LOVE ALONE IS
SRI SWAMI CHIDANANDA
Divine Power has innumerable aspects. But in so far as man is concerned, three of these aspects are fundamental.
In the beginning God is, the Bible says. God alone is. And then God wills: “Let there be Light.“ And there is light. One is, the Upanishads say, One without a second, supreme and all alone. In Him a mystical idea appears, “May I become many.“ And the many is brought forth; the whole universe is manifested.
Bringing into being is one of the innumerable aspects of the Supreme Divine Power. It is also one of the three which are fundamental. In Hinduism, this creative aspect is conceived of as a person called Brahma. It is Brahma's function to manifest the countless names and forms which spring into being at the beginning of a cycle.
At the end of a cycle another aspect of the Divine Power comes into play—that which absorbs all these manifest names and forms back into the bosom of the Unmanifest. This absorbing aspect is also personified and given the name of Siva. Siva is the dissolver, the absorber, the destroyer. Man often associates evil intention with the meaning of the word `to destroy'. But think carefully. Doesn't man himself destroy? When he wants to drink a glass of fresh fruit-juice, for instance, doesn't he destroy the fruit? Fruit-juice is created, it is true, but in the process fruit-pulp is completely destroyed. There in no evil design in reducing the pulp to fluid. Destruction is the natural preliminary to the creation of new form. Thus it is the universal process, a significant phase. It is Brahma who creates, but when. He is finished with creation, it is Siva who steps in to dissolve or destroy.
Between these two terminals, the universe has to be maintained. In the past, the present and the future, on and on throughout the ages, a great providing power has to send rain and sunshine and wind and clouds and storms and tides and seasons and all those things that are necessary for the preservation of life. Producing things when they are needed, restoring things when they are lost, righting things when they are wrong—these are the functions of another aspect of the Divine Power. This aspect is of great significance to man, for it preserves his very life. He, therefore, praises it above all the other aspects of the Divine Power. He also personifies it and gives it the name of Vishnu or Narayana. Lakshmi is Vishnu's great consort. She is present in this world as corn, or that which grows in the fields as nourishment. She is present as wealth. She is present as knowledge—secular and scientific and commercial. She is endowed with unimaginable power to maintain law and order in the universe and to administer justice.
In the Bhagavata, the glories of Vishnu, Narayana, are extolled. Of the twelve books in the Bhagavata the tenth is predominant. In it the supreme incarnation of Lord Vishnu, namely, the Avatara known as Krishna is described in detail.
Krishna was born in Mathura on the banks of the river Yamuna, but soon after His birth was taken to Brindavan where He spent His boyhood—a period of wonderful divine sport. There He saved many good people, destroyed many wicked people and created in many others waves of real spiritual love. His Lilas as they are told in the Bhagavata open a wide field for the exercise of the higher emotions and for the play of pure spiritual love.
The life of Krishna, especially His life in Brindavan, has ever been the inspiration of artists in India. It has provided the subject-matter and themes for innumerable great works of art. Even today, in this nuclear age, almost 90% of the music played in India, for instance, is religious. So it is in painting. There is a particular school of art, for instance, which flourished about a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, which produced a rich crop of fine paintings featuring the Radha-Krishna and the Gopis' Divine Love of the Lord.
Krishna's life, especially His life in Brindavan, and the love shown for Him by the rural cowherd folks elucidates the highest points of the devotional philosophy of India. If you read the Bhagavata, you will understand what these points are. Love is a path on which you try to attain the Divine experience of God by relating yourself to Him through some particular emotional link. This emotional link is intensified through various exercises until you are eventually brought to the climactic point where divine love fills your entire consciousness. It pushes out even your awareness of `I'. You become a personification of love, an embodiment of love. Through total forgetfulness of your `I'-sense, you are actually turned into Love Divine. Higher and higher you rise into a state of God-experience until, ultimately, your whole being is totally absorbed, your entire consciousness is completely saturated. Love and love alone prevails.
“But how, “ you may say, “can I love a Being whom I do not know? My father, my mother, my friend, my wife, I can love because I know them. They are related to me. They are not strange or foreign or unfamiliar. “ All right. In whatever way you now relate yourself to your intimate companions, relate yourself to the Lord. No strange new type of relationship has to be created. Whatever love is predominant in your heart at this moment, you may direct towards Him. If, for instance, the love you feel for your child is predominant, direct that love to God. Conceive of Him as your child. Forget all about His grandness and greatness and glory for the time being, and feel that He is your own Divine Child. Or, if you love your Master best, if you love Him with all your heart, think of Him as your Master. Or, if the love you feel is the deep and passionate love that the lover feels for his beloved, all right—this, they say, is the most intense form of love—conceive of the Lord as your dearly beloved, as your own eternal bridegroom. In any of these ways, link yourself with the Lord. Then devise your own special technique for keeping yourself linked with Him until He reveals Himself to you in your heart.
Now before closing, I would like to comment briefly on the Gopis' love for Krishna. It was the deep love of the lover for the beloved that the Gopis felt for Krishna and it was carried to the acme of perfection in them. But please note. The Gopis were well aware that Krishna was their God and the very embodiment of the great divine Reality. The love they lavished upon Him was the love of the individual soul for the supreme divine Being. Moreover, their love was tested severely before it was returned. Only after much penance, much prayer and much purification did they finally succeed in receiving Krishna's love in return.
But one full-moon night in autumn He did reveal to them the grandeur of His divine love. And they were all enraptured, completely overcome by the celestial music of the soul. Even on this night, however, Krishna challenged them. At a climactic moment in the divine sport He suddenly stood stock-still. “My God,“ He said, “What is happening to you all? Why have you come here? You have your husbands at home. It is very, very wrong of you to desert your husbands and children and forsake your duties at home to come here. This goes entirely against the law. What will people say? Please go back home!“ And do you know what the Gopis replied? “Do You think we don't know who you are, Krishna? Do you think we can't tell? When we are loving our husbands, You think that we are not loving You? Do You think that we aren't aware that You are the Indweller of all beings, the cosmic Being, the one great Lord who alone merits the love of all human hearts? In Your love is our liberation. In Your love is our emancipation and salvation.“ The Gopis, you see, were not conscious of their bodies.
Many people think that the love of Radha and Krishna was something like the love of Romeo and Juliet. It was not like that. It was not like the boy-meets-girl kind of love at all. Their love was not of this world. It has nothing physical about it. The Gopis were completely beyond their body-awareness. Their love was pure. The drama they enacted was transcendental. It was the response of the soul to the call of the Divine.
