Hari OM

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SIVANANDA DAILY READING FOR 8 MAY

UNSELFISH LOVE

 

The innate nature of all beings is to love an external

object - we cannot but cherish something in the heart.

For, truly, the absolute alone is existent. Man is

only an ego, apparently separated from it.

 

Love for external things is an unconscious internal

urge to become unified with everything. For, in

reality, man is everything, the absolute itself. Love

is the forerunner of experience. Love is the craving

and experience is the fulfilment of it. None can live

without love for something. "The creator pierced the

senses with outward activity", and that rule applies

to one and all. The mind is the main sense of

perception, for it is only the mind that perceives

through the various channels of the senses. The senses

do not work when the mind does not.

 

Emotions are generally considered as a hindrance in

perfect realisation, but only certain emotions are of

a binding nature. Certain others will liberate the

jiva (soul) from bondage. The conception of God does

not rouse in man any binding emotion - it is pure

emotion, without carnality or attachment. Love for God

rouses

the purest emotions; this is the significance of

divine emotion in bhakti.

 

Love for God can never be the type of love cherished

towards wife, children and property. There is much

difference. How then does love give us liberation from

samsara (worldliness)? Man is an egoistic entity. Ego

is his only enemy. He feels he is entirely different

from other things in the world. He is convinced that

he is sharply marked off from the rest of the

universe, by his physical body. He is sure he is only

the body, even though he may try to deny this. When he

says 'I' he always points to his chest and not to

yonder tree.

 

"I am doing nothing. You are doing it through me. You

are the doer. You are the enjoyer. I am nothing. Thy

will be done." This is the highest type of love, this

is divine love. Now the ego cannot assert itself for

God alone is everywhere. Now the mind cannot modify

itself into vrttis (or sense objects ) for to him

there is no object except God. Who is there left to be

loved or hated?

 

"I feel extreme pangs of separation,

I will perish unless I behold thee.

Let me see thy face even for a minute.

Ah, who will take me to my beloved?

Who will show me his path?

Who will console my heart now?

Sivananda says: O Hari! Give me the cup

of thy divine love and quench my thirst now."

 

 

 

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