Love is immortal (amrta-rupa).
We are met at the outset in these verses with two words bhakti and prema. The first has often been translated by “faith,” and thus confusion has arisen and the term been identified with the Western doctrine of faith, with which it has nothing to do. It signifies devotion, love, loyalty to something higher than oneself, mingled with an element of respect, reverence and worship.
Prema, on the other hand, signifies intense devotion, the love and loyalty of an equal to an equal; and is a higher form. It is the stage in which the devotee stands to Deity in the light of beloved and lover, to be followed later by a complete identity of the two.
Although bhakti may often be used in the sense of prema yet the reverse is never found. For example:—
Samo ’ham sarva-bhūteṣu na me dveṣyo ’sti na priyaḥ
Ye bhajanti tu māṁ bhaktyā mayi te teṣu chāpyaham.
“I am the same amidst all beings, for me none is hateful, none lovable, but they who worship me with love (bhakti) are in me, and I also in them.”
Bh. Gītā, IX, 29.
Here lover and beloved are signified, and bhakti stands for prema. All through the Nārada Sūtra, then, bhakti stands for para (excessive) bhakti, and this is the same as prema. Hence the second verse identifies bhakti with prema, so that its lesser meanings of worship, as with ritual, etc., may not
We are met at the outset in these verses with two words bhakti and prema. The first has often been translated by “faith,” and thus confusion has arisen and the term been identified with the Western doctrine of faith, with which it has nothing to do. It signifies devotion, love, loyalty to something higher than oneself, mingled with an element of respect, reverence and worship.
Prema, on the other hand, signifies intense devotion, the love and loyalty of an equal to an equal; and is a higher form. It is the stage in which the devotee stands to Deity in the light of beloved and lover, to be followed later by a complete identity of the two.
Although bhakti may often be used in the sense of prema yet the reverse is never found. For example:—
Samo ’ham sarva-bhūteṣu na me dveṣyo ’sti na priyaḥ
Ye bhajanti tu māṁ bhaktyā mayi te teṣu chāpyaham.
“I am the same amidst all beings, for me none is hateful, none lovable, but they who worship me with love (bhakti) are in me, and I also in them.”
Bh. Gītā, IX, 29.
Here lover and beloved are signified, and bhakti stands for prema. All through the Nārada Sūtra, then, bhakti stands for para (excessive) bhakti, and this is the same as prema. Hence the second verse identifies bhakti with prema, so that its lesser meanings of worship, as with ritual, etc., may not
« Love is immortal. »
Love is one of the definitions or methods by which the finite and mortal mind tries to express its conception of its essential and eternal nature. Through the veil of the brain and senses this appears as separate from itself, as a divine principle, which illumines the mind with a ray of itself (“Love is God”).
This conception of the abstract principle of Love as lover is an enormous help in the ascent which the mind is at length destined to make to the ultimate disclosure, the last words that can be spoken, that “Thou Thyself art THAT.” It is the natural process through which man passes, and the various conceptions of religion show its different phases up to the highest and ultimate expression, the Adwaita Vedanta, which recognises no duality, nothing apart from the Self anywhere.
Love is one of the definitions or methods by which the finite and mortal mind tries to express its conception of its essential and eternal nature. Through the veil of the brain and senses this appears as separate from itself, as a divine principle, which illumines the mind with a ray of itself (“Love is God”).
This conception of the abstract principle of Love as lover is an enormous help in the ascent which the mind is at length destined to make to the ultimate disclosure, the last words that can be spoken, that “Thou Thyself art THAT.” It is the natural process through which man passes, and the various conceptions of religion show its different phases up to the highest and ultimate expression, the Adwaita Vedanta, which recognises no duality, nothing apart from the Self anywhere.