Swami Vivekananda tells what is unselfish love

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THE FIRST STEPS

Volume 4, Addresses on Bhakti-Yoga

 

What can be a higher end than God? God Himself is the highest goal of man;

see Him, enjoy Him. We can never conceive anything higher, because God is

perfection. We cannot conceive of any higher enjoyment than that of love,

but this word love has different meanings. It does not mean the ordinary

selfish love of the world; it is blasphemy to call that love. The love for

our children and our wives is mere animal love; that love which is perfectly

unselfish is the only love, and that is of God. It is a very difficult thing

to attain to.

 

We are passing through all these different loves — love of children, father,

mother, and so forth. We slowly exercise the faculty of love; but in the

majority of cases we never learn anything from it, we become bound to one

step, to one person. In some cases men come out of this bondage. Men are

ever running after wives and wealth and fame in this world; sometimes they

are hit very hard on the head, and they find out what this world really is.

 

No one in this world can really love anything but God. Man finds out that

human love is all hollow. Men cannot love though they talk of it. The wife

says she loves her husband and kisses him; but as soon as he dies, the first

thing she thinks about is the bank account, and what she shall do the next

day. The husband loves the wife; but when she becomes sick and loses her

beauty, or becomes haggard, or makes a mistake, he ceases to care for her.

All the love of the world is hypocrisy and hollowness.

 

We say that a wife loves her husband. She thinks that her whole soul is

absorbed in him: a baby comes and half of it goes out to the baby, or more. She

herself will feel that the same love of husband does not exist now. So with

the father. We always find that when more intense objects of love come to

us, the previous love slowly vanishes. Children at school think that some of

their schoolfellows are the dearest beings that they have in life, or their

fathers or mothers are so; then comes the husband or wife, and immediately

the old feeling disappears, and the new love becomes uppermost.

 

The world presents to us manifold stages of love. We have first to clear the

ground. Upon our view of life the whole theory of love will rest. To think

that this world is the aim and end of life is brutal and degenerating. Any

man who starts in life with that idea degenerates himself He will never rise

higher, he will never catch this glimpse from behind, he will always be a

slave to the senses. He will struggle for the dollar that will get him a few

cakes to eat. Better die than live that life. Slaves of this world, slaves

of the senses, let us rouse ourselves; there is something higher than this

sense-life. Do you think that man, the Infinite Spirit was born to be a

slave to his eyes, his nose, and his ears? There is an Infinite, Omniscient

Spirit behind that can do everything, break every bond; and that Spirit we

are, and we get that power through love.

 

What is the use of writing a book either to prove or disprove God? What does

it matter to most people whether there is a God or not ?The majority of men

work just like a machine with no thought of God and feeling no need of Him.

Then one day comes Death and says, " Come. " The man says, " Wait a little, I

want a little more time. I want to see my son grow a little bigger. " But

Death says, " Come at once. " So it goes on. So goes poor John. What shall we

say to poor John? He never found anything in which God was the highest;

perhaps he was a pig in the past, and he is much better as a man. But there

are some who get a little awakening.

 

There is a form of religion which is fashionable. My friend has much

furniture in her parlour; it is the fashion to have a Japanese vase, so she

must have one even if it costs a thousand dollars. In the same way she will

have a little religion and join a church. Bhakti is not for such. That is

not want. Want is that without which we cannot live. We want breath, we want

food, we want clothes; without them we cannot live. When a man loves a woman

in this world, there are times when he feels that without her he cannot

live, although that is a mistake.

 

When a husband dies, the wife thinks she cannot live without him; but she

lives all the same. This is the secret of necessity: it is that without

which we cannot live; either it must come to us or we die. When the time

comes that we feel the same about God, or in other words, we want something

beyond this world, something above all material forces, then we may become

Bhaktas. What are our little lives when for a moment the cloud passes away,

and we get one glimpse from beyond, and for that moment all these lower

desires seem like a drop in the ocean? Then the soul grows, and feels the

want of God, and must have Him.

 

It is a wellknown psychological phenomenon. As the loving wife thinks of her

departed husband, with the same love we must desire the Lord, and then we

will find God, and all books and the various sciences would not be able to

teach us anything. By reading books we become parrots; no one becomes

learned by reading books. If a man reads but one word of love, he indeed

becomes learned. So we want first to get that desire.

 

There is a proverb in our language — If I want to be a hunter, I'll hunt the

rhinoceros; if I want to be a robber, I'll rob the king's treasury. What is

the use of robbing beggars or hunting ants? So if you want to love, love

God. Who cares for these things of the world?This world is utterly false;

all the great teachers of the world found that out; there is no way out of

it but through God. He is the goal of our life; all ideas that the world is

the goal of life are pernicious.

 

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Om namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Prashant Jalasutram