Guru Bhakti: A Lesson in Love

VII

Love neither grows in the field nor is sold in the market, even the high and the mighty who aspire for Love have to pay for it with their head.

Love is the zest of life for we live by the Love of the Lord.

Guru Amar Das has said:

Accursed is the man whose heart is bereft of Love.

Love is the Light of Life in which we live. What does it avail to have a human birth if we know not what Love is and make the most of it? We must taste the blessings of Love and be really blessed. That is the whole purpose of human existence. But what do we do? All the time we are busily engaged in doing things on the plane of duality and are lost not only to God but also to our own True Self, forgetful of our essentially Divine Nature. Is there no remedy then? The reply is: Yes, there is a remedy:

The Love for a Godman inspires Love for God.

If you love One Who is Truth Personified, He will surely pass on His infection to you. This is the way to be inspired with the Love of the Divine. Live in the divinely awakened and you will live in the Divinity. Hence the supreme need for cultivating Love, the Life-Principle, that will abide with you for ever and ever.

Without Love the mercurial nature of man finds no rest.

Tossed in the seas of senseless pleasures, we have lost our mooring and are drifting rudderless along the stream of time. Until we find some safe anchorage, a haven of peace, we are ever a prey to chance winds and storms of life as it is. Every day we see strife and struggle everywhere, clashes in households, men set against men, tribe against tribe, and country against country. Why all this confusion? Because of the lack of loving understanding, of loving toleration for the views of others. In spite of our man made artificial barriers – national, linguistic, religious and political – are we not members of one great family of man? So long as we do not rise above these petty, racial and clannish prides and prejudices, which have bogged and clouded our vision, we cannot gain access to the bright sunshine of loving unity and have peace within and without. And this will be possible only when we rest our soul in the causeless cause.

St Augustine tells us:

Thou hast created my soul, oh God, after Thee and it is restless until it rests in Thee.

During my second world tour I had an opportunity of meeting national, religious and political leaders in various countries and I placed before them the principle of live and let others live, and it had a chastening effect on them. I told them that God had put under their care and protection millions of His children and if they could not, for one reason or another, take proper and adequate interest in them, they should pass over a part of their burden to others. This line of thought appealed to them and at one or two places where relations had almost reached the breaking point, better counsels prevailed by Divine Grace.

Love works as a great healing balm in the affairs of the world. In our households if we could make use of a sweet tongue we would have paradise on earth. A sword-cut may get well in a few days but the wound caused by a sharp tongue festers all the while like a running sore. The more one ruminates on the bitter words, the more do they rankle in the mind.

The great epic of Mahabharatha war was the outcome of just a few bitter words uttered inadvertently by Draupadi. When the Kauros visited the queen’s palace, at one place the glittering surface of the courtyard looked like ripples of water. Naturally, they pulled up their garments. Watching them, Draupadi facetiously remarked that the children of a blind Father could not but see things blindly. The result was a great homicidal war in which the most ancient culture and civilisation of India came virtually to an end.

This weakness for fault finding and sarcasm has unfortunately become a common feature of the present day society. We are keenly alive to a mote in others eyes, but cannot see a beam in our own eyes. We try to be clever in making allusions and speaking in oblique terms. This in fact is a very nasty habit for it deeply hurts others feelings.

I would suggest you all – old and new initiates – to maintain introspection diaries and at the close of each day make a note of all your failings during the day from the path of rectitude, viz. truthfulness, purity, straight-forwardness, non-injury, selfless service and the like. In this way you will know your faults easily and try to eradicate them one by one. It will also enable you unwittingly to cultivate corresponding virtues on all levels – in thought, word and deed. Ahimsa parma dharma or non-injury is the highest of all virtues. If you have Love in your heart for all, you will not then try to deceive any person, for in doing so, you will in the first instance be deceiving yourself. Far from this you will try to be of service to others. Service you know, comes before self and becomes sanctified by being selfless. All these are aids in purifying the mind and the more the mind gets purified, the more it is fitted to receive the Light of Truth and the more you will be able to radiate It in your acts and deeds. I have always insisted on keeping such a diary.