Today Sri Swami Vishwananda tells us.....

As you all may know, the ultimate goal of life is to realise the Self. The soul, the Divine, whatever name you want to call it, is your own Self. In this daily life, with our daily occupations, the mind becomes very busy. We read lots of books, and talk about spiritual things.

There are many ways of attaining Divine love. There are many ways of attaining this unity, this realisation of who we really are. Each person has their own way, but all paths are the same. At the end you will experience the same love, the same happiness. For sure, some ways are longer and some are shorter. Some people like taking a short way, and some people like taking a long way. Do you like the long way or the short way? Of course the shorter way is better (laughs)… The quickest way is just to love.

This word ‘love’ hides a lot of mystery, hides a lot of secrets given to mankind. This expression of Divine love, pure consciousness, is who you really are. So many times we forget about it. We try to be separate from it. We have to continuously remind ourselves that we are this love. No matter what comes on the way, remember that we are this love. We are here to give and to share this love… to realise it. So how do we realise this love? We meet someone and say to the person, “I love you”. Don’t we? How many times in your life have you said to somebody else, “I love you”? Many times. But have you ever said it to your own self? “I love myself!” When it comes to loving one’s own self, people say, “It is difficult.” It’s difficult because you see all the negative qualities of your outer self, forgetting that this true Self, who you really are, is just pure love. So to give love, first you should realise love with your own self. Start loving yourself. Not in an egoistic way – some people think loving oneself is very egoistic, but to love the Self is not to love the body. Loving oneself is transcending the physical aspect. Through love you will develop trust and patience. If you have these three: love, trust and patience, you have everything else.

This reminds me of a story. Krishna used to stay in Vrindavan. He stayed there until the age of sixteen, and then he went away. So when he left, everybody in Vrindavan was sad and always thinking of Krishna. They thought that Krishna had forgotten about them. So, one day, Krishna sent one of his devotees, Uddhava, to tell them that he does care for them. When he arrived there, he met the gopis and before he could start talking, the gopis started blaming Krishna, saying, “Oh, he forgot about us. He has left us. He has given us so much love and then he just withdrew everything and went away.” Uddhava was laughing and said, “No, Krishna has never forgotten about you. He thinks about all of you everyday. There is not one second that he doesn’t talk about all of you. The point is: He had other work to do, and that is why he went.”

But they could not accept it. So they keep on saying bad words about Krishna, but in a more loving way. There was so much love in it that it didn’t matter. Then Uddhava gave the gopis a message that Krishna had given to them. Krishna said, “All that is and all that you feel is just a game. I create, I protect and I destroy everything by my own will. And it all goes back to me. Maya, illusion, has created a veil of separation. With this veil, you can’t see that you are all a part of me.”

That is actually why you are all here… to remove this veil. There are many lifetimes that you keep on with the same game. And you repeat and repeat the same thing, forgetting that the Lord is here deep inside our heart. We are looking for Him on the outside. We are looking for Him in this world, but we can just drop deep inside ourselves and find Him. Let go of the mind which is always busy looking on the outside. If we just drop ourselves deep in our heart, we can feel this peace and happiness and enjoy it. You will see how great it is, how great it is to love. Not just to say to somebody, “I love you”. But really to feel it from deep within you – this is the true love of loving somebody. It is not only for one person but for everybody. Love unconditionally!

When you say, “I don’t love this person…” I don’t love means… you love this person, but in a different way. The mind of man can’t think ‘no’. In words we can say ‘no’, but our mind thinks in pictures, and in pictures, ‘no’ doesn’t exist. It is only how we talk about it on the outside.

So let go of the power of the mind that makes yourself feel separate from the Divine, and be one with it. There are different practices to help with this. You can sing the name of God. Recite any mantra. Sing the name of Jesus, sing the name of Rama, Krishna, or Allah, it is all equal. All are His names. Become one with this Divine name. That’s what the word mantra really means: to merge and become one. Let your life itself reflect who you really are.