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Love For The Master
We are grateful to Him, because He is now the connecting link between
me and my original home which we call our destination. Gratitude begins
to come. Because of gratitude we now go to Him with tears in our eyes,
with longing in our hearts. He is now no longer a human being, He is
at least one who has reminded us of something which we have lost, and
that remembrance of what we have lost and which we have to regain, makes
us go to Him more and more, seek to be closer and closer with Him and
He is able to perform that miracle of awakening the impulse, reinforcing
that impulse, strengthening that impulse, and then we find, out of
gratitude love comes. What can you do but love a person who is giving
you so much?
So you see, here the Master is your map. He is the pathfinder. He is
the guide who takes you through that, the bizarre convolutions of this
terrain, through which you have to pass. And this gratitude, when it
is awakened first in your heart, it is something devastating, because
you don't just find a man who has reminded you of your home, you find
someone who loves you so much that he is prepared to tolerate your ignorance,
your sickness, your stupidity, your greed, your vices, your sins, and
yet touch you with His divine hand and say, "Doesn't matter; you
are all this but you are nevertheless mine, because I am the home itself,"
you see. So this gratitude turns into love. Now we don't even care for
the original home because the father I have lost is in front of me,
and where is my home but with my father!
Our love for the Master must not be of the human sort. We begin with
the love of a human being for a human being. Our love has to become
progressively refined as we see the Master more and more as a divine
being. Our love becomes a divine love for the divine. Krishna, the Divine
Avatar, could not do it himself. What God cannot do, therefore, a divinely
endowed man has to do. A Master provides us a form to love. He comes
with divine blessings and divine commands to transform us. That is:
He loves us with a divine love and also teaches us to transform ourselves.
Similarly we have to approach him in two ways: We have to love Him with
a total love, with total obedience to His teachings and practice. The
divine principle in Sahaj Marg, as far as I have understood, is that
love itself must bring out our obedience. This obedience makes us grow
faster and faster, refines and develops our love progressively, till
we reach the goal, our destination, which is the Master, who is love
personified. So the individual human heart, full of hatred, lust, and
selfishness, acts as the vehicle for love to join with the divine love.
It is because love implies obedience, love implies surrender, love implies
conformity.
The teaching of Sahaj Marg has two important aspects: It not only teaches
us how to love, which most people think they already know, but they
realise they don't know much of it in any case. That realisation comes
when we realise the second aspect of love that implies a total commitment
to the person loved, to his teachings, to his practice, to everything
that He represents. I would like to emphasise this very strongly because
there are many abhyasis who say, "I love the Master but I don't
want to practice at all. Why should I practice to love Him?"
So if we accept the Master, we have to accept everything or nothing.
May I remind you that, that is how Master accepts us. He accepts us
as we are with all our faults, with all our weakness, with all sickness.
This means that He is willing to accept the responsibility of making
us what we have to become, that awful responsibility which we must remember.
This is precisely what is lacking in most human love relationships.
We are able to love each other, but not with the responsibility that
it implies, not with the commitment that it implies. Therefore the only
difference between the Master's love and the merely human love is this
responsibility.
So for me, the love for the Master has always been of the highest importance.
Forget spiritual development; because if you love the Master He begins
to love you, and when He loves you He gives you everything. You don't
have to meditate for it and beg for it and sit on your head for it;
all these things are necessary if you don't love Him and He doesn't
love you. Therefore, this love for the Master achieves everything.
So you see, with the Master too this miracle happens. He is still a
human being, but He is a beloved. He is a human being whom we love very
much but He is also now partaking of the essence of divinity. He is
a human being, a beloved, partaking of the essence of divinity, and
that divinity is growing and growing in our perception, until we see
that It is God. He is the human being we love; He is the Master whom
we adore; He is the saint whom we worship; He is the God who is the
goal of our existence, like whom we must become. See, there is a simultaneous
presence of all the facets of His existence, which gives a unity of
consciousness, a unity of perception to us, and which makes the one
in Him long for one in us - oneness.
So love is a very tender thing, it is the most tender thing, it is the
most subtle thing and even the love for one's Master should not become
an object of derision or public utterance. "No, no, I love my Master
so much," you see, "how can I be without Him?" That is
alright for the cinemas. Even in temporal love, human love, Hindu society
does not permit it, to such an extent that in North India, you are not
supposed to call your wife by her name! You call her as the mother of
your children. Isn't it? So even the name becomes a secret thing, you
see. How can you whisper the name of your beloved in public, lest somebody
else should catch on it, and then she becomes an object of derision,
of let us say, public-seeking? In the Jewish tradition, God is known
as "The nameless One;" He cannot be named.
A lover does not go to his lover's house to eat apples. Isn't it? Or
even rasagulla! He goes for her. And if she doesn't give herself,
his journey is a waste. She may give him apples, she may give excellent
dhoties and kurtas, everything else! He may come away
with millions of rupees, but he is a failure! So, love lives on love.
Love goes to love for the sake of love; not for spirituality, not
for Central Region, etc.
We must remember that on very sacred occasions - I mean there are profane
occasions when we weep out of misery, out of anguish, so many things
- but there is a sacred occasion when you sit before the Master or stand
before the Master and the heart is bursting with its desire to express
its gratitude, no known sense can express it, and then it sort of melts,
becomes tears which flow through your eyes. This is the highest expression,
this is the highest offering of your love to the Master, not flowers
and chocolates and boursin cheese.
So love for the Master will ensure that you are also able to love others
because you see the Master in them. Not because you see them in Him,
but because you see the Master in them. Love for the Master makes you
feel…it is like mothers who love other children because they love
their children. If you hate your own child, you will hate all children.
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