Sri.Prasad Shintre

Dear Revered Sir & my dear brothers and sisters

My humble Pranams to you all

On this auspicious occasion of Pujya Shri Ramchandraji Maharaj’s 115^th Birthday celebrations, we all are imperiencing showers of His love while merged in the Ocean of bliss.  Today I would like to touch upon the topic of Love as spiritual feeling or as divine attribute, which one need to develop while progressing on the Natural Path.  This is a very big subject by itself which requires deeper and deeper contemplation to get better understanding of love.  However I am to make an attempt to share whatever brief understanding I have.

Let’s first try to understand what is Love.  Love is there in us as is as it was there at the time of creation.  Divine, with all the love created us and so we were born along with the feeling of love at our core being. At that time we were complete, as love was our way of expressing the divine. It’s still there however we now need to develop it or uncover it with the help of Natural Path.

One of the definition of Love is closeness between two entities. In our system of Natural Path, it is closeness between Abhyasi and the Master

Love by definition has lot of connotations under different contexts. One of them says, it’s a virtue representing human kindness, compassion and affection towards others and divine. Love is a feeling which has no limits or boundaries.  Love is an attribute to be developed however due to our own grossness we have; it makes it difficult for us to understand real meaning of Love.  Love is simple and natural feeling. Love is a non-sensory feeling. Love is beyond words, language, country, colour, country.  Beyond Everything.  It’s Pure feeling to come closer with kindness. We can see that kids express their love openly as they do not feel bound by social constraints.  However, as they grow old, it changes.  Love is a give and take process.  It’s actually more give than take. The Natural path gives us an opportunity to develop real Love. Love Universal.

As we all know that, a common man loves ones‘Self’ or ‘I’ more than anything else in this world.  We want to keep our ‘self’ happy because we love our ‘self’. This approach is like chasing Oasis in this material world. Our journey starts from here and after spending few decades in materialistic world we find ourselves not in a happy state so we start looking for ways and means to keep ourselves happy.  The reason is we love ourselves so we try to make every effort to keep this ‘Self’ as high as possible in terms of achieving something called happiness.  When we are not able to satisfy our ‘Self’, we think there could be something other than ‘Self’ or ‘I’. We then start seeking love in other humans and away from ‘Self’.  We as a common man now start our reverse journey from this stage back to the original state.

There are various examples in this world where we find humans loving others. The noblest example is a Mother and her child.  Mother loves her child beyond everything. Her first priority is her child. Every mother has a special place in her heart for her son or a daughter right from child’s birth and it remains throughout her life no matter what. No other person can understand that closeness and deepness of such selfless love. She makes every effort to make her child happy eventhough she has to go through hard times. That gives her happiness as she does not think child is an external entity. This type of love is developed due to inseparable relationship between Mother and the child.Our relation with Master is also similar where Master is the mother and we being a child.  Despite being in such close relation withthe Master we don’t feel it for several reasons.

The clear message given by Master is that you get connected to the Master permanently so you remember Him under all circumstances.  With Natural path practices constant remembrance develops. We remember Him always and with ongoing experiences we develop love for Him. Master says (BWS Commandment 2) ‘Remembrance brings a lover closed to beloved. There is no limit to this closeness. The greater the love or affinity the more does one advance towards Him”

Before given to understand the state of being in love, we may need to touch upon basic attitudes we need to develop. Faith is the beginning. Faith in Self to reach the goal, Faith in the system and in the Master is needed. It is developed with constant influx of Pranahuti and assiduous practices.  With increasing faith then one starts development of Devotion which then turns towards Love. Once Devotion starts to establish, the feeling of Love flourishes.

One of the questions we put to ourselves is ‘Why divinity still loves us’. We actually don’t know the reason. Perhaps He loves us because this is His creation so just like every mother loves her child, He loves us. No matter how bad the child is, mother always loves child so similarly Divinity loves us.  Whatsoever the reason might be. Whether we know it or not, He surely loves us.  He knows that what so ever we do, finally we will get attracted towards Him due to His love for us. It may take years for a common man however it will happen for sure in ones lifetime. Then why don’t we have same feeling towards divinity. With our current grosser state, since we are far away from divinity in terms of subtlety/purity and therefore do not really know what divinity is, it becomes difficult for us to understand and feel, how to express love towards Divinity. Pranahuti helps us here.  As Rev Sir says (BP Vol 1) ‘Pranahuti makes us all the more confident that Divinity loves us more than we love Divinity’. When this confidence gets developed, we then get better understanding of our love relationship with the Divine.

Feeling dependency helps in developing closeness with Master further. We are dependent and we get such feeling as we follow the Natural path. Constant Influx of Pranahuti helps us develop feeling of Devotion which further develops into feeling of love.

Rev Sir says ‘To serve means to love, to obey means to love, to sacrifice means to love. Without these three characteristics there is no point in talking about love. Love demands all these three’ (BP Vol 1).   So what I understand from this is to be able to develop love we should make every effort to become most humble obedient servant of the Master keeping only single pointed orientation towards Him.

Master says (in Reality at Dawn:Constant remembrance) “Service and sacrifice are the two main instruments with which we build the temple of spirituality, love of course being the fundamental basis.”  Here again Master says that Love is fundamental basis for taking up the spiritual work. With love as a foundation, it would be possible to do selfless service or sacrifice for a divine cause.

Now let us look at how development of Love is needed or how love helps in following commandments and in turn feeling of love gets matured.

Commandment 1 – relates to bringing discipline in our life. We love ourselves and for us to follow this commandment, we need to lose the ‘Self’ Importance. Master says ‘Gird up your lions’. So we need to make every effort to reduce loving our physical body. Come out of feeling of giving importance to this grossness.  That requires us to think beyond self and seek something higher. For surepractice of natural path reduces love for self and help us to think that there is something higher who loves us.

Commandment 2 - tell us that “Begin your puja for spiritual elevation with heart full of love & devotion”. As Master says“Prayer is a sign of devotion. It’s connecting link between Master & serf”. We have come so far away from the Master that now we have no or very little clue about Him. The prayer becomes effective only when it is done for specific purpose and in this case for spiritual elevation.  And Spiritual development is not sustainable unless one develops feeling of Devotion & Love.  So the importance of development of love is stressed upon by Master as(BWS C-2) “The reason why  prayer should be offered with a heart full of love and devotion is that one should create within himself a state of vacuity so that the flow of Divine Grace may be diverted towards him. In other words we create a space within us which attracts the direct descent of the Divine current”. This tells us that we are currently full with our own creation as we love ourselves. When we try to pray with love and devotion for spiritual elevation, it helps us go away from self & create some space in us to attract Divine Grace. This is nothing but Divine Love. With repeated and sincere prayers, we then start getting filled with more and more Divine love. That’s how the seed of Divine love actually gets rooted in our heart. We then need to continuously water this seed to get closer and nearer to Divine.  Prayer is the definite means to get connected with Divine and feel His presence. Prayers offered with love & devotion never go unheard. It may take some time however you get helped for sure.

Commandment 3 - Tell us about goal of life which is complete oneness with God. What would be that state when reach that stage and we are with God i.e. nearest to Him.  We will have all the qualities, attributes of God in us. We actually as a person will not exist & we will express Him all the time..at every second… Then what is one of the divinequality one will have when he reaches the goal.  He will be demonstrating the selfless service and when would that be possible. Only when one is expressing love without any discrimination. Any service with pure love is the real service. So to be able to reach the goal, we need to develop the quality of Love in us. Then how will we be able to develop that quality?. Let’s look at next commandment which will give us an idea.

Commandment 4 – Tells us to “Be plain and simple to be identical with nature”. As Master says “The very essence of nature is simplicity”. That needs to be applied in all our behavior with whatever effort we may need to take.  We were originally pure & simple but now we are not.  Master gives example of Jamila to explain how one can go from good tobad to worse condition in terms of love with respect to physical world. As we follow our own intentions and become external world oriented and develop love towards it, we go downwards. Now this commandment expects our journey back to the origin developing love towards everything what Divinity has created.  Nature being ideal expression of divine we can copy its qualities and implement in us to develop love towards nature. 

Commandment 5 – tells usto “Be Truthful. Take miseries as divine blessings and be thankful” Why do we have miseries is bigger subject however Master gives an example of  harsh behavior of beloved which tells us that if Divinity loves us then we should try to understand that through miseries”. If we take miseries as blessings then we develop more love towards divinity and vice versa. Then we are in a same situation like in the example given by Master that “even the harshness of the Beloved is appealing to lover since it contains tenderness which reflect love all through and attracts him all the more”. Master further says that “when this state is achieved, the underlying emotions get converted into gratitude” (IB). “In our system this stage is often attained by an Abhyasi. He begins to feel that these things which has come to me as miseries are for my own good. They are really invaluable gifts for me from beloved”.

Commandment 6: says “Know all people as thy brethren and treat them as such”.  This commandment helps us understand that the family which are supposed to be in, is not just the members staying in one house or close relatives or friends but beyond that. We already have some amount of love towards them as we think that they are mine.We currently do not feel everyone in this world as brother or sister since we have not understood the expanded concept of our Origin. As Master says (IB-6) “All of you people have come from me. You are only my expressions. Just as the children are the expression of the parents, you are all my expression and there can not be anything wrong between you; there can be nothing but love between you”

Thus we need to expand the family tree much beyond ancestors, cast, religion until the time of creation.  With constant influx of Pranahuti we start imperiencing this real relationship with everyone in the world. Meditation on Point A and 9PM prayer helps us grow this feeling of fraternal love.  Then Master gives us opportunity to express the feeling of brotherhood through various situations in our day to day life.  We become cognizant of our condition of love towards others once we develop some amount of sensitivity towards others. This is the step in transformation which everyone goes through. As second part of commandment tells us not to just know that everyone else is brethren but demands that we should treat them as such.  This is to make our love more expressible through our behavior so others get real time experience of divinity through Universal brotherhood.

Commandment 7:“Be not revengeful for the wrongs done by others. Take them with gratitude as heavenly gifts”.  Master, in this commandment tell us that “When we do something by applying our head and heart we form impressions thereof at the base, which remain there in seed-form till they are washed off by the effect of Bhoga” The basic question here is why do we apply our head and heart for something. The reason being we love our ‘self’ and so take a contrary trend to divine way by creating our own world hence form impressions. Master further says that “Nature wants to keep everything pure and crystal clear just as it was at the beginning”. We now need to understand this nature’s principle and start applying that in our behavior with the help of love being our attitude. In previous commandment we develop love towards others after realizing to certain extent that they are brethren. Now with more understanding of theory of our own Karmas, we should be feel positive and take others so called wrongactions gracefully as they are result of our own prior actions. This helps us to develop love further towards others as well as divine thinking that he is giving us all these things as gifts for our own good.

Meditation on Point A& B along with influx of Pranahutihelps us a lot to develop all these feelings and attitudes.

Commandment 9:“Mouldyour living so as to rouse love and piety in others” This commandment demands us to be at such a higher state of consciousness that others should get attracted towards divinity. It should create a feeling of love in their hearts. How is this possible? Master gives the example of “when things are made of clay, we take different view and our liking for it is increased in comparison to the mass of clay which it is made up of”.  With respect to this statement, we need to understand the importance for having divinity in us to get others attracted towards it since they see divinity in us.   How can we become like that? One of the important thing in molding ourselves is to get to a state where love being our expression.  Alongwith other attributes required to get molded, Revered Sir says (IB-Com9) “Love being our expression, it should be possible for us to make others think in terms of divinity”. So in my understanding Love is the epitome of all the divine attributes one develops in spiritual journey.  Master says that “live in such a way that we are the most humble persons that we are humble servants of Divine who is trying to express fully through us and we are allowing only Divinity to express itself, rather than our own creation to be expressed”.  The final state we should strive to reach is to express divinity in the form of Love and only pure love as our way of living. This is surely difficult task however since Master is there to help us, we should take every effort to perform our spiritual duties and be confident that Master will take care of the rest.  We should try to make ourselves insignificant and co-operate with Him then only Master can take us to the highest possible state for a human being to express divine love.

As we know, the commandments’ is a yardstick given to us by Master to gauge our state of consciousness in terms of expression of divine. It also helps understand how much more we need to develop in any specific Divine attribute.  Love being more difficult to imbibe, Master gives us every opportunity to develop that. In my experience, Master has given me biggest opportunity to develop love and I am still learning it practically (through my son)

Then how should we love Him? – We should love Him like a true devotee.  As Master says (in Reality at Dawn – Realization) “A true devotee is one who loves Him not for any favor or worldly interest but merely for love's sake. He always remains in a state of complete resignation to His will. He is perfectly contended with all that is bestowed upon him whether good or bad, joyful or unpleasant. Joy or sorrow is meaningless to him. Everything is a boon to him from his Beloved”. The important aspect here is to be able to become true devotee. Also to be able to develop true love, one needs to have faith in self, Master & Path.

9PM Universal Prayer: This is the best opportunity given to us by Master to develop love for fellow brethren. With regular prayer we surely develop Universal fraternity.  This is given to us by Master as fraternal duty. We have to do our duty and seek continuous help from Master to give us required energy to perform such duties with love and devotion.

With regular meditation practices as prescribed and implementing 10 commandments as the most humble obedient servant of the Master along with constant influx of Pranahuti, we develop the required attitudes in sadhana, love being essence of all.

I hereby close my talk with your kind permission.  I humbly seek forgiveness if I have not expressed my thoughts clearly or if I have not been able to organize it due toless understanding. I sincerely seek your guidance to correct myself. 

With Love to all brother & sisters