Sri Yukteswar Giri

Surrender - Part 6

LOVE OF GOD

• Realization of God becomes possible only when the feeling for God becomes most intense. If it is mild or middling, it will not be a success.

• Now, what is meant by ‘intense feeling for God’? What does it mean? Have we, at any time, felt an intense feeling for God?

• The word tivra, or intense, has a special meaning. It means almost the same thing that the word ananya signifies in the Bhagavad gita. “ Ananyāś cintayanto māṁ ye janāḥ paryupāsate” (Gita 9.22), says the Bhagavadgita.

• Ananya means one who is not devoted to any other. This is said to be the most purified form of divine devotion.

• Devotion is divine love, and love becomes intense when it has only one object before it. If it has two objects, the love cannot be called intense.

• Has our feeling only one object before it, or has it more than one object?

• If it has two objects or three objects, then the love or feeling is mild. If it has hundreds or thousands of objects, it is very poor indeed; it cannot get even a pass mark.

• But if it has only one object, it is said to be intense.

• Mild love for God can be equated with a stream of tiny, thin flow of water, scattered and narrow, flowing with less vigour, less current and less intensity, whereas, intense love for God can be understood as if all the thinner, force less flow of water have got together, gathered strength flowing with greater current, greater intensity, rushing towards their goal!

• Evolving further in his devotion for God, the devotee, having his eyes (focus) only on God, as though, has brought the God parallel to him and the God has come very near to him and in fact touched him. The only one object has also now become parallel to the devotee and has become so near to the devotee that the thought/the experience of the object – God, has become very subtle by now.

This stage is LOVE OF GOD, in 2 ways. It is the devotee’s Love of his chosen God on one hand and also the starting of reciprocation by God in response to devotee’s love and in this way, it is also LOVE OF GOD towards His bhakta!!

The next post on LOVE IS GOD would leave us all with a different dimension.

Love.