Vivekananda Mailing List-12/10/03

[Guest guest]

Then comes Priti — pleasure in God. What an immense pleasure men take

in the objects of the senses. They go anywhere, run through any danger,

to get the thing which they love, the thing which their senses like.

What is wanted of the Bhakta is this very kind of intense love which

has, however, to be directed to God. Then there is the sweetest of

pains, Viraha, the intense misery due to the absence of the beloved.

When a man feels intense misery because he has not attained to God, has

not known that which is the only thing worthy to be known, and becomes

in consequence very dissatisfied and almost mad — then there is Viraha;

and this state of the mind makes him feel disturbed in the presence of

anything other than the beloved (Ekarativichikitsâ).