For the Indian people and a Message to the world
Millions of minerals, plants, animals seem to be suffered to waste every day by spendthrift Nature. Well, let it be. Nature and Rama can well afford to squander millions of lives and treasures every hour.
Where will the thing be lost? Wherever it goes it is in me. The immense wealth of ancient India was in my left hand pocket while in India; it is in my right hand pocket now that it is drained to England. I am the ocean. The ebb and the flow both are mine. Not by nursing antipathy and retaliation will any good accrue, but by doing your part -love. It is no rash cant that love conquers all. Owning is not to be encompassed by grubbing accumulation. You cannot keep even a little piece of camphor, bidding; “Camphor, camphor, stay here, I possess you.” But through love you can feel the whole world to be “My own, my very own.” Through love alone the legitimate owning can be accomplished. All other possession is theft, robbery, violating the divine laws, even though the selfish tendencies of man call it legal.
That tyrant, Tamerlane, who had celebrated his conquest of Persia by a tower of ninety thousand human heads, ordered Hafiz to be brought before him because of the following line in his famous ode:
Agar an Turk-i-Shirazi, etc.
“If that Turk of Shiraz plunder away my heart.”
For the black mole on the face of that Sweet Tyrant I would give away the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.”
“Art thou the man,” Timur cried, “who hast been bold enough to offer my two greatest cities for thy mistress?”“Yes, sir,” replied the undaunted poet. “And by such acts of generosity have I lost everything.
The poet did not tell the truth. The fact ought to have been put in this form: Giving all to love has brought me wealth enough that I can well afford to give away both the worlds, whereas you, Oh tyrant, in your fever for possession, have lost the leg, have lost the temper, but have not yet land enough to bury you. “A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone.”
The source of inspiration of all the prophets, poets, discoverers and inventors in art and science, and dreamers in philosophy, has been Love, only in some cases it was more apparent than in others. Krishna, Chaitanya, Tulsidas, Shakspeare, Jesus, and Ramakrishna, were inspired in as much as they were lovelorn.
Love divested of all carnality is spiritual illumination. Dear me! The cowards of prophets had not always the courage or light enough to disclose to the people the true secret of their inspiration -love or Tat tvam asi, wherever the eyes fall that thou art.
People, like planetary bodies, proceed toward the sun with a desperate zeal. In this manifestation of love they are inspired prophets. But after a while, the centrifugal force, or spiritual inertia, makes them go round and round, keeping them away from the sun, turning them into fanatics, tied to the orbits of different creeds. Some move in an orbit very far away from the central truth; others have their orbits nearer and nearer. Rama enjoys this religious solar system. But who would care to play the role of a moth nearing (up) and nearing the Light in such a way as surely (ni) to lose (shad) all sense of meum and tuun, mine and thine, possession and property, burning the little self (or life) in the Light of lights -Upanishad, (Tat tvam asi) that thou Art.
Upstarts of civilization! we accommodate your sciences and arts, but pray push them not forward too much. Lord Love is the sun around which the sciences of the world should revolve like planets and satellites.
Geology treats of minerals and stones so far removed from man. Botany treats of a subject a little higher than minerals. Astronomy treats of stars so far away. Physiology treats of the bones of man, the exterior skeleton. Psychology treats of the different functions only of mind. But Love treats of the realest Reality in man as well as in nature. It is an Art as well as a Science. Scientific discoveries are only sparks and scintillations from the grand Sun, Fire of Love, or Oneness-feeling.
While the young Franklin is flying the kite, his father Benjamin is watching the magnetic needle crossing the twine. Watch him how motionless, breathless his body is! Does he seem to have any separate existence from the earth on which his body? Is he not inst one with all around him? A mere piece of a rock so to say. His bosom is beating with Nature’s heaving breast, and thus Nature’s secrets become his secrets. The lightning in heaven proves itself to be identical with the electric spark on the earth. The light without shows itself to be one with the light within.
Love or oneness feeling, when brought into play between two persons, dispels the illusion of division. The feelings of one party laconic those of the other. What passes in one breast is revealed in the other, and clairvoyance becomes an established fact, and clear demonstration is afforded.
“By Me, verily, is all this pervaded, as by the same string are threaded various beads.”
Whatever thou lovest, man,
Thou too become that must;
God, if thou lovest God,
Dust, if thou lovest dust.
Oh what a blessed food, a delicious food, happy
food, to eat our own heart! Nothing tastes so sweet.
In the ease of Rama milk sometimes serves as a tine
seasoning to that food.
The moon is up; they see the moon
I drink Thine eyebrow’s light.
Big fair they hold, full crowded soon.
I watch and watch Thee, source of light.
Nay, call no surgeons, doctors, none,
For me my pain is all delight,
Adieu, ye citizens, cities, good bye I
Oh welcome, dizzy, ethereal heights!
O fashion and custom, virtue and vice,
O laws, convention, peace and fight,
O friends and foes, relations, ties,
Possession, passion, wrong and right,
Good bye, O Time and Space, good bye;
Good bye, O world, and Day and Night.
My love is flowers, music, light.
My love is day, my love is night.
Dissolved in me all dark and bright.
Oh, what a peace and joy!
Oh, leave me alone, my love and I,
Good bye, good bye, good bye.
When blushing bride by Love doth stand
Says “Yes” with eyes and gives her hand,
Adieu! father, mother, Adieu! sister, brother,
The hairs do stand at end,
The throat is choked, Oh friend.
Welcome you are to world so bright,
Welcome to us is God’s fair sight;
But remember well
This in the last we tell;
The hairs do stand at end,
The throat is choked, Oh friend.
The different objects, -big, small, fair, foul, ugly and charming, -all, all are but strange hieroglyphics to the living Lover all indicating the same Love; beautiful characters, all meaning my own Self; fine pictures, all representing the beloved Lord; different garbs of beauty, all clothing the same sweetheart—Self.
Oh, what an ocean of beauty! What an ocean of love! The dark tresses of the beloved are just as fascinating to the lover as the bright face. So night is just as welcome to Rama as day: death as sweet as life; fever just as welcome as health; the foes as dear as friends.
How blessed is he whose property is stolen away! Thrice blessed is he whose wife runs away, provided by such means he is brought in direct touch with the All Love. Abraham, says the Mohmmedan tradition, at one time desired to take a sea voyage. Khizra, or Neptune, offered his services as a humble captain of the boat. Abraham at first gave his foolish consent; but on reconsideration, he begged pardon of Khizra, saying, “My most gracious brother, excuse me please, I would prefer to have my boat without a captain, ferried directly by the hand of love. If you, the Lord of the Seas, take the oar, it is safe riding; but, ah me! it is too safe! It will make me rely on you, and bar me from direct dependence on God. Please do not stay between me and God. There is more joy to me in resting directly on God’s bosom than even the bosom of my brother Khizra,”
Says the desperate and forlorn lover: “Pray, flash on, Oh lightning! roar on, Oh thunder! rage on, Oh storm! howl on. Oh winds! I thank thee, I thank thee, I thank thee. Oh blessed Thunder, you frighten delicate Love to cling to me for a moment. How infinitely sweet are the bitters of life! when out of its grapes we can press the sweet wine of delicious pangs of God-Love!
Take my life and let it be Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. Take my heart and let it be Full saturated, Love, with Thee. Take my eyes and let them be Intoxicated God with Thee. Take my hands and let them be Engaged, in sweating Truth, for Thee.
Dear blessed Reader! Did you ever have the privilege of being lost, nay risen, in love, unselfish love, giving all to love? Then you must be in a position to appreciate sentiments like the following.
“Soft skin of Taif for thy sandals take,
And of our heart-strings fitting latchets make,
And tread on lips which yearn to touch those feet”.
“O my blessed Lord, accept me as
the most humble slave of feet”
What office is there that love cannot bless and beautify?
There is no great and no small, no low and no high, where Love is. The hardest work becomes heavenly when the spirit of love prompts us to it. Selfishness will make the highest position most wearisome and tedious. Whatever your station of life, love makes it sweet. All troubles, storms, pangs and anguish spring simply from the spirit of possession in us. Where is the pain of hell when I love it? All our troubles and turmoils are, so to say, a teasing on the part of Love to wake us up to her embraces. These jerks, shaking, and pats an* from no other than sweet Love, God, sweet Hari, wakes you pouring forth His love.
Then rise, awake.
Dost hear the palm trees sighing?
It is my heart that sighs
To hear thy lips replying
And gaze into thine eyes,
Then wake, awake!
Sweet Love! see here,
I bend to thee, awake, awake!
My loved one! unfold thy heart to me.
Wake, awake!
Dost see the Himalayan snows
That grow and never tire?
They cannot cool my burning love
Or quench my soul’s desires
Then wake, awake
Dost hear the Ganges river,
Its sacred waters roll?
But deeper flows forever,
The passion of my soul,
Then wake! awake!
LUDICROUS FRIGHT
They say it was a penniless lad And nothing, nothing to lose he had.
He heard that thiews were at him still,
They must pursue, go where he will.
Thus haunted, worried, he for escape
Ran uphill, down ditch, into the cape.
He hurried and flurried in fear and fright,
Wore out his body and mind in flight,
Yet nothing, nothing to lose he had,
They say it was a penniless lad!
O worldly man! such is thy plight,
Thy arrant ignorance and fright,
O scared fellow, just know thyself.
Away with dread of thieves and theft,
Up, up awake, see what you are,
There is nothing to lose or fear for,
No harm to thee can ever accrue,
Thy thought alone doth thee pursue.