Divine Love, the End

Divine love implies two things: the feel­ing of attach­ment or affec­tion for the beloved and hap­pi­ness. How­ever, divine love is not syn­ony­mous with hap­pi­ness as a kind of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion. Rather than seek­ing any­thing for itself, it longs “to con­tribute to the happiness…of the beloved, even…at the cost of one’s own hap­pi­ness. It does not desire even the object of love, if such a desire hin­ders, in any way, the hap­pi­ness of the beloved.” (199)

Although the devo­tee does not con­sciously seek hap­pi­ness as per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion, the devotee’s hap­pi­ness comes “as a nat­ural con­comi­tant of the hap­pi­ness of the beloved. What­ever con­tributes to the hap­pi­ness of the beloved con­tributes to the hap­pi­ness of the per­son lov­ing. There­fore”, divine love “involves hap­pi­ness both in union and sep­a­ra­tion.” (199) The basic ele­ment in divine love is self­less ser­vice of the beloved.

Divine love directed toward God-dess is an expres­sion of the spir­i­tual energy of God-dess. It is awak­ened in the devo­tee through grace. The bliss of divine love intox­i­cates both the devo­tee and God-dess, result­ing in their becom­ing com­pletely engrossed in each other. There­fore, it has the power to com­pletely sub­ju­gate God-dess.

When divine love becomes strong enough in the devo­tee, it may man­i­fest out­ward phys­i­cal signs due to dis­charge of intense psy­chic energy. In divine love, “our psy­cho­log­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion is worked up to such an extent that it brings into play some parts of our ner­vous sys­tem, which do not ordi­nar­ily func­tion. It is these that bring about such extra-ordinary changes in the phys­i­o­log­i­cal appa­ra­tus.” (200)

The most per­fect form of divine love is eter­nally found in Radha Krishna’s female asso­ciates in Vrind­a­ban. They are our role mod­els as we progress through the var­i­ous stages of devel­op­ing divine love. First, one must have faith in Radha Krishna, the scrip­tures and saintly per­sons. Then one asso­ciates with saintly per­sons and has the oppor­tu­nity to engage in hear­ing and chant­ing. This purges the mind of mate­ri­al­is­tic thoughts. Then one’s reliance on Radha Krishna becomes firm. This “cre­ates a taste or nat­ural lik­ing for devo­tional activ­i­ties…, which fur­ther devel­ops into a strong inclination…for them.” (201) Then, unal­loyed devo­tion sprouts in the devotee’s heart as spir­i­tual emo­tion, which ulti­mately ripens into divine love.

Unal­loyed devo­tion is the begin­ning of divine love. “It is known by nine ensu­ing atten­dant cir­cum­stances…, which are enu­mer­ated thus: seren­ity of mind…, which remains undis­turbed, what­ever be the cir­cum­stances; effort not to let a sin­gle moment of one’s life pass with­out remem­brance of” (202)God-dess; detach­ment from sense objects; humil­ity; firm faith that God-dess will be attained; eager­ness to attain God-dess; taste for chant­ing God-dess’ names; nat­ural incli­na­tion to speak of God-dess’ attrib­utes; strong desire to live in Radha Krishna’s abode.

When spir­i­tual emo­tion is inten­si­fied and the feel­ing of attach­ment for Radha Krishna increases, it is called divine love. Noth­ing can break this affec­tion­ate bond because it is not self serv­ing and the lover is will­ing to pay any price for the hap­pi­ness of the beloved. This is a tran­scen­den­tal state that even the wise can­not understand.

Divine love can be real­ized while in the phys­i­cal body, but there are higher stages of divine love, which can be real­ized only after leav­ing the phys­i­cal body and attain­ing the spir­i­tual body.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 14:59 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.