Love
as one’s own home.”
I have experienced
even in my insignificant life
that good motives, sincerity and infinite love can conquer the world.
One single soul possessed of these virtues
can destroy the dark designs
of millions of hypocrites and brutes.
It is unswerving love and perfect unselfishness that conquer everything.
We Vedantists, in every difficulty,
ought to ask the subjective questions,
“Why do I see that?”
“Why can I not conquer this with love?”
Love sees no distinction
between man and man,
between Aryan and a Mlechchha,
between a Brahmin and a Pariah,
not even between a man and a woman.
Love makes the whole universe
as one’s own home.
It is not in the brain but in the heart
that the Atman,
possessed of knowledge, power and activity,
has its seat.
The chief nerve-center near the heart,
called the sympathetic ganglia,
is where the Atman has Its citadel.
The more heart
you will be able to manifest,
the greater will be
the victory you achieve.
It is only a few that understand
the language of the brain,
but everyone,
from the Creator down to a clump of grass understands the language of the heart.
It is the heart,
the heart that conquers,
not the brain.
Books and learning, yoga and meditation
and illumination
— all are but dust compared with love.
It is love that gives you the supernatural powers, love that gives you bhakti,
love that gives illumination,
and love again that leads to emancipation.
This indeed is worship,
worship of the Lord in the human tabernacle, and “not this which people worship here.”
When you serve an embodied soul
with the idea that he is a jiva,
it is daya, compassion, and not prema, love;
but when you serve him with the idea
that he is the Self, that is prema.
That the Atman
is the one objective of love
is known
from shruti, smriti, and anubhava.
Bhagavan Chaitanya was right
when He said:
“Love to God, compassion to the jiva.”
This conclusion of the Bhagavan,
intimating differentiation
between Jiva and Ishvara was right,
as He was a dualist.
But for us, Advaitans,
this notion of jiva
as distinct from God
is the cause of bondage.
Our principle should be, therefore,
love and not compassion.
The application of the word compassion
even to jiva
seems to me to be rash and vain.
For us, it is not to pity,
but to serve.
Ours is not the feeling of compassion
but of love,
and the feeling of Self in all.
I bless the day I was born.
I have had so much
of kindness and love here,
and that Love that brought me into being
has guarded all of my actions, good or bad.
For what am I,
what was I ever,
but a tool in His hands?
— for whose service I have given up everything, my beloved ones, my joys, my life.
He is my playful darling,
I am His playfellow.
There is neither rhyme nor reason
in the Universe.
What reason binds Him?
He the playful one
is playing these tears and laughter
over all parts of the play!
Great fun, great fun!
All expansion is life,
all contraction is death.
All love is expansion,
all selfishness is contraction.
Love is therefore
the only law of life.
He who loves lives,
he who is selfish is dying.
Therefore, love for love’s sake,
because it is the only law of life,
just as you breathe to live.
This is the secret of selfless love,
selfless action and the rest.