on love - Bhagavatam

...contd....

on love - Bhagavatam

Both these forms express ‘love’ as an action – a verb. It’s an act between two persons. But the highest form and only thing that’s actually referred correctly as ‘Love’ is when it is a ‘noun’ – a state of existence. In other lower levels of its expression, object, subject and action exist i.e., in “I love him”, I is kartha or subject, him is karma or object and love is kriya or action. Love ‘here’ is action verb. But when I say ‘love’ I don’t mean those levels at all! I mean, when ‘love’ is noun, i.e., is a state of being – where I don’t exist as my ‘ego’ should go away if there is love. ‘You’ and ‘love’ both can’t exist at a time. If I exist, love can’t and if love exists, I can’t. It doesn’t mean I die. It means ‘I’ as an attitude dies. I as an ego die.

When I meet him, my persona dies and I meet him, then it is love. Like-wise, he loses ‘himself’ (here again it is not about physically losing – but mentally as an ego he doesn’t exist). For both, the other only exists. I don’t desire as I don’t exist and for me since only he exists, only his desire matters and exists. Similarly for him too! He doesn’t exist and only I exist for him. Since, this happens, there is no desire and only love remains (Are you still with me?). Then we both exist only ‘in love’

and therefore we become love. That is the state of existence. For example, I love singing. As I sing, I am aware of singing. I hear the song, its tone, lyrics, and notations and then as I keep singing, slowly I lose myself in singing so much so that now I no longer know tone, lyrics or anything as I eventually become singing and ultimately I become ‘the song’. That is the time I experience ‘love’ as I become it.  ‘Love’ is God here at this stage. When you don’t exist, you realize you own it all, you pervade all! But it is not easy to go there, so in this stage if any person practices ‘non-selfishness’ or living for the other, it easily takes that one to this stage.

It means you ‘give, give and give’ to the object of your love as much as possible and is thinking ways and means of giving more. In the process ‘you’ as an ego keeps dying more and more. Gandhi gave himself to the country and didn’t expect anything for ‘himself’ in return. That itself healed him completely and gave that aura of purity and divinity that made him courageous enough to face the British Empire and fearful enough for his opponents!

Meera sang to express her love. She wasn’t working to become ‘Indian Idol’ or asking for votes or money in exchange for her song. I am not saying it is wrong. It just doesn’t let you grow towards ‘love’ – that’s all! Instead lust for money, fame, success creeps into the persona so silently and breaks so many people who were crowned with success at very start of their career. Care to throw in couple of names? Because, she sought nothing, all fame, name, adoration came her way – not only during her times but centuries later too! That’s the paradox of life. You get more and more of what you don’t want! The more you give away something, the more you receive of that!

Radha loved Krishna day in and day out. Her every thought revolved around him. She was in the midst of her worldly duties and yet her mind was centered around Krishna. Whenever I quote such examples I get to hear from people wonderful feedbacks like: “Guruji, just as you asked us to love, I am loving ‘X’ now. Just as Radha, I am married to ‘Y’ and ‘X’ is my Krishna and I his Radha. I am doing exactly as you guided us!”

“What you said is absolutely true maam ‘Love like Radha to experience that bliss’. I did and I am happy. It’s just that my wife is not your student, so doesn’t understand my love. Shall I get her to you for explanation?” and many more in this way. I repeat, I am NOT SUGGESTING extra-marital affair by giving this example do what you want to do with your life, just don’t use my quotes in wrong places to get away with your lustful acts. Radha unlike these people didn’t own, possess or manipulate Krishna. Her love only teaches us to be unselfish. It teaches us to

‘let go’ of our love if that’s what our love wants”. My need, want and desire mean nothing. All that matters is his needs, his wants and his dreams.” If I can think on such grounds, than I become ‘love’. For that I don’t need to touch my love, possess him, own him, sleep with him or take anything from him. Infact, he need not even know that I love him. Because, I am not interested in his part of reaction. My whole concern is that I want him to be happy, safe and successful even if it means being away from me. Please don’t use ‘right examples’ in ‘wrong places’ to do what you want to do. Inspite of fooling people with such quotes, you’ll know that you had manipulated and that knowing will not make you pure. You’ll not even respect yourself. Then how can you expect someone else to respect you?

...contd.....

# on love - bhagavatam, Epics of India, Radha and Krishna, 

Points to understand:

• Just because we use the right examples, our wrongs don't become right.
• People understand as per their level of consciousness. Adi guru, Lord Shiva himself may come and lecture and yet their understanding will remain faithful to their level of consciousness.
• Level of consciousness decides our clarity of thought.
• Our clarity of thought decides and impacts our decisions.
• And our decisions decide whether we become slaves to our senses or becoming masters of our senses!
• Logical arguments may lead to wrong assumptions and understandings.
• Better to have a person who has better clarity of thought than you to guide you till your consciousness level has reached a point worthy of guiding you in the right path. In Eastern culture, that's why Guru/Master is given so much of importance for he does this job.