Supremacy of God love Devotion

The supremacy of God love

The lord is one. He is alone is Brahma (the absolute). He alone is Paramatma (the supreme spirit). He alone is a divine person. Though they are identical in essence, the spiritual discipline leading to Their realization varies. Brahma is realized through knowledge of identity, Paramatma through yoga (setting at rest the vagaries of the mind) and the Lord through yoga (setting at rest the vagaries of the mind) and the Lord through Bhakti(Devotion). For those, however, who seek to attain the Lord as Dearest One, love alone is the highest discipline.

In the discipline of knowledge, inquiry into the abiding and the fleeting, Dispassion, the sixfold endowment in the shape of Quietism self control, Endurance, resignation, piety and composure and an intense longing for Liberation are essential requisites. Atonement with Brahma born of hearing, cogitation and constant musing. For the realization of the supreme spirit practice of the eight limbs of Yoga, viz., Yamas (Self restraints in the form of harmlessness, veracity, continence, non stealing and non-acquisition of property) Niyamas (the five religiousvows of external and internal purity, contentment, askesis, study of the Vedas and self surrender to God) is essential. For communing with the Divine person the hearing and singing of the Lord’s praises, dwelling on His immaculate exploits muttering and chanting His holy names, fellowship with saints and God-remembrance with the nine forms of Devotion and an intense and exclusive longing for His blessed sight constitute the highest discipline; while for realizing Him as the highest object of love, love coupled with adoration etc., is the most essential requisite.

Self-denial is the foundation of love. Love does not manifest itself without self-denial. It is not necessary to renounce any article, object, and situation, stage in life or action. It is the seeking for one’s own gratification that ought to be renounced. Even an iota of desire for the joy of liberation, to say nothing of the luxuries of this world as well as the world and the celestial worlds etc., is an obstacle in the path of love, where the only natural desire and effort is to gratify the highest object of one’s love and there is no thought even of a craving of any description whatsoever. In this way love consists in harnessing all one’s enjoyments of this world as well as of the next, nay, even for final beatitude. Such love pertains to the heart and is not for ostentation. It has no reference to virtue, is disinterested, abiding, uninterrupted, very subtle and of the nature of experience and grows from more to more to more every moment. In this ocean of Love an endless variety of waves in the form of most agreeable sentiments, both straight and oblique, continue to leap up. Gratification of one’s dearest object of Love is the principal cause as well as the supreme end of all these waves.

The love is a supreme rarity but by the grace of lovers of God it can be had very easily. Lovers of God are they who, having renounced the longing for both sense-enjoyment and liberation and serving as a plaything in the hands of their most beloved Lord, who is their manipulator, remain engaged in sport according to his desire and who have no consciousness left of their own identity for their own purpose. One ought to secure the grace of such lovers of God. Such grace is had by pursuing the path of love followed by those lovers of God, a path full of supreme renunciation, highest emotion and supremely holly.

Even though identical with the Supreme Brahma, who is all truth, all consciousness and all bliss, the most beloved Lord of such a lover of God is in his eyes an eternally true mine of supreme joy, comeliness and sweetness, and a repository of endless self-contradictory divine excellences and properties which are beyond the ken of thought and speech, who ever incessantly remains engaged in enjoying and making His lover enjoy the sweetness of Love. While continuing to be the supreme Ruler of all the worlds of all the worlds and independent in every way, He remains subservient to the love of His loving devotee and exalts His lover to the rank of His beloved God.