Guru Bhakti: A Lesson in Love

II

Now we revert to our original question: Whom should one love in the world? If we look critically, we find that love is an innate quality in man and everyone is devoted to one thing or another: may be service to ones family, community, nation or religion, or it may be to the development of some art or craft or any other such thing. And yet there are some who love themselves above all else and self-indulgence is with them the be-all and the end-all of life.

Once there was in our country a ruler named Mohammad Shah Rangila. He was given over to bouts of drinking. When Delhi was in the throes of a wholesale massacre, the people petitioned the king to intervene. The king was so dusty drinking that he had neither time or the heart to attend to this appeal for mercy and exclaimed:

Let these papers of no importance be drowned in the wine.

Similarly, it is said of Nero, a Roman emperor, that he fiddled while Rome was burning. There is no dearth of such people in the world. He who worships his family is far better than the one who worships himself and lives for self-gratification only. So also he who loves and serves his society, religion or country is still better progressively. But all these varying types of love and devotions are more or less characterised by a sense of ego and smack of pride, as such more often than not the result is a clash between family and family, class and class or country and country.

We have had what are euphemistically called crusades or holy wars fought in the blessed name of religions, but born out of misguided religious zeal and, to speak plainly, out of sheer religious ignorance, bigotry and intolerance. But on the contrary, the Love of God far transcends all these petty adoration as it consists in total self-abnegation and selfless sacrifice because of the knowledge that God resides in all heart and he is the substratum of the entire creation. God is an unchangeable permanence and everlasting. But we have not yet seen him, and without seeing Him how can we love Him and inculcate devotion for Him? So we have of necessity, to bestow our loving devotion on the Human Pole where the Power of God is manifested.

Guru Amar Das Ji says:

If you want to worship God, worship the Satguru, who is God Personified or the Word made flesh.

He then grants contact with the Holy Naam and helps us to crossing over into the beyond. The worship of Satguru is really the worship of God. The easiest way of developing the worship of God is to develop Gurubhakti – Love of Master.

In Gurbani we have:

The loving devotion to the Master is above everything also and I love His feet with all my strength.

Now what is Bhakti – loving devotion? It is the Love of God. God is Love and Love is God. The way back to God is also through Love. Love knows naught but service and sacrifices. What is it that distinguishes Love? He who loves, desires to sacrifice all and does not look for any reward in return.

God Himself speaks thus in the Gurbani:

If you desire to join Me in the game of Love, come unto Me with your head on your palm as an offering. If you want to treat the Path of Love, never for a moment hesitate to offer your life.

This is the type of sacrifices that Love demands and in doing so never think that you have done any favour. You should rather feel grateful that you have won Love so easily.

Amir Khusro was a Great Devotee of his Master. One day he exclaimed with delight that he had received happy tidings from his beloved. What is this? The people asked. My beloved has ordered that I be decapitated tomorrow in the open market, he said. Has your beloved given you any assurance to see you and cast His loving glance on you?, enquired the people. None whatsoever, was the reply.

This is what Love demands from the lover and complete submission to the will of the beloved without any rhyme or reason. Love is just a one-way traffic so far as the lover is concerned. It knows no bargaining. All it connotes is implicit obedience. 

Not my will, but Thine,

cries the True Lover.

A Persian poet has defined Love thus:

What is Love? It is to be a bondsman of the beloved. And to go wandering and offering one’s heart.

Love then means to dedicate yourself – body and soul – to someone and to wander the earth over in His search.

A Real Devotee dedicates his very life to the service of his Master and dissolves His will in that of his. It is a life of complete surrender with no mental reservations.

Sarmad, a Great Gurubhakta, said:

I have given away my heart, my life and my very soul; having passed on all my burdens I know no greater gain than this.

All the ills of the world originate with mental activity. We are stuck fast in the heart focus from where the rays of the mind starts and passing from the sense organs envelop the sense objects; and we get attached to the world around us. How little do we realise the great motor power of the soul behind, enlivening the mind and the intellect. If we could divest ourselves of these adjuncts and dedicate our very life to the service of a Godman, we would at once become a feed soul ready to go God ward. Can there be any greater gain than to escape from all the trials and turmoil’s of the earthly life? This is what we gain by practising the presence of the personified God in our midst. He is a living embodiment of the God-into-expression-Power and helps us to reveal and develop it the same way as He has done.