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God is Love, Live in
Love In one of the His Divine
discourses, Bhagavan declared that He is the richest person in the
world, nay,
in the universe itself, richer than Kubera, the Lord of wealth.
Swami further clarified that His
richness does not consist of money or materials; the most valuable
asset of Baba is Love. He is the
embodiment of Love itself.
The whole world is an expanse of love enveloping all the living
beings, one-way or the other. Even the
most dry hearted human being or for that sake even any wild animal
exhibit sparks of love in their own
way. Such love may be of selfish nature with attachment or bondage
to their kith and kin or to
outside people who are admired or revered. It is only the
consistent spiritual sadhana which slowly and
steadily leads us up to a level in which we are able to transcend
the narrow frontiers of selfish love
into the vast expanse of divine love enveloping the whole of
humanity. 'Premaswarupullara' addresses
Swami very often, while delivering Divine discourses to the
gathering. Because, this is the real nature
of mankind.
Swarm's advent of this present Avatar hood is to regenerate the
mankind, with the human values informing
both our view and way of life. As all of us know, what these
values are viz.,, Sathya, Dharma, Shanthi,
Prema and Ahimsa. If only the prime value of universal Prema is
fostered and developed in our life, it
will be very easy and almost automatic to develop the other values.
How do we go about it ? According
to Bhagavan it is very simple; it only requires a degree of
earnestness in our efforts.
Man is by very nature love personified. But the self and the
desires of the self have come to grip our
thoughts and actions in our lives, past and present. Our efforts,
therefore, should be, to purify our
chitha by removing the accumulated dirt slowly so that the ever
present quality of love surfac es in
all our thoughts and deeds. Swami is, in fact, making us aware of
the inherent LOVE in us by subtle
methods of spiritual sadhanas inculcating in us.
To develop universal love, we have to first realize that the
universe is only a manifestation of
Divinity, and that Divinity is inherent in all living beings, what
Swami call as Resident Divinity
We should extend our love to every living beings as a
manifestation of the same divinity, and in the
same way, as we love God Swami also invariably emphasizes the need
to have expansion of love and not
contraction of love which means that love should be selfless and
with not selfish motive.
We love our family members, because they happen to be our wife/husband,
son, daughter, father or mother.
The love extended to all these relatives is only selfish in
nature. Our love is conditional based on our
relationships. We even find variations in the intensity of love
towards different relatives, depending
upon the degree of attachment with each one of them. But the
divine love is not conditional It is
selfless.
Our love to God should also be selfless. "Love is selflessness and
self is lovelessness. Love is a
mutual feeling. Love generates Love. When you love somebody it is
always reciprocated. Even a person of
very hard nature responds to love. I remember a story narrated by
a senior devotee in Madras, during
one of his discourses,. in a study circle meeting.
It was said that during period of His boyhood, Sri Krishna was
undergoing Gurukula Vaasam (living in the
hermitage of the Guru) with Guru Sandeepini Maharshi along with
Balarama and Sudhama. In the
performance of the chores all the three used to go to the forest
to fetch firewood for the Ashram. One
day it was too late in the night, they were still in the forest
and they had to camp there. They
decided to take turns so that one could be awake, while the other
two could sleep under the tree. First
it was the turn of Sudhama to keep vigil. While doing so, he
noticed that a gang of tribal men were
passing by, closely where they were resting. Sudhama thought that
they might cause harm to them and
tried to scare them away, by angry gestures. The tribal folk did
not mean any harm to Krishna and
company. And yet when Sudhama tried to threaten them by gestures,
they also reacted likewise. Luckily,
without much ado they moved away.
Next, it was the turn of Balarama, to take over from Sudhama. He
also noticed the tribal folks moving
about in the area. Balarama too tired to scare them away by angry
gestures to which they responded
angrily. Balarama did not leave them at that. He gestured that he
would attack them if they did not
move away from that place. The tribal folk responded in the same
manner and measure. They got nearer to
Balarama and beat him brutally and then moved away. Balarama took
it quietly and retired for the night
after his time was over.
Last it was for Sri Krishna to take over. The other two could not
forget their respective encounters and
were not able to sleep. To their horror, they found that the
tribal people were once again passing
through the place. They were very eager to watch how Krishna was
going to tackle them. On seeing the
tribal folk, Krishna waved His hands towards them smilingly
conveying His good wishes. They also
responded smilingly. Krishna then, by His gestures, invited them
to come nearer. They came nearer and
were all in smiles. They hugged each other reflecting warmth and
friendship. After a while, they went
their way.
The devotee, in his talk, was further trying to explain to us, how
our own feelings get reflected in
others. When you show hatred to any one, the other party also
responds with hatred. When you show
love, they also extend their love to you. Love is reciprocated by
love Swami often points out the
simple analogy of a person looking at the mirror. If the person
puts on an angry face, the reflection
is also the same. If, one smiles, the reflection also smiles !
Thirty thousand feet above the earth, when an aircraft was being
high jacked, the devotee heard the
command of Swami, to "love the highjacker". How could you love a
'high jacker', when he was threatening
to blow up the plane killing every body on board. And yet this was
the command. The lady devotee, on
hearing the message, mentally extended her love towards them. It
was reported that they, the
'highjackers' subsequently, lost their nerves to live through the
tension drama and ultimately
surrendered to the authorities.
It is not enough if you say that you love somebody. In case of
pure love, we follow it up with positive
action. When we love our child, we try to express our love by
purchasing and presenting something for
the child to bring joy. Any sincere feeling of love manifests
itself into an action.
When we love God, God's love also manifests. In fact, God is ever
loving and at times we are not able
to feel and enjoy that divine love because of certain inherent
blocks in our feelings of love. The
magnetic power in iron automatically attracts the ordinary iron.
But in case the ordinary iron is
densely covered by rust and other impurities, the magnet can not
attract it. The rust in our feelings
has to be removed and our chitha purified to be able to absorb the
abundant love from God. And we
too should love God unconditionally.
When once we develop love towards someone, we start listening to
him or her with interest and act in
the best way possible to please the party, whom we love. When we
say we love God, it implies and
involves total commitment to the Divine Commands and direction. We
can then claim that we love God,
unconditionally.
What Is it that Swami is instructing us? "Start the day with Love
spend the day with Love and End the
day, with Love." We hear the sayings of Swami several times, but
we fail to put it in practice in our
daily life ?Start the day with love.... But what do we do? A
slight delay in getting our morning
coffee, or in sighting the newspaper boy, makes us agitated. We
have sharp remarks in reserve, for the
maidservant if she comes late or slips up, in work. In our
conversations we exhibit irritation,
because it has been our way of life all along. We seem to have
lost the faculty of tolerance and
softness in speech. Only when we are free of mental agitation, we
can speak softly and sweetly.
Swami has been teaching to mend our habits and has shown us the
ways too. Early morning, if we sit for
meditation followed by Japa and pooja, our mind becomes calm and
gets itself conditioned to accept the
events as they come and to develop tolerance, which in turns
removes anger and hatred. Love resumes its
place in our mind. This is what Swami wants from us, under item No
I of 9 point Code of Conduct which
has been prescribed for all the devotees.
As we go out into the world during the day we come into contact
with various personalities. Some of
them, you may like and many others you may not like. We react
differently to different people. You feel
happy to see and talk to the one whom you like. You breed a sense
of aversion to those whom you do not
like. It is very difficult to condition the mind. Yet, we have to
try and attempt to foster and
develop a proper balanced attitude and behavior towards every one.
Constant remembrance of Swami, in
such situation, to some extent direct us to stick to proper
behavior. Swami teaches us to extend
mentally our love towards such persons. Our smiling face would
elicit the same smile from the other
party too.
However at times, when we are engaged in conversation with someone,
the subject matter quite often turns
to those on whom we may have reservations. We pass comments and
criticize them. Swami warns us to be
cautious and careful about this habit and behavior. Remember
Swami's dictum in the 9-Point Code of
Conduct, which says "Don't talk ill of others, especially in their
absence".
As the day closes in, we prepare ourselves to retire for the day.
While doing so, we should spend a
while in self-retrospection. What are all the mistakes we have
done during the day? Have we strayed away
from the path of Love any time during the day? We should
contemplate, and try to improve our performance
the next day. It should be a continuous process. This is the
sadhana of self-discipline.
As long as hatred and anger prevails in our mind, it is very
difficult to cultivate love in our hearts.
Anger and hatred have to be eliminated gradually by constant
practice and tolerance and love assumes
its place automatically.
The most tolerant person may encounter a very difficult man who
may even inflict mental or physical pain
on us. Then what are we to do? Here too, Swami says that we should
not act in the manner of 'tit for
tat'. For all the pain inflicted, it is our duty to pray for
forgiveness and for his welfare in spite
of all that he has done to you. This pleases Swami very much.
Swami wants us to live happily for ever, with overwhelming love in
our heart, for God is Love !
(From the book "Hrudaya Nivasi".
To read the other chapters in this book, click on
http://www.bombaysrinivasan.com/hrudayanivasi.htm)
- Bombay Srinivasan
Source:
http://www.geocities.com/saicenter_us/snl/snl_080802.htm
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