Analects of Swami Sivananda

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(ix) God Is Your Own

 

127. True love is self-effacing and demands no consideration.

128. God is nearer to you than anything else. Know the nearness of God

to you.

129. God cares for you more than anybody else in the world. If you

take one step towards Him, He takes hundred steps towards you.

130. Talk with God. Walk with God, Sleep with God. East with God.

Drink with God.

131. Through removal of desires, Bhakti is generated.

132. Through growth of devotion, relish for hearing the Name and glory

of God, and Kirtan, etc., rows.

133. From relish grows intense attachment to God.

134. From attachment sprouts the love for God. When love intensifies,

it is called Prema (Deep Love).

135. Nishtha leads to Bhakti. Mature Bhakti becomes Bhava. Intensified

Bhava becomes Mahabhava. Prema is the highest Bhakti or culmination of

a devotee.

136. The following are the marks of a devotee in whom the seed of

divine love has generated -- forbearance (not to lose temper under the

greatest provocation), dispassion, humility, unbroken happiness in

chanting the Divine Name.

137. Just as a person who eats feels satisfied, gets nourishment and

experiences relief from hunger, even so, devotion realisation of the

Supreme, and indifference to worldly things, these three are always

found together in the devotee.

138. The Kali age is full of many evils; but it has one great virtue

that during this age one can free himself from all bonds and realise

God by mere repetition of the Name of the Lord.

139. Lord's Name is thy armour and thy strength.

140. Teach the unity and love of God to all mankind.

141. Love for all beings erases enmity and hostility from the mind.

142. Love of God is inborn in a man by virtue of his evolution and

previous spiritual Samskaras.

143. For a true lover of God, all places should be like heaven.