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of God. For the Mohammedan it is Impossible to have this
idea of God as a child; they will shrink from it with a kind of
horror. But the Christian and the Hindu can realise it easily,
because they have the baby Jesus. and the baby Krishna.
The women in India often look upon themselves as
Krishna s mother; Christian mothers also may take up the
idea that they are Christ s mother, and it will bring to the
West the knowledge of God s Divine Motherhood which
they so much need. The superstitions of awe and reverence
in relation to God are deeply rooted in the heart of our
hearts, and it takes long years to sink entirely in love our
ideas of reverence and veneration, of awe and majesty and
glory with regard to God.
There is one more human representation of the divine
ideal of love. It is known as Madhura (mxur), sweet, and is
the highest of all such representations. It is indeed based on
HUMAN REPRESENTATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE 89
the highest manifestation of love in this world, and this love
is also the strongest known to man. What love shakes the
whole nature of man, what love runs through every atom of
his being, makes him mad, makes him forget his own nature,
transforms him, makes him either a god or a demon, as the
love between man and woman? In this sweet representation
of divine love God is our husband. We are all women; there
are no men in this world; there is but One Man, and that is
He, our Beloved. All that love which man gives to woman, or
woman to man, has here to be given up to the Lord. All the
different kinds of love which we see in the world, and with
which we are more or less playing merely, have God as the
one goal; but unfortunately, man does not know the infinite
ocean into which this mighty river of love is constantly flow-
ing; and, foolishly, he often tries to direct it to little dolls of
human beings. The tremendous love for the child that is in
human nature is not for the little doll of a child; if you bestow
it blindly and exclusively on the child, you will suffer in
consequence; but through such suffering will come the
awakening by which you are sure to find out that the love
which is in you, if it is given to any human being, will sooner
or later bring pain and sorrow as the result. Our love must,
therefore, be given to the Highest One, who never dies and
who never changes to Him, in the ocean of whose love there
is neither ebb nor flow. Love must get to its right destination,
it must go unto Him who is really the infinite ocean of love.
All rivers flow into the ocean. Even the drop of water coming
down from the mountain-side cannot stop its course after
reaching a brook or a river, however big it may be; at last
even that drop somehow does find its way to the ocean. God
is the one goal of all our passions and emotions. If you want
90 BHAKTI YOGA
to be angry, be angry with Him. Chide your Beloved, chide
your Friend. Whom else can you safely chide? Mortal man
will not patiently put up with your anger; there will be a
reaction. If you are angry with me, I am sure quickly to
react, because I cannot patiently put up with your anger. Say
unto the Beloved,  Why do You not come to me: why do
You leave me thus alone? Where is there any enjoyment
but in Him? What enjoyment can there be in little clods of
earth? It is the crystallised essence of infinite enjoyment that
we have to seek, and that is in God. Let all our passions and
emotions go up unto Him. They are meant for Him, for if
they miss their mark and go lower, they become vile; and
when they go straight to the mark, to the Lord, even the
lowest of them becomes transfigured; all the energies of the
human body and mind, howsoever they may express
themselves, have the Lord as their one goal, as their
Ek�yana. All loves and all passions of the human heart must
go to God. He is the Beloved; whom else can this heart
love? He is the most beautiful, the most sublime. He is
beauty itself, sublimity itself. Who in this universe is more
beautiful than He? Who in this universe is more fit to become
the husband than He? Who in this universe is fitter to be
loved than He? So let Him be the husband, let Him be the
Beloved. Often it so happens that divine lovers who sing of
this divine love accept the language of human love in all its
aspects as adequate to describe it. Fools do not under-stand
this; they never will. They look at it only with the physical
eye. They do not understand the mad throes of this spiritual
love. How can they?  For one kiss of Thy lips, O Beloved!
One who has been kissed by Thee, has his thirst for Thee
increasing for ever, all his sorrows vanish, and he forgets all
HUMAN REPRESENTATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE 91
things except Thee alone. Aspire after that kiss of the
Beloved, that touch of His lips which makes the Bhakta mad,
which makes of man a god. To him, who has been blessed
with such a kiss, the whole of nature changes, worlds vanish,
suns and moons die out, and the universe itself melts away
into that one infinite ocean of love. That is the perfection of
the madness of love. Aye; the true spiritual lover does not
rest even there; even the love of husband and wife is not mad
enough for him. The Bhaktas take up also the idea of
illegitimate love, because it is so strong; the impropriety of it
is not at all the thing they have in view. The nature of this
love is such that the more obstructions there are for its free
play, the more passionate it becomes. The love between
husband and wife is smooth, there are no obstructions there. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]