature raises questions concerning the exact happenings of Mirabai’s life and the authorship of her poetic compositions. Which Mirabai authored each composition?

In light of this, the main corpus of academic scholarship on Mirabai can be split into two categories. The first category addresses the social and political dimensions within which Mirabai exists. This includes scholarship such as Nancy Martin’s recent book ‘Mirabai: Making of Saint’ which rigorously maps the presence of Mirabai in in hagiographical narratives as well as modern social and political movements, as well as Ritu Varghese and Akshaya Rath’s ‘Mirabai in public spheres’ and Parita Mukta’s ‘Upholding the Common Life. The Community of Mirabai’. Such scholarship focuses primarily on understanding the many layers of Mirabai’s identity and the contexts in which it permeates.

The second category seeks to conduct a theologically informed literary analysis of Mirabai’s compositions, drawing out various devotional themes that make these compositions particularly poignant. Such scholarship includes Parshuram Chaturvedi’s introductory chapters in ‘Mīrām̐bāī Kī Padāvalī’ as well as Holly Hillgardner’s analysis of Mirabai’s viraha-bhakti in ‘Longing and Letting Go: Christian and Hindu Practices of Passionate Non-Attachment’ and John Hawley’s ‘Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours’. This category of academic literature seeks to draw out the theologically significant relationship between the devotee and the divine that appears in Mirabai’s poetic compositions, often in comparison with other poets. Such analyses appear to be built upon an acceptance of general structure of Mirabai’s life provided in the Bhaktirasabodhinī. Vignettes mentioned in the Bhaktirasabodhinī, such as Mirabai’s relationship with her husband, the prince, and the ordeals she faces at the palace, are littered in the poetic compositions attributed to Mirabai. Rather than treading lightly around them, this category of scholarship simply sets questions of authorship aside, preferring instead to accept the authorship of a distinctly Vaiśnava Mirabai. Moving towards an agnosticism about authorship allows this category of academic literature to tease out the motifs of devotion that perfuse Mirabai’s compositions.

Both categories of scholarship are, in their own right, extremely important in facilitating a better understanding of Mirabai. The former allows the reader to better understand the diverse religious and political beliefs that influence the retellings of Mirabai’s life and work in varied contexts. Exclusively focusing on the former, however, and not making space for an analysis of the devotional themes in Mirabai’s compositions would be an epistemic injustice. Irrespective of questions concerning authorship, Mirabai’s poetic compositions are deserving of theological analysis. To refrain from doing so would be affording Mirabai less credibility than her peers. In this context, Sunita Sharma notes that whilst male poets often attain a ‘saintly status’, Mirabai’s portrayal as a dīwānī (fanatic) has prevented her from being seen as spiritually worthy (Sharma, 2017, p. 308). The devotional intensity of a woman’s emotions, which drew praise and reverence from male poets, so much so that some of them even appropriated a female voice for their own poetry (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 120), has become the very reason Mirabai, and some other female poets, are not given the same spiritual respect as their male counterparts.

Highlighting the value of such female subjectivities with regards to Mirabai’s poetry, Hawley asserts that unlike male poets such as Kabir or Surdas, whose poems are often ‘voiced as by a woman’ (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 120), Mirabai does not have to appropriate a female voice for her poetry, where such appropriation implies some measure of existential distance (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 120). Thus, her mode of gendered suffering, be that in Mewar, Braj or Dwarka, gave Mirabai an epistemic leverage in connecting with Krishna.

My argument is not intended to downplay the theological significance of the works of such male poets; rather, I argue that because they were not exposed to the same type of gendered oppression, they would not have been able to access the mode of intense pain of the laments of Mirabai, a female bhakta (devotee) (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 120).Footnote 2 The mode of patriarchal persecution and social ostracism that women encounter is often intertwined with their gendered identity, and absent from the lives of men (Harding, 1991, p. 122). As a poet-singer herself, Mirabai is able to express the pathos of her lamentation and the depth of her longing through the immediacy of her own words. Her poetry is a primary key to, as well as a shimmering mirror of, her emotions from her first-person standpoint.

In line with the theme of this special issue, this article fits into the latter category of scholarship on Mirabai. Rather than explore the various socio-political contexts that permeate our understanding of Mirabai’s life, this article is a hermeneutic exploration of the relationship between the finite and the non-finite through the lens of Mirabai’s compositions. I will demonstrate how Mirabai’s poetic compositions provide a unique tool through which the paradox of the intimate stranger can be unravelled.

Attempting the Logically Impossible: Mirabai’s Struggles to Reach the Divine

The paradox of the intimate stranger can be found in the undercurrents of the rāsa līlā (dance of divine love), a series of events narrated in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (c.900 CE) (Edelmann, 2018). This narrative highlights how the gopīs (cowherd maidens) develop a devotional relationship with their beloved, Krishna. Graham Schweig distinguishes their journey towards Krishna into eight phases. The gopīs are first awakened by the sound of Krishna’s flute, which causes them to leave their homes and run towards the forest. There they are able to view Krishna. However, an existential conflict arises as they mistakenly believe they have managed to capture Krishna; because of this pride, he disappears from them. Krishna’s disappearance leads to a phase of separation, loss, and longing. Krishna ultimately reunites with the gopīs, upon which they rejoice and perform the rāsa līlā (Schweig, 2013, p. 173). Through an exploration of her poetry, in this section I seek to highlight, in Mirabai’s journey towards the non-finite beloved, similar oscillations of agony in separation and rejoicing at union, only to be followed by further spirals of separation and rejoicing at union. Mira herself identifies deeply with the gopīs, as she writes:

In my past life

I was a gopī

so friend, surely

he will redeem me. (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 67, pad 34)

Mirabai’s self-identification as a gopī is inscribed in her relationality with Krishna: like the gopīs, she too must undergo the pain of separation and longing in order to reunite with Krishna, even if only momentarily.

Before I delineate Mirabai’s journey, I will outline the crucial motif that upholds the deity-devotee relationality: viraha-bhakti. A straightforward translation of viraha-bhakti would be ‘devotion in which the sentiment of separation is cultivated’ (Hardy, 1983, p. 9). However, the translation of bhakti as ‘devotion’ and viraha as ‘the sentiment of separation’ can fail to convey the existential gravitas and phenomenological pathos of these terms. The term bhakti is derived from the Sanskrit root bhaj which can be translated into a myriad of verbs, including but not limited to: ‘to share’, ‘to revere’, ‘to adore’, ‘to love’, and ‘to serve’. Thus, bhakti is not merely a passive state of adoration as the term ‘devotion’ may suggest, but points to a dynamic spectrum of acts such as ‘participation’ and ‘committed engagement’ (Hillgardner, 2017, p. 12) (Pechilis, 1999, pp. 20–24). So, in a religious context, bhakti may be defined as ‘the devotee’s personal engagement with a divinity’ (Dwyer, 2016, p. 24). Viraha-bhakti is a particular type of bhakti, centred in the experience of viraha. Whilst the Sanskrit term viraha can be literally translated as ‘separation’, the term viraha-bhakti carries dynamic connotations of a continuous oscillation between experiencing anguish in divine absence and experiencing joy in divine presence. Mirabai becomes enfolded within these oscillations as she experiences both the divine presence and the divine absence of Krishna, and it is through her participation in these oscillations that an existential connection is forged between her, a finite devotee, and Krishna, the supreme non-finite Lord. Thus, the experiences of viraha-bhakti, oscillating between divine presence and divine absence, encompass ‘not just goodness, mutuality, and beauty, but also intense grief, conclusion and frustration’ (Hillgardner, 2017, p. 11). In this section, I will explore, through Mirabai’s poetry, the phenomena of divine presence and divine absence and the liberating consequences of indwelling their oscillations.

I will distinguish four phases of her journey with God and towards God: an agonising realisation of God’s sudden absence; longing, lament, and anguish in separation from God; a deepening immersion in God; and liberation through the return of God. These four phases are not necessarily found in one particular poem, but they are undercurrents running through her compositions. They loosely follow the spiralling patterns of the rāsa līlā, so that Mirabai’s devotional engagements with Krishna can be characterised as paradoxical modes of experiencing God’s absence-in-presence as much as experiencing God’s presence-in-absence.

The first phase of Mirabai’s engagement with Krishna is that of Krishna’s disappearance, in other words, the moment of divine absence. In one poem Mirabai beseeches Krishna:

jogī mata jā mata jā mata jā

pāṁi parūṁ maiṁ terī cerī hauṁ

Yogi, do not go, do not go, do not go

I fall at your feet, I am your slave. (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 49, pad 12)Footnote 3

The emphatic triad of the phrase ‘mata jā’ expresses the vulnerability and desperation that Mirabai is feeling. Her attachment to Krishna enables her to see beyond social norms; thus, despite her royal status, she refers to herself as a slave. Yet, her pleas are in vain, for Krishna does not stay. Mirabai, the finite devotee, is unable to circumscribe or domesticate the non-finite. This failure, cognitive as well as existential, leads to the second, and the most poignant, phase in Mirabai’s journey which is suffused with her anguish.

Mirabai yearns for Krishna’s presence as she writes:

Friend, who can know

my love’s deep anguish?

only one wounded

knows how it hurts,

only a jeweller

knows a lost gem’s worth

My bed is a bed of nails

how can I sleep?

and I can’t reach

my Lover’s bed made

in the sky (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 47, pad 10).

Mirabai presents her love and longing as an esoteric truth, which is only apprehended by those who engage with Krishna’s mysterious transcendence and seeming aloofness as deeply as she does, because, as she says, ‘only a jeweller knows a lost gem’s worth’ (Ibid). It is perhaps for this reason that she often refers in her poetry to other ardent female devotees, such as Śabarī (Hawley, Songs of Saints of India, 2004, p. 137), a tribeswoman who welcomed God Rāma into her forest home and offered him plums that she had first tasted to ensure their sweetness; Draupadī (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 103, pad 76), whom Krishna saved when she was staked and lost by her husbands in a game of dice; and, of course, the paradigmatic gopīs of Braj, in particular Rādhā (Ibid, pp. 51, pad 14). Mirabai considers her love to be charged with the same ecstatic intensity as that of these female devotees, and even compares herself to them in her moments of anguish (Ibid, pp. 103, pad 76). Although her agony is often manifested in a steadfast waiting on Krishna for his return (Hillgardner, 2017, p. 96), her patience occasionally slips into anger and frustration.

You don’t look at me ever

though I glance at you alone,

O cruel-hearted Lover

your heart is of stone!

I’m tired of pleading, pleading,

yet you look not my way

and now night’s receding

and comes the day. (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 53, pad 17)

Mirabai becomes weary of waiting for Krishna, and her resentment towards him resonates throughout this poem as she defiantly accuses him of having a heart made of stone. Yet, despite her vexation, Mirabai’s radiant love does not falter. Although a sense of psychological distance from Krishna is expressed through her anger, this expression is momentary and is, paradoxically, an experiential stage through which she moves yet closer to Krishna (Sanford, 2008, p. 87). Thus, at the end of this particular poem she declares:

Krishna, you are the Lord

beginningless

and endless;

I will seek deliverance at your feet. (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 53, pad 17)

This leads us to the third phase in Mirabai’s journey, namely, her deep immersion in Krishna. Despite the notes of pain and the longing that permeate her poetry, Mirabai consistently ends with one particular sentiment: a resolute trust in Krishna who is her saviour. Often Krishna is described as a vaid (physician) who will cure her of the malady of her grief (Ibid, pp. 47, pad 10), or as a navigator who will steer her worldly ship to safety (Ibid, pp. 52, pad 15).

Elsewhere, she ends with this meditative reflection:

O Mind,

dwell on Hari’s feet

lovely, soft, lotus-like,

cooling souls burning

with life’s miseries (Ibid, pp. 46, pad 9).

These poems convey the visceral intensities of both Mirabai’s separation from Krishna and her closeness to him. It is through these forms of devotional intimacy that she maintains a connection with him. Encased within these oscillations of divine presence and divine absence, she conveys to her readers that whilst an existential absence gnaws away at the heart of her being, she remains consciously aware of Krishna’s immanence and accessibility, and thus his divine presence. These oscillations are foregrounded to a greater extent when Mirabai both lovingly converses with Krishna and complains of his absence in the same verse.

Darling Lover,

tell me pray,

why you give your heart to others

but from me you turn away? (Ibid, pp. 52, pad 16)

Thus, Mirabai’s poetry reflects her encasement within what we have called the paradox of the intimate stranger (Barua & Khalid, 2020, p. 7). Considering Krishna to be her beloved, she yearns for his presence at all times. Consumed with her devotional love, she even forgets that Krishna, as the supreme non-finite Lord, cannot be wholly bound to her, a finite lover (Ibid). Mirabai repeatedly mentions that ‘elders’ and ‘busybodies’ consider her to be foolish, encouraging her to fulfil her social duties within the finite realm, rather than looking towards the non-finite. Yet, Mirabai claims to have grasped a truth that was not visible to those who were scorning her:

Let busybodies say

what they say,

Krishna is in my heart always

I have surrendered to my Lover

and now I am his slave (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 57, pad 23).

I argue that Mirabai was not oblivious to the existential risk that she was undertaking in enslaving herself to a seemingly distant Lord whom she might never meet. Although, whilst immersed in her devotion, she may forget that she is unable to capture the transcendent non-finite, she would have been aware that unlike in the time of the gopīs when Krishna was living in Vraj, Krishna was not currently roaming the finite realm. That is, at the time when she was singing her songs of ecstatic devotion, Krishna was not readily present in a physical form, bewitching passers-by with his mellifluous flute. So, she would not have been able to meet Krishna in a straightforward manner—whether at the river’s edge or in the fields. Crucially, it is precisely this uncertainty of Krishna’s arrival or return that forms the basis of her anguish and lament. This is because if she were wholly certain of Krishna’s presence, there would be no existential space for her anger or suffering; rather, her songs would be suffused only with undiluted joy. And yet, it appears that by undertaking this risk and by inhabiting this uncertainty, Mirabai gradually begins to receive an assurance that her Lord is indeed with her. In this way, the ongoing oscillations between a sense of Krishna’s absence and a sense of Krishna’s presence forge Mirabai’s faith and God-immersion within the painful fires of waiting on Krishna. What remains uncertain to those around her gradually becomes certain in her eyes which are now steadfastly oriented to Krishna who is present in his very absence.

So far, we have observed Mirabai’s staunch devotion towards Krishna, her agonising realisation of God’s gnawing absence, as well as her longing, lament, and anguish in separation from her own ‘intimate stranger’. We have seen how this anguish and uncertainty lead, however, only to an ever-deepening immersion in God. We move now to the fourth stage in Mirabai’s journey: liberation through the return of God. Here it must be asked: “what is the nature of this liberation?” and “what is Mirabai’s victory?”.

Mirabai’s Victory

It is clear from Mirabai’s poetry what she would consider to be her spiritual triumph: liberation from the finite world and union with Krishna. For she implores Krishna:

O Giridhara, I’m your slave,

come Master, come, make haste

the noose of worldliness chokes me,

cut it and set me free (Ibid, pp. 41-42, pad 2).

And elsewhere, invoking the powerful image of satī (self-immolation), she writes:

Yogi Lover,

I have made a pile of aloewood and sandalwood

for you to ignite;

and in its flames

I’ll immolate

my body for your sake.

With my ashes smear

your limbs; so that my light

may unite with yours

for every and ever (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 50, pad 12).

It is interesting to note that Mirabai refused to undergo a bodily satī upon the death of her husband, and yet she is so willing to place herself upon a symbolic pyre where she is incinerated by the blazing flames of her love for Krishna. Her striking lack of concern towards self-preservation portrays the extent to which she has intertwined her worldly identity with her radiant love for Krishna. With the idiom of satī, she reminds her readers that she considers herself to be Krishna’s wife and longs for their union. Hillgardner argues that this union should be understood not as a complete absorption but as a form of ‘qualified non-dualism’ (Hillgardner, 2017, p. 99) in which Mirabai, who has wholeheartedly surrendered herself to Krishna, retains a sense of distinct individuality. Invoking a popular saying from bhakti contexts that ‘the devotee does not want to be sugar, she wants to taste sugar’ (Ibid), Hillgardner argues that Mirabai’s final liberated state is that of a virahiṇī. This is because Mirabai situates her spiritual victory within the dynamic oscillations of divine absence and divine presence (Ibid, p. 39). Mirabai’s longing for Krishna is not endlessly debilitating, rather separation is inherent to the communion that she seeks with Krishna (Ibid, p. 99). It is from within the bowels of viraha-bhakti that she realises this particular type of communion, which is a communion of separation and not an ‘ultimate, total communion’ (Ibid, p.39).

However, Parshuram Chaturvedi, in his notable collection and commentary on Mirabai’s poetry titled Mīrām̐bāī Kī Padāvalī, characterises Mirabai’s victory in a somewhat different manner. He argues that a distinct trope of saṃyoga (union) can be seen in Mirabai’s poetry, particularly through her evocative descriptions of sāvana, namely, the season of the monsoon rains (Chaturvedi, 1964, p. 49). Mirabai writes:

Dark clouds are massing

lightning flashing

across the sky;

droplets drizzle

soft and light,

the cool breeze fills

hearts with delight.

My Lord Giradhara

is home after long,

come friends, come,

welcome him with songs (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 50, pad 13).

The thirst-quenching monsoon rains are greatly anticipated in the Indian subcontinent after the long arid summer months. These rains mark the end of the affliction of those who have been struggling to find water during the dry season. Invoking these rains of sāvana, Mirabai expresses her visceral response to her joyful union with Krishna. The images of abundance provide a window into the blissful heart of the once-virahiṇī Mirabai as she now meets with her beloved (Chaturvedi, 1964, p. 50). They symbolically express her sigh of relief after having undergone—successfully—her test of faith: her existence within the oscillations of divine presence and divine absence. It is this moment of arrival that Chaturvedi highlights by separating the trope of saṃyoga (union) from the trope of viraha (Ibid, 48–50). Unlike Hillgardner, he does not appear to view Mirabai’s union with Krishna as a momentary episode that is followed again by viraha; rather, it seems that her lasting union with Krishna, which is her liberation, occurs after her viraha is ended.

To make sense of these two distinctive approaches of Hillgardner and Chaturvedi, let us turn to G. Schweig’s analysis of the rāsa līlā in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Tracing the theological contours of the gopīs’ final phases in their journey, namely, the phases of rejoicing and returning, Schweig argues that through the soteriological momentum of their bhakti, the gopīs attain a siddha-deha (a spiritually perfect body) (Schweig, 2013, p. 135). It is only by virtue of a devotee’s siddha-deha, rather than through their physical body, that an absolute immersion in the service of God can be attained (Ibid). Liberation for the gopīs, as viewed through this lens, is therefore not an ontological absorption into Krishna, rather it is to remain in Krishna’s eternal service through their siddha-deha. Crucially, however, Schweig argues that the gopīs attained their individual siddha-deha whilst remaining in their physical bodies, that is, they attained liberation and were able to experience the unadulterated bliss of Krishna whilst remaining within the world. As they continue to inhabit the finite realm, their separation from God remains, and yet the gnawing sense of the absence of God disappears from their finite subjectivities. Importantly, Schweig distinguishes the liberated gopīs’ mode of separation from God from their earlier separation whilst in a non-liberated state (Schweig, 2013, p. 137). Earlier, the gopīs’ separation from Krishna had produced intense anguish and longing in them. Now, although the existential separation remains, for they realise that they can never exhaust the plenitude of Krishna, they have yet attained a supreme spiritual state as the eternal servants of Krishna, and they bask in his everlasting bliss.

The recurring motif of the master–slave distinction in certain verses of Mirabai’s poetry,Footnote 4 in which Mirabai portrays herself as Krishna’s slave, indicates that, like the paradimatic gopīs, she too considered remaining in the eternal service of Krishna as her ultimate goal. Thus, I argue that it is an experiential transformation into a form of liberation in the embodied state that brings together the interpretations of Hillgardner and Chaturvedi relating to Mirabai’s union with Krishna. Although Mirabai herself does not explicitly refer to attaining a siddha-deha in her poetry, I argue that its employment by Schweig in the soteriological narrative of the gopīs provides a useful framework for understanding Mirabai’s victory in attaching herself to Krishna as his devotional servant. In order to do so, a distinction must be made between the notions of separation from God and absence of God. The former is to be taken as the unavailability, in a spatio-temporal sense, of Krishna to some world-bound individuals. Despite Krishna’s omnipresence as the innermost self of reality, Krishna is not available in a tangible human-like form to some devotees such as Mirabai (unlike the case of the gopīs who were able to directly participate in a circular dance with Krishna). The latter, in contrast, is to be taken in a phenomenological sense, whereby a devotee is unable to feel, in an uninterrupted stream, Krishna’s presence which continually suffuses all finite reality.

An implication of this distinction is that somehow overcoming separation from Krishna (and thus, for instance, standing in front of Krishna) does not entail overcoming the felt experience of Krishna’s absence, for a finite devotee such as Mirabai can never wholly contain Krishna even if they are in Krishna’s presence. Therefore, Mirabai’s anguish at her real-world separation from Krishna only intensifies the pain of her experience of absence of Krishna. Notwithstanding this separation, Mirabai occasionally feels a spiritual connection with Krishna—she proclaims that Krishna ‘is ever in the hearts of those who love him.’ (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 52, pad 15).

As Mirabai moves from this stage of anguish to the interrelated stages of God-immersion and liberation, relishing the euphoria of her developing communion with Krishna, Mirabai cries out with joy that ‘the virahiṇī has found that which quenches her thirst’ (Mirabai, 1924, pp. 143, pad 150).Footnote 5 I argue that these expressions of jubilance, especially in verses where Mirabai describes her communion with Krishna,Footnote 6 distinguish her joyful states from her agonising states of divine absence she earlier underwent in her journey. Swept along the streams of her viraha-bhakti, Mirabai appeared to be oscillating between spiritual divine presence and absence. Now that she has attained a joyful communion with Krishna, and as I have argued, a mode of embodied liberation, the acute sense of Krishna’s divine absence becomes somewhat mitigated in her verses. As she transcends her state as a virahiṇī, having found the ‘ocean of bliss’ that quenches her thirst (Chaturvedi, 1964, pp. 142, pad 144),Footnote 7 she appears to intensely experience Krishna’s presence, even with the continued undercurrents of spatio-temporal separation. Much like how the gopīs forget the agony of Krishna’s separation as they perform the rāsa līlā (Schweig, 2013, p. 65), Mirabai too appears to be submerged in her newly strengthened connection with Krishna to such an extent that she forgets, in her rejoicing, the agony of separation from Krishna. In other words, following Hillgardner, we see that a type of distance persists in Mirabai’s liberation, where the joy of Krishna’s presence is yet infused with the pang of viraha from Krishna. Yet, we also see, following Chaturvedi, that this newly received devotional gravity in Mirabai’s journey is distinct from the existential instabilities of her earlier anguish in the crucibles of her viraha-bhakti.

Conclusion

Let us return to the paradox at the heart of our investigation: how can a finite being have a meaningful relation with that which is non-finite? That is to say, how can a finite devotee establish a devotional connection with the non-finite divine, who is the intimate stranger? I have considered Mirabai’s experiences to be the focal point of this investigation. I do not claim that Mirabai’s poetic compositions were written with the intention of addressing this theo-logical paradox, rather I have attempted to show that these compositions embody a unique insight into how a finite devotee may seek to establish a meaningful connection with the non-finite divine.

As I argued in the introduction, establishing a connection between the finite and the non-finite appears to be impossible on the logical plane. The non-finite, by definition, cannot have any finite limitations and is not bound to the spatio-temporal realm. Yet it can be observed from Mirabai’s experiences that she attempted precisely this logically impossible task, and even appears to have succeeded somehow. Her initial attempts to establish a connection with the non-finite Krishna cause her to become lost in the crushing spirals of viraha-bhakti, oscillating between her experiences of divine presence and divine absence. Krishna, the non-finite intimate stranger who is seemingly aloof and elusive, can never be wholly known or controlled by a finite devotee. Yet, as Mirabai persevered with her viraha-bhakti, the storms of anguish subsided and she became drenched in the blissful rains of her devotional communion with Krishna. This communion does not entail that the divine intimate stranger has now become fully domesticated as exclusively intimate, rather the degree of intimacy has increased.

This article is merely a small stepping stone into the ocean of Mirabai’s poetic compositions, many of which are still not translated. I hope that this article has laid the foundations for future scholarship on Mirabai’s poetic compositions as well as other female poets who have received less academic attention than their male counterparts, such as Gagasati and Janabai.