BHAKTI OR DEVOTION

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Posted by: " Uttishthata " uttishthata

Sun Jul 8, 2007 8:04 pm (PST)

 

BHAKTI OR DEVOTION - Swami Vivekananda

 

That is the madness of love which finds expression in these songs.

The highest, most expressive, strongest, and most attractive human

love is that between man and woman, and, therefore, that language was

used in expressing the deepest devotion. The madness of this human

love was the faintest echo of the mad love of the saints. The true

lovers of God want to become mad, inebriated with the love of God, to

become " God-intoxicated men. " They want to drink of the cup of love

which has been prepared by the saints and sages of every religion,

who have poured their heart's blood into it, and in which have been

concentrated all the hopes of those who have loved God without

seeking reward, who wanted love for itself only. The reward of love

is love, and what a reward it is! It is the only thing that takes off

all sorrows, the only cup, by the drinking of which this disease of

the world vanishes. Man becomes divinely mad and forgets that he is

man.

 

Lastly, we find that all these various systems, in the end, converge

to that one point, that perfect union. We always begin as dualists.

God is a separate Being, and I am a separate being. Love comes

between, and man begins to approach God, and God, as it were, begins

to approach man. Man takes up all the various relationships of life,

as father, mother, friend, or lover; and the last point is reached

when he becomes one with the object of worship. " I am you, and you

are I; and worshipping you, I worship myself; and in worshipping

myself, I worship you. " There we find the highest culmination of that

with which man begins. At the beginning it was love for the self, but

the claims of the little self made love selfish; at the end came the

full blaze of light, when that self had become the Infinite. That God

who at first was a Being somewhere, became resolved, as it were, into

Infinite Love. Man himself was also transformed. He was approaching

God, he was throwing off the vain desires, of which he was full

before. With desires vanished selfishness, and, at the apex, he found

that Love, Lover, and Beloved were One.

 

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 2 [ Page : 52 ] The

End.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:

The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom

of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King.

While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us

come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have

God.

- Swami Vivekananda