In all times (past, present and future) Love is the greatest thing.
Seek no means but Love, and do not delay. Pleasure and pain, restless seeking and all the rest are to be left for time to work upon. Cause and effect are inevitable in the world of thought, as elsewhere. The wheel revolves after the propelling hand is withdrawn. All causes which lie within us biding their time must inevitably be worked out, but the effects may not “stain” us, may not affect us, if we have become entirely without “attachment to the fruit of works.” If a mother left alone in the world to protect her babe can so ignore disease and pain as to prolong her life for the sake of her child over many years, and many such cases are known, how much more is this the case with him whose attention is now given more and more to God!
Even to-day there are those who decline medical assistance when suffering from fever, dysentery and the like. “These are effects of the past,” say they, “let them work themselves out as they may. Our attention is wholly with God.”
Those are the most hopeless patients for doctors who pity themselves, whose thoughts are always about themselves. The same morbid processes may be applied to the mind, and lead to untold misery. We find everywhere in the world those are the happiest who have forgotten themselves in their devotion to some other object. If, when the object is even material and transient, it can thus produce happiness (equally transient though it be) how much more is this the case where the object, besides being eternal, ever appears to grow more satisfying!
Seek no means but Love, and do not delay. Pleasure and pain, restless seeking and all the rest are to be left for time to work upon. Cause and effect are inevitable in the world of thought, as elsewhere. The wheel revolves after the propelling hand is withdrawn. All causes which lie within us biding their time must inevitably be worked out, but the effects may not “stain” us, may not affect us, if we have become entirely without “attachment to the fruit of works.” If a mother left alone in the world to protect her babe can so ignore disease and pain as to prolong her life for the sake of her child over many years, and many such cases are known, how much more is this the case with him whose attention is now given more and more to God!
Even to-day there are those who decline medical assistance when suffering from fever, dysentery and the like. “These are effects of the past,” say they, “let them work themselves out as they may. Our attention is wholly with God.”
Those are the most hopeless patients for doctors who pity themselves, whose thoughts are always about themselves. The same morbid processes may be applied to the mind, and lead to untold misery. We find everywhere in the world those are the happiest who have forgotten themselves in their devotion to some other object. If, when the object is even material and transient, it can thus produce happiness (equally transient though it be) how much more is this the case where the object, besides being eternal, ever appears to grow more satisfying!
Therefore the bhakta should be “without any anxieties.” He takes the Love of God; he gives all he has, feeling that that too is God's Love returning to itself. There is no Love in the query, “Am I saved?” But compare the following:
Nâtha yoni-sahasreṣu yeṣu yeṣu vrajāmy aham
Tatra tatrāchyutā bhaktir achyutāstu sadā tvayi,
“Lord! Imperishable One! In whatever thousands of births I may wander, may my undying love be always in Thee.”
Viṣṇu Purāṇa.
There is Divine Love already in the heart that aspires thus, and as verse 80 says, “He manifests Himself soon, and makes himself felt by His worshippers.”
Nâtha yoni-sahasreṣu yeṣu yeṣu vrajāmy aham
Tatra tatrāchyutā bhaktir achyutāstu sadā tvayi,
“Lord! Imperishable One! In whatever thousands of births I may wander, may my undying love be always in Thee.”
Viṣṇu Purāṇa.
There is Divine Love already in the heart that aspires thus, and as verse 80 says, “He manifests Himself soon, and makes himself felt by His worshippers.”