“I am the origin and end
Of all this changeful universe,
There is, oh mankind, naught Beyond;
For all is strung on me alone
As are the beads upon the thread.
I am the freshness of the waters,
The splendour of the Sun and the Moon,
The essence of the Holy thought,
The sound of sounds, the man in men,
I am the life of life, oh man! “
“All true devotion’s centred power,
All being’s seed am I, the strength,
The wisdom of the strong and wise,
Lo, those who worship Me in truth,
Fulfilling in their acts my laws;
Regarding me their aim and end,
Their hearts, oh man, dwell then in love,
And I to them will always be a guide
From out the surging flood of wrong and
migratory life.”At whose behest doth work the Intellects?
At whose command does life subsist?
By whom enlightened grasps the mind?
And what enlightens ears and eyes?
The Ear of ear, the Mind of mind,
The Speech of speech, the Life of life,
The Eye of eye, the Self of self
That eats up Pain and Death as rice.
ALL IS LOVE
To know is to love Truth.
What is Truth? Tat Twain Asi or Love itself.
Step by step this love manifested itself through different stages as the force of affinity, cohesion, gravitation, greed, desire, ambition, aspiration. In different modes and degrees of vibrations this Love appeared being known as Magnetism, Electricity, light, heat, sound, etc., the most accurate conception of the material atoms being as “Centres of forces.”Matter itself in the ultimate analysis resolves itself into concentrated Love. All Law being nothing more than the discovery of unity in diversity, harmony in heterogeneity, unison in variety, is itself a phase of Love. In your inquisitive detectives, insidious spies, suspected friends, menacing foes, betraying comrades, there is no other power at work but Love. No other government rules the world than Love, Carlyle said, “Hatred is inverted love.”Fear is only congested love. Else how could love conquer fear? A man with a purse of a thousand pounds in the woods is full of fear only because of the loved gold. A free man greets all he meets. A free person enjoys the uniform circulation of love. Love being the only force there is in reality, the realization of identity with Love is salvation and redemption and the conscious or unconscious struggle to achieve that absolute Love-consciousness is life, to be willing to follow the line of quickest approach to that goal is wisdom, and to that end to rightly adjust the different love forces is virtue.
There is no such thing as betrayal of love nor is anybody a traitor. No character is unfaithful. No right have we to limit our ideas as to the possibilities of man on the ground of his being a Jew, Mahomedan, Sudra, or Brahman. Even the sworn slaves of dogmas are bound to be redeemed. God, Truth, must pull you out from the clasp of conventionality and conservatism, even as Krishna drew out the Gopikas from the homes of their so-called husbands.
Man’s real self is nothing but this transcendental Love. You are Love. Oh, you are the universal Self. You are the Roseate Dandy that flushes in the blooming cheeks of Leili on the one side and appears as the bleeding heart of Majnoon on the other. To realize and feel this truth in practical life is Purity. But he who begins to seek things and hankers after them as if not one with him rends his God-self twain and is thereby impure. Shunning and curling up is not Purity; resisting and avoiding beauty is not Chastity. True Purity is that where all beauty is absorbed in me and I feel and enjoy my spiritual oneness with all to such an extent that to talk or think of meeting any object sounds like a painful hint of separation.
“Speak to him, then, for He hears and Spirit to
Spirit can meet;
Closer is He than breathing and nearer than hands
or feet.
The sun, the moon, the stars, the hills, and the plains,
Are not these, O Soul, the visions of Him who reigns? “
Tennyson.
Thy voice is on the rolling air,
I hear Thee where the waters run,
Thou standest in the rising sunAnd in the setting, Thou art fair,
Far off Thou art and ever nigh
I hear Thee still and I rejoice,
I prosper circled with Thy voice
I shall not lose Thee, though I die.
All that is, is good—God is that which is fit, appropriate, apt. Now the world’s movement is nothing else but continuous adaptation). So the world is nothing but a flow of good. Wherever people’s adaptation to the past (conservatism) opposes re-adaptation to the running present, the irresistible marching adaptation (harmony or God) is accompanied by a noisy and dazzling show Revolution.
We cannot give up anything until we get something else to take its place, and progress must be gradual. Love and attachment are a form of grasping and grabbling from one stand-point, and nothing short of renunciation from another standpoint. Love rises from one object to another. The objects of love keep changing all the time, and in every act of unfoldment or development it renounces a good many old clingings. By slow degrees there comes at last a time when a person falls (or rather rises) in love with Love itself and the object of love turns out to be the self of each and all and the lover is tied back or married and reunited to this -his one Self Supreme. After this marriage (that is religion -’re‘ again, ‘ligo‘ unite), the true lover finds the whole universe in his embrace and every object in his clasp. What can such an one desire? Can we desire the bride that is already folded in our arms?
When one realizes his own self to be the all, he cannot desire, but simply enjoys everything as his. He looks at his work and finds it good. Every object brings him joy ineffable. Every creature pays him tribute from clod to the cloud, from the minutest atom to the mightiest Sun, from the lowest crawling vermin to the remotest shining star, all declare his glory, all sing praises, Hallelujah. There is nothing different from such an one.
LET NOT THE WORLD BE TOO MUCH WITH YOU
I see two objects before me, sweet peas and a maiden. The flower is dissected. In the flower is found a force called cohesion, keeping the different particles together, and some other forces like heat, gravity, magnetism, etc. And in the maiden all the imaginable wonders are suppressed, especially in that part of her body called the head. Herein I find all space and all time including and embracing the whole universe. The whole world is contained in a single ball called the head. This universe is present in the head as a mere idea, the whole world is a mere idea in the head. If it were not for the passing of this idea of the world from one head to another, like the throwing of a ball from one to another, the world would have been no world. This hypnotic sleep or idea of the world we pass on or fling from generation to generation, and from country to country, and this is the whole world, your world, your idea, your doing. Let not this ball be too much with you. It is your own head-ball or foot-ball.
Renunciation alone leads to immortality -And practical renunciation means throwing off and casting overboard all anxiety, fear, worry, hurry, trouble of mind by continually keeping before your mental vision the ball-ness of the world and all-ness of your real self. You have no duties to discharge, you are bound to none, you are responsible to nobody, you have no debit to pay.
Assert your individuality against all society and all nations and Everything. That is Vedanta. Society, customs and convention, laws, rules, regulations, criticisms, reviews they can never touch your real self. Even a tiny slender column of water can match and balance the pressure of the whole sea, says Hydrostatics. O individual Infinity, dare to stand on your own feet, and you can hold back the weight of the universe. Feel that. Throwing off fear, renounce anxiety, dispel the limited vulnerable ego. Giving this sense to OM, chant it.
OM! OM! OM!