Be grateful that the poor man is there so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.
It is not the receiver that is blessed, but the giver.”
Again she asked about beauty. So many people worshiped beauty in all its forms; in fact, they were slaves to beauty.
The Guru answered:
“Even in the lowest kinds of attraction there is the germ of Divine Love.
One of the names of the Lord in Sanskrit is Hari, and this means that He attracts all things to Himself.
His is, in fact, the only attraction worthy of human hearts.
Who can attract a soul, really?
Only He.
When you see a man being drawn to a beautiful face, do you think that it is a handful of arranged material molecules which really attracts the man?
Not at all!
Behind those material particles there must be and is the play of divine influence and divine love.
The ignorant man does not know it, but yet, consciously or unconsciously, he is attracted by it, and it alone.
So even the lowest forms of attraction derive their power from God Himself.
‘None, O beloved, ever loved the husband for the husband’s sake; it is the Atman, the Lord, who is inside, and for His sake the husband is loved.’
The Lord is the great magnet, and we are all like iron filings; all of us are being constantly attracted by Him, and all of us are struggling to reach Him, the face of Brahman reflected through all forms and designs.
We think we worship beauty, but we are really worshiping the face of Brahman shining through.
The Reality behind the scenes.”
Again:
“The raja-yogin knows that the whole of nature is intended for the soul to acquire experience, and that the results of all the experiences of the soul are for it to become aware of its eternal separateness from nature.
The human soul has to understand and realize that it has been spirit, and not matter, through eternity; and that this conjunction of it with matter is and can be only for a time.
The raja-yogin learns the lessons of renunciation through the harshest of all renunciations, as he has to realize from the very first that the whole of this solid-looking nature is all an illusion.
He has to understand that all that is any kind of manifestation of power in nature belongs to the soul, and not to nature.
He has to know, from the very beginning, that all knowledge and all experiences are in the soul, and not in nature, so he has at once and by the sheer force of rational conviction to tear himself off from all bondage to nature.
“But of all renunciations, the most natural is that of the Bhakti-yogin.
Here there is no violence, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from which we have to separate ourselves with violence.
The bhakti’s renunciation is easy, smooth, flowing, and as natural as things around us.
A man loves his own city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense love for his little city drops off, smoothly, naturally.
Again, a man learns to love the whole world; his love for his country; his intense, fanatical patriotism drops off, without hurting him, without any manifestation of violence.
Uncultured man loves the pleasures of the senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual pleasures, and his sense enjoyments become less and less.
The renunciation necessary for the attainment of bhakti is not obtained by killing anything, but just comes as naturally as, in the presence of a stronger light, the less intense lights become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish completely.
So this love of pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim, and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself.
That love of God grows and assumes a form which is called Para-bhakti, or supreme devotion.
Forms vanish, rituals fly away, books are superseded, images, temples, churches, religions and sects, countries and nationalities, all these little limitations and bondages fall off by their own nature from him who knows this love of God.
Nothing remains to bind him or fetter his freedom.
A ship, all of a sudden, comes near a magnetic rock and its iron bolts and bars are all attracted and drawn out, and the planks are loosened and float freely on the water.
Divine grace thus loosens the binding bolts and bars of the soul, and it becomes free.
So, in this renunciation auxiliary to devotion, there is no harshness, no struggle, no repression or suppression.
The Bhakti has not to suppress any single one of his emotions; he only strives to intensify them and direct them to God.
“Set aside this apparent, illusive world, and by seeing God in everything one can find real happiness.
Have what you will, but deify all.
Possess nothing.
Love God in all.
Working thus you will find the way which corresponds to the Christian tenet:
‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.’
“The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya.
Take refuge utterly in Him.
By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change.
“When at the end of a time-cycle, or Kalpa, the universe is dissolved, it passes into a phase of potentiality—a seed-state—and thus awaits its next creation.
The phase of expression is called by Sri Krishna ‘the day of Brahma’ and the phase of potentiality ‘the night of Brahma.’