There is a figure in the Radha-Krishna theology who receives almost no attention outside the tradition itself.
The Sakhi. The companion. The one who serves the love between Radha and Krishna without being one of the principals of that love. Who carries messages between them. Who prepares the meeting place. Who decorates Radha and fans her and brings her the news of Krishna. Who weeps in Radha's Viraha and rejoices in her union. Who loves Krishna — with complete love, full devotion — but whose love is expressed entirely through the service of their love rather than in any direct relationship of her own.
The six Goswamis of Vrindavan — Rupa, Sanatana, Jiva, Gopala Bhatta, Raghunatha Dasa, Raghunatha Bhatta — developed an entire theology around this figure. Rupa Goswami's Ujjvala Nilamani devotes substantial chapters to the Sakhi's specific qualities, her specific emotional state (called Sakhya-bhava), and the specific spiritual attainment she represents.
Why would identification with the companion be considered higher than identification with the beloved?
Because the Sakhi's love is the most purified. The beloved loves from closeness — the love of presence, the love that needs to be received. The Sakhi loves from a remove — without any claim, without any expectation of direct reciprocation, entirely for the flourishing of the love she is serving. Her pleasure is not in being loved by Krishna. Her pleasure is in watching Krishna and Radha together. In making that union more perfect. In being so completely a servant of the love that she has no remaining desire that is not already fulfilled by its fullness.
The Bhakti tradition uses the term Nishkincana — the one who has nothing — for the highest devotional state. Not material poverty but the poverty of desire: the state of having no agenda that is not already fulfilled in the beloved's fulfilment. The Sakhi embodies this more completely than even the beloved, because the beloved's love still contains an element of reciprocal desire — even if purified, even if Nishkama, there is still an orientation toward the beloved. The Sakhi's love has released even this. She wants only for the love to be what it is. Her entire existence is in the service of something she is not the centre of.
The practice of Sakhi-bhava — which the Vrindavan Goswamis considered the highest available to a human practitioner — is not primarily an emotional exercise. It is an ontological reorientation. It is the deliberate cultivation of the capacity to love what one is not the centre of. To be genuinely nourished by witnessing the full expression of something beautiful that does not need you in order to be beautiful.
This capacity — to love without needing to be the subject of the love one witnesses — is among the rarest human qualities. It is what makes great teachers, great friends, great parents at their best: the ones who are genuinely fulfilled by watching the people they love come into their own, needing nothing in return except that the flowering continue.
The Sakhi carries the lamp. She does not need to be the flame. The flame is enough — its light is her light, its warmth is her warmth, its existence is her fulfilment. This is what Nishkama Prema looks like from the outside. And from the inside, the Goswamis say, it is the fullest state available — because it is the only love that has genuinely released the last vestige of the self that loves in order to be loved.