49 a child, and it is no fault of the fire if it did so; the difference lies in the way in which it is used. Therefore, love, the intense longing for association, the strong desire on the part of two to become one, and, it may be after all of all to become merged in one, is being manifested 'every where in higher or lower forms as the case may be. Bkakti-Yoga is the science of higher love; it shows us how to direct it; it shows us how to control it, how to manage it, how to use it, how to give it a new aim, as it were, and from it obtain the highest and most glorious results, that is, how to make it lead us to spiritual blessedness. Bhakti- Yoga does not say “Grive up”; it only says “ Love; love the Highest”; and everything low natarally falls off from him the object of whose love is this Highest.
“ I cannot tell anything about Thee, except that Thou art my love. Thou art beautiful, (3h Thou art beautiful! Thou art beauty itself-” What is after all really required of us in this Yoga is that our thirst after the beautiful should be directed to God. What is the beauty in the human face, in the sky, in the stars, and in the moon? It i.s only the partial apprehension of the real all-embracing Divine Beauty. “ He shining, everything shines. It is through Hi.^ light that all things shine.” Take this high position of Blakh which makes you forget at once all your little personal it ict.. Take youi*self away from all the world’s little selfish clingings. Do not look upon humanity as the centre of all your human and higher interests. Stand as a witness, as a student, and ohoorve the phenomena of nature. Have the feeling of personal non-attachment with regard to man, and see how this mighty feding of lo;e 18 working itself out in the world. Sometimes a li^ile fricti i IS produced, but that is only in the course of dio struggle attain the higher real love. Sometimes there i. a little hg* ' 48 48 or a little fall; but it is all only along the way. Stand aside, and freely let these frictions come. You feel the frictions only when you a:*e in the current of the world, but when you are outside of it simply as a witness and as a student, you will be able to see that there are millions and millions of channels in which God is manifesting Himself as Love.
“ Wherever there is any bliss, even though in the most sen- sual of things, there is a spark of that Eternal Bliss which is the Lord Himself.” Even in the lowest kinds of attraction there is the germ of divine love. One of the names of the Lord in Sans- krit is Han, and this means that He attracts all things to Him- self. His is ill fact the only attraction worthy of human hearts. Who can attract a soul really? Only He! Do you think dead matter can truly attract the soul? It never did, and never will. When you see a man going after a beautiful face, do you think that it is the handful of arranged material molecules which really attracts the man? Not at all. Behind those material particles there must be and is the play of divine influence and divine love. The ignorant man does not know it; but yet, consciously or unconsciously, ho is attracted by it and it alone. So even the lowest forms of attraction derive their power from God Himself. “ None, 0 beloved, ever loved the husband lor the husband’s sake; it is the A'tman, the Lord, who is iriside, and for His sake the husband is loved.” Loving wives may know this or they may notj it is true all the same “ None, 0 beloved, ever loved the wife for the wife’s sake, but it is the Self within the wife that is loved.” Similarly no one loves a child or anything else in the world except on account of Him who is within. The Lord is the great magnet, and we arc all like iron filings; all of us are being constantly attracted by Him, and all of us are straggling to reach Him. All this 49 struggling of ours in this world is surely not intended for selfish ends. Fools do not know what they are doing: the work of their life is all to approach the great magnet. All the tremendous struggling and fighting in life is intended to^mako us go to Him ultimately and be one with Him.
However the Bhakti-Yogin knows the]meaning of life’s strug- gles; he understands it. He has passed through, a long series of these struggles, and knows what they mean, and earnestly desires to be free from the friction thereof; he wants to avoid the clash and go direct to the centre of all attraction, the great Hari. This is the renunciation of the Bhakta, this mighty ^attraction, in the direction of God makes all other attractions vanish for him • this mighty infinite love of God which enters*his heart leaves no place for any other love to live there. How can it be otherwise? Bhakti fills his heart with the divine waters of the ocean of love, which is God Himself; there is no place there for little loves. That is to say, the Bhakta s renunciation is that vairdgya^ or non-attachment for all things that are not God, which results from anurdgaj or great attachment to God, This is the ideal preparation for the attainment of the supreme Bhakti, When this renunciation comes, the gate opens for the soul to pass throughand reach the lofty regionsof Supreme Devotion or Bard- Bhakti. Then it is that we begin to understand what Pard-Bhakti is; and thp man who has entered into the inner shrine of the Pard~Bhakti, he alone has the right to soy that all forms and symbols are useless to him aJ3 aids fo religious realisation. He alone has attained that supreme state of love commonly called the brotherhood of man; the rest only talk. He sees no distinctions; the mighty orean oi love has entered into him, and he sees not man ia mLiii, hat beholds his Beloved everywhere. Through every urs fo him his 7 50 7 50 Hari. The light iti the sun or the moon is all His manifestation. Wherferer there is beauty or sublimity, to him it is all His. Such Bhakias are still living; the world is never without them. Such, though bitten by a serpent, only say that a messenger came for them from their Beloved. Such men alone have the right to talk of universal brotherhood. They feel no resentment; their minds never re-act in the form of hatred, or of jealousy. The external, the sensuous, has vanished from them for over. How can they be angry, wher, through their love, they are always able to see the Reality behind the scenes?
The NaturalnesB of Bbakti-Yoga and Its Centre!
Secret.
“ Those who with constant attention always worship Tou, and those who worship the Undifferentiated, the Absolute, — of these who are the greater Yogim — Arjuna asked of Sri Krishna. The answer was: — “ Those who concentrating their mind on Me worship Me with eternal constancy, and are en- dowed with the highest faith — they are My best worshippers, they are the greatest Yogins* Those that worship the Absolute, the Indescribable, the Undifferentiated, the Omnipresent, the Unthinkable, the All-comprehen ling, the Immovable, and the Eternal, by controlling the play of their organs and having the conviction of sameness in regard4to all things, they also, being engaged in doing good to all beings, come to Me alone. But to those whose minds have been devoted to the unmanifested Ab- solute, the difficulty of the struggle along the way is much greater, for it is indeed with great difficulty that the path nf the unmanifested Absolute is trodden by any embodied being. Those who, having offered up all their work unto Me, with entire reliance in Me, meditate on Me and worship Me without any attachment to anything else — them I soon lift up well from thf ocean of death and ever-recurring birth, as their minci is wholly attached to Me-’* Jndna-Yoga and BhaJcti-Yoga are both rt ferred to here. Both may be said to have been defii.d in th 3 above passage. Jndna-Yoga is grand; it is high p' ilosoph}; and almost every human being thinks, curiously er ugh, thi t he can surely do every thing required of him by philo )phy; 1).t it is really very difficult to live truly the life of phi] opby. \ 0 are often apt to run into great dangers in trying tc- guide ( ir life by philosophy. This world may be said to K ivided 0- tween'persons of demoniacal nature, who think tht are-tal ng of the body to be the be-all and the end-all of r (euce, nd persons of godly nature who realise that the bo*l'. sim a means to an end, an instrument intended for 1 cultu of the soul. The devil can and indeed does quote • serif ’xjb for its own purposes; and thus the way of knowl- - app». lo offer justification to what the bad man doe** t** ^luch ifc offers inducements to what the good man tk*. ^ Thi& the great danger in Jndna-Yoga. But BJiakti-) is j •al sweet, and gentle; the Bhakta does not take ligh as the Jndna-Yogtnj and therefore he is not apr fvve ^alls. Until the bondages of the soul pass il u' curse be free, whatever may be the nature he religious man takes.
Le?
Here is a passage showing how, in the case u: oft 1 j/opts, the soul-binding chains of both merit iroken. “ The intense pleasure in meditai on 3k way the binding effects of her good let kteiise misery of soul in not attaining unto i i Wife all Ir sinful propensities; and then she bet qr ^qr| cKsninqir? < Vslif ♦ ^ri 52 tral secret is, therefore, to know that the various passions aod feelings and emotions in the human heart are not wrong in themselves; only they have to be carefully controlled and given a higher and higher direction, until they attain the very highest condition of excellence. The highest direction is that which takes us to God; every other direction is lower. We find that pleasure and pain are very common and oft-recuning feelings in our lives. When a man feels pain, because he has not got wealth or some such worldly thing, he is giving a wrong direc- tion to the feeling. Still pain has its uses. Let a man feel pain that be has not reached the Highest, that he has not reach- ed God, and that pain will be to his salvation. When you bo< come glad that you have got a handful of coins, it is a wrong direction given to the faculty of joy; it should be given a higher direction, it must be made to serve the Highest Ideal. Pleasure in that kind of ideal must surely be our highest joy. This same thing is true of all our other feelings. The Bhakia says that not one of them is wrong, he gets hold of them all and points them unfailingly towards God.
The Forms of LoTO-manifestation.
Here are some of the forms in which love manifests itself. First there is reverence. Why do people show reverence to temples and holy places P Because He is worshipped there, and His presence is associated with all such places. Why do people in every country pay reverence to teachers of religion? It is natural for the human heart to do so, because all such teachers preach the Lord. At bottom, reverence is a growth out of love; we can none of us revere him whom we do not love. Thea comes Prtti — pleasure in God, What an immense pleasure 53 men take in tbe objects of the senses! They go anywhere, mn through any danger, to get the thing which they love, the thing which their senses like. What is wanted of the Bhakta is this very kind of intense love which has, however, to be directed to God. Then there is the sweetest of pains, Viraha^ the intense misery due to the absence of the beloved. When a man feels intense misery, because he has not attained to God, has not known that which is the only thing worthy to be known, and becomes in consequence very dissatisfied and almost mad — then there is Tirana; and this state of the mind makes it feel disturbed in the presence of anything other than the beloved In earthly love we see how often this Virdha comes. Again, when men are really and intensely in love with women, or women with men, they feel a kind of natural annoy- ance in the presence of all those whom they do not love. Exactly the same state of impatience, in regard to things that are not loved, comes to the mind, when Pard-Bhakti holds sway over it; even to talk about things other than God be- comes distasteful then- “ Think of Him, think of Him alone, and give up all other vain words”— Those who talk of Him alone, the Bhakta finds to be friendly to him; while those who talk of anything else appear to him to be unfriendly. A still higher stage of love is reached when life itself is maintained for the sake of the one Ideal of Love» when life itself is considered beautiful and worth living only on account of that Love Without it, such a life would not remain even for a moment. Life is swoef because it tlinks of the BeIo7ed. Tadiyatd -- Hisncu) comes when a man becomes perfect acco«iin;.' to Jiliakh; when he has become blessed, when he has aWabi. d (o Ood.wben he has touched the feet of God» as it were, his whole nature is purified and completely changed. All his purposes in life then become fulfilled. Yet, many such Bhdktat lire on just to worship Him. That is the bliss, the only pleasure in life, which they will not give up. “ Oh king, such is the blessed quality of Hari that even those, who have become satisfied with everything, all the knots of whose hearts have been out asunder, even they love the Ijord for love’s sake” — the Lord ** whom all the gods worship, all the lovers of liberation, and all the knowers of the Brahman*' ^ ^ (^n. Tap. JTpa). Such is the power of love. When a man has forgotten himself altogether, and does not feel that anything belongs to him, then he acquires the state of Tadiyatd; everything is sacred to him, because it belongs to the Beloved. Even in regard to earthly love the lover thinks that everything belonging to his beloved is so sacred and so dear to him. He loves even a bit of the cloth belonging to the darling of his heart. In the same way, when a person loves the Lord, the whole universe becomes so dear to him, be* cause it is all His.
UniTersal Loto and How It Leads to Self-surrender.
How can we love the vyaahti^ the particular, without first loving the tanuuhti^ the universal P God is the samathtiy the generalised and the abstract universal whole; and the universe that we see is the vya$hHy the particularised thing. To Jove the whole universe is possible only by way of loving tbe $a‘niatJUi‘-“ihe aoiver8al->which is, as it were, the one unity in which are to be found millions and millions of smaller unities. The philosophers of India do not stop at the particulars; they cast a hnrried glance at the particulars, and immediately start to find th« generalised forms which will include all the parti culars. The search after the universal is the one search of Indian philosophy and religion. The Jndnin aims at the whole- ness of things, at that one absolute and generalised Being, knowing which, he knows every thing. The Bhakta wishes to realise that one generalised abstract Person, in loving Whom, he loves the whole universe. The Yogin wishes to have po8se8.sion of that one generalised form of power, by controlling which he controls his whole universe. The Indian mind, throughout its history, has been directed to this kind of singu- lar search after the universal in everything — in science, in psychology, in love, in philosophy. So the conclusion to which the Bhakta comes is that, if you go on merely loving one person after another, you may go on loving them.so for an infinite length of time without being in the least able to love the world as a whole. When, at last, the central idea is, however, arrived at, that the sum-total of all love is God, that the sum-total of the aspirations of all the souls in the universe, whether they be free, or bound, or struggling towards libe- ration, is God, then alone it becomes possible for any one to put forth universal love. God is the samaslili, and this visible universe is God differentiated and made manifest. If we love this sum-total, we love everything. Loving the World and doing it good will all come easily then; we have to obtain this power only by loving God first; otherwise it is r>o joke to do good to the world. “ E»e,.ytliing is His and He is my Lover; I love Him,” says the Bhakta. In this way every- thing becomes sacred to the Biiakta, because all things All are his children, His body. His manifestation. Ho v leh may we hurt any one? How i-Hen may we n.t love -..ir. o.? With the love of God will com ■, as a sore offccr. I f: o- - f every one in the universe. The nearer we approach to God, the more do we begin to see that all things are in Him. When the soul succeeds in appropriating tbe bliss of this supreme love, it also begins to see Him in everything. Our heart will thus become an eternal fountain of love. And when we reach even higher states of this love, all the little differ- ences between the things of the world are entirely lost; man i® seen no more as man, but only as God; the animal is seen no more as animal, but as God; even the tiger is no more a tiger, but a manifestation of God. Thus, in this intense state of hhaktiy worship is offered to every one, to every life, and to every beiog. €^3 ^^3 | qfb^f.
II “ Knowing that Hari, the Lord, is in every being, the wise have thus to manifest unswerving love towards all Jjeings.” As a result of this kind of intense all-ab- sorbing love, comes the feeling of perfect self-surrender, the conviction that nothing that happens is against us — Then the loving soul is able to say, if pain comes, “ Welcome pain.” If misery comes, it will say “ Welcome misery, you are also from the Beloved.” If a serpent comes, it will say “ Welcome serpent.” If death comes, such a Bhakta will wel- come it with a smile. “ Blessed am I that they all come to me; they are ail welcome.” The Bhakta in this state of per- fect resignation, arising out of intense love to God and to all that are His, ceases to distinguish between pleasure and pain in so far as they affect him. He does not know what it is to compUin of pain or misery; and this kind of uncomplaining resignation to the will of God, who is all love, is indeed a wor- thier acquisition than all tbe glory of grand and heroic perfor- mances.
57 57 To the vast majority of mankind, the body is everything; the body is all the universe to them; bodily enjoyment is their all in all. This demon of the worship of the body and of the things of the body has entered into us all. We may indulge in tall talk, and take very high flights, but we are like vultures all the same; our mind is directed to the piece of carrion down below. Why should our body be saved, say, from the tiger P Why may we not give it over to the tiger? Tlie tiger will thereby be pleased, and that is not altogether so very far from self-sacrifice and worship. Can you reach the realisation of such an idea in which all sense of self is completely lost? It is a very dizzy height on the pinnacle of the religion of love, and few in this world h we ever climbed up to it; but until a man reaches that L est point of ever-ready and ever-willing self-sacrifice he can, become a perfect Bhakta. We may all manage to maintain bodies more or less satisfactorily and for longer or shorter iuv wals of time. Nevertheless, our bodies have to go; there is no permanence about them. Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others. “ Wealth, and even life itself, the sage always holds ready for the service of others. In this world, there being one thing cer- tain, viz., death, it is far better that this body dies in a good cause than in a bad one.” We may drag our life on for fifty years or a hundred years; but after that, what is it that happens? Everything that is the result of combination tnust get dissolved and die There must and will come a time for it to be deoom- posed. Jesus and Buddha and Mahommarl are all; all the great prophets and teachers of the world ate do;id. “ In this evanescent world, where everything is i ailing to pieces, we have to make the highest use of what tiiue we have, says the Bhakfa; and really the highedt usf of life is to hold ji at 8 58 the service of all beings. It is the horrible body-idea that breeds all the selfishness in the world, just this one delusion that we are wholly the body we own, and that we must by all possible means try our very best to preserve and to please it. If you know that you are positively other than your body, you have then none to fight with or struggle against; you are dead to all ideas of selfishness. So the Bhakta declares that we have to hold ourselves as if we are altogether dead to all the things of the world; and that is indeed self-surrender. Let things come as they may. This is the meaning of “Thy will be done;” not going about fighting and straggling, and thinking all the while that God wills all our own weaknesses and worldly ambi- tions. It may be that good comes even out of our selfish strug- gles; that is, however God’s look out. The perfected Bhakta* s idea must be never to will and work for himself. “ Lord, they build high temples in Your name; they make large gifts in Your name; I am poor; I am nothing; so I take this body of mine and place it at Your feet. Do not give me up, 0 Lord.” Such is the prayer proceeding out of the depths of the Bhakta* $ heart* To him who has experienced it, this eternal sacrifice of the self unto the Beloved Lord is higher by far than all wealth and power, than even all soaring thoughts of renown and enjoy- ment. The peace of the Bhakta*8 calm resignation is a peace that passetb all understanding, and is of incomparable value. His Aprdtihdlya is a state of the mind in which it has no interests, and naturally knows nothing that is opposed to them. In this state of sublime resignation everything in the shape of attachment goes away completely, except that one all-absorbing love to Him in Whom all things live and move and have their being. This attachment of love to God is, indeed, one that does not bind the soul but effectively breaks all its bondages.
59 The Higher Knowledge and the Higher Love are one to the True Lover.
The Upanishads distinguish between a higher knowledge and a lower knowledge; and to the Bhahta there is really no difference between this higher knowledge and his higher love [Para^bhakti). The Mundaha Upamshad says: — ^? w t cmrq^r fjrexii i W W II “The knowers of the Brahman declare that there are two kinds of knowledge worthy to be known, namely, the Higher (Pard) and the Lower (Aparn) Of these the Lower (knowledge) consists of the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Sdmavedaf the Atharvaveda, the,^ikshd (or th e science dealing with pronunciation and accent), the Kalpa (or the sacrificial liturgy), Grammar, the Nirukta (or the science dealing with etymology and the meaning of words), Prosody, and Astronomy; and the Higher (knowledge) (is that by which that Unchangeable is known/’ The higher knowledge is thus clearly shown to be the knowledge of the Brahman; and the Bevi-Bhdgavata gives us the following definition of the higher love (Para^hhakti) As oil poured from one vessel to another falls in an unbroken line, so, when the mind in an unbroken stream thinks of the Lord, we have wliat is called Para-hhakti or supreme love.” This kiiui of iin disturbed and ever steady direction of the mind niul the hea to the Lord with an inseparable attachmeni i.n feed highest manifestation of man’s love to God. Al l t-i aer f of Bhakti are only preparatory for the attainm^ id oi this j).g form thereof, viz., the ParaMaktl which is a so knovn a5 love that comes after attachment [Tingomi i<i }. \V'l,en 60 60 supreme love once oomes into the heart of man, his mind will continuously think of God and remember nothing else. He will give no room in himself to thoughts other than those of God, and his soul will be unconquerably pure, and will alone break all the bonds of mind and matter and become serenely free. He alone can worship the Lord in his own heart; to him forms, symbols, books and doctrines are all unnecessary and are incapa- ble of proving serviceable in any way. It is not easy to love the Lord thus. Ordinarily human love is seen to flourish only in places where it is returned; where love is not returned for love, cold indifference is the natural result. There are, however, rare instances in which we may notice love exhibiting itself even where there is no return of love. We may compare this kind of love, for purposes of illustration, to the love of the moth for the fire; the insect loves the fire, falls into it and dies. It is indeed in the nature of this insect to love so. To love, because it is the nature of love to love, is undeniably the highest and the most unselfish mani- festation of love that may be seen in the world. Such love working itself out on the plane of spirituality necessarily leads to the attainment of Fara-bhakti.
The Triangle of Love.
We may represent love as a triangle, each of the angles of which corresponds to one of its inseparable characteristics. There can be no triangle without all its three angles; and there can be no true love without its three following charac- teristics. I’he first angle of our triangle of love is that love knows no bargaining. Wherever there is any seeking for something in return, there can be no real love; it becomes a mere matter of shop-keeping. As long as there is in us any idea of deriving this or that favour from God in return for our respect and allegiance to Him, so long there can be no true love growing in our hearts. Those who worship God because they wish Him to bestow favours on them are sure not to wor- ship Him if those favours are not forthcoming. The Bhakta loves the Lord because He is loveable; there is no other motive originating or dii*ecting this divine emotion of the true devotee. We have heard it said that a great king once went into a forest and there met a sage. He talked with the sage a little and was very much pleased with his purity and wisdom. The king then wanted the sage to oblige him by receiving a present from him. The sage refused to do so, saying, “ The fruits of the forest are enough food for me; the pure streams of water flowing down from the mountains give enough of drink for me; the barks of the trees supply me with enough of covering; and the caves of the mountains forui my home. Why should t take any present from you or from any body?” The king said, “ Just to benefit me, sir, please take something from my hands and please go with me to the city and to my palace. After much persuasion, the sage at last consented to do as the king desired, and went with him to his palace. Before offering the gift to the sage the king repeated his prayers, saying, “ Lord, give me more children; Lord, give me more wealth; Lord, give me more territory; Lord, keep my body in better health and so on. Before the king finished saying his prayer the sage iiad got up and walked away from the room quietly. At seeing this the king became perplexed and began to follow him, crying aloud, “Sir, you aiv going away, you have not taken my presents.” The turned