BHAKTI OR DEVOTION

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Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:07 pm (PST)

 

BHAKTI OR DEVOTION - Swami Vivekananda

 

The third is a still higher test. Love is always the highest ideal.

When one has passed through the first two stages, when one has thrown

off all shopkeeping, and casts off all fear, one then begins to

realise that love is always the highest ideal. How many times in this

world we see a beautiful woman loving an ugly man? How many times we

see a handsome man loving an ugly woman! What is the attraction?

Lookers-on only see the ugly man or the ugly woman, but not so the

lover; to the lover the beloved is the most beautiful being that ever

existed. How is it? The woman who loves the ugly man takes, as it

were, the ideal of beauty which is in her own mind, and projects it

on the ugly man; and what she worships and loves is not the ugly man,

but her own ideal. That man is, as it were, only the suggestion, and

upon that suggestion she throws her own ideal, and covers it; and it

becomes her object of worship. Now, this applies in every case where

we love. Many of us have very ordinary looking brothers or sisters;

yet the very idea of their being brothers or sisters makes them

beautiful to us.

 

The philosophy in the background is that each one projects his own

ideal and worships that. This external world is only the world of

suggestion. All that we see, we project out of our own minds. A grain

of sand gets washed into the shell of an oyster and irritates it. The

irritation produces a secretion in the oyster, which covers the grain

of sand and the beautiful pearl is the result. Similarly, external

things furnish us with suggestions, over which we project our own

ideals and make our objects. The wicked see this world as a perfect

hell, and the good as a perfect heaven. Lovers see this world as full

of love, and haters as full of hatred; fighters see nothing but

strife, and the peaceful nothing but peace. The perfect man sees

nothing but God. So we always worship our highest ideal, and when we

have reached the point, when we love the ideal as the ideal, all

arguments and doubts vanish for ever. Who cares whether God can be

demonstrated or not? The ideal can never go, because it is a part of

my own nature. I shall only question the ideal when I question my own

existence, and as I cannot question the one, I cannot question the

other. Who cares whether God can be almighty and all-merciful at the

same time or not? Who cares whether He is the rewarder of mankind,

whether He looks at us with the eyes of a tyrant or with the eyes of

a beneficent monarch?

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page : 49 ]

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of

the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around

yourself.. Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful

butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.

- Swami Vivekananda