True Devotion

The essence of bhakti (devotion) is love and not formal exercises in japa (recitation) or worship of various kinds. Worship should be offered to the Divine who resides in all beings. Love is God. Live in love. Love is the means of realizing the bliss of the Self, which is centered in ourselves. It need not be sought elsewhere.

It can be found within oneself when all thoughts are controlled and the mind is turned inwards. Dedicate all actions to the Lord. This is the highest knowledge. It is the summum bonum of existence. Love should become a way of life. That alone is true devotion.

Baba

We have to see it in our own life. How do we do that? If nothing is coming to my mind I just write down thoughts until I begin to get into it. Sometimes we have to write us into it or like when we begin to read a book, we have to read ourselves into it, before it gets more interesting and we get that absorbed that we forget time and space around us.

That is the inner level which has to be reached.

Live in Love

Live in love. Love is life. Without loving or being loved, no being can exist on the earth. Love sustains. Love strengthens. Love is the urge behind all adventure, all sacrifice, all success.

Baba

After watching for some time, I don’t remember how long it was, it seemed a very long time, there was in the dream the higher self and it was love, but it was also beauty and it was white light and what I didn’t know at that time, it was the refection of ‘that’.

That light could not reflect if there would not be an ocean of light. Without the sun, we cannot get aware that there is the same reflection of light in our own self. If we watch and take care that the mind is pure, we are able to see that light as the same ‘I am that’. That is self-realization.

But after I had that light self in the dream I knew that is what I wanted, but the watching didn’t change, I went on. I didn’t understand it and I had no idea how to understand it and that is what we learn with Baba.

If we listen to his words and think it over, we can dive deep into his wisdom and it his knowledge and through him and with him we are able to understand it and it grows inside in us as self-realization.

The Principle of Love a Powerful Magnet

The human being possesses the constituents needed for generating electrical energy, radiation and telecommunication. The whole world is filled with electromagnetic energy. The world is governed by the principle of mutual attraction. Green grass attracts the cow. The child attracts the mother. The law of universal attraction is related to this magnetic power. Rama is the supreme symbol of the power of attraction. “Ramyate iti Rama” (The one who confers ānanda is Rama). This Rama is not the son of Dasharatha but the spiritual Rama who is Atma-Rama (Indweller in every heart). The Atma is the universal magnet which attracts everything.

Today if so many people from all over the world are drawn to this place, it is due to the power of attraction. When you keep a flower here, bees are attracted from afar. They are drawn to the flower because of the sweet honey in it. Not a single bee will be attracted by a plastic flower. The sweetness that attracts people is prema (love). This love may be manifested in many forms—maternal love, filial love, fraternal affection, marital love, friendly love and so on. Divine Love is the basis of all these forms of attraction. It is a powerful magnet. It is present everywhere including in every human being.

Baba

Here Baba talks about that Atma-Rama, the spiritual principle in the heart, the indweller in the heart. We know there is consciousness and it is non-conceptual and unlimited and absolute. And we know the relative always changing reality of our world and the mind, not two are identical and the same in limitless forms and varieties, we can call it transcendental reality and he said it is not two but one.

But if we get to the principle of Atman, we have the lover and the beloved and love, there are first three, the subject and the object and what is between them, just being or love. We have the lover, the beloved and love. There are two a lover and a beloved but in the transcendental principle is only one.

But it is love and love is in the heart. And the indweller in the heart is the power of attraction, Atma-Rama. 

If he is the universal magnet that attracts everything, he is everything, there is only one.

We are attracted to our own higher self and we have to get aware that there is no difference, because with our senses we see only differences.

The Power of Attraction

The entire Nature is suffused with power of attraction. The world attracts one and all. This power of attraction originates from the changeless and eternal principle of Truth, which is the basis of creation. This is known as Transcendental Truth. It is present in trikālas, trilokas and triguñas (three periods of time, three worlds and three attributes). It is only one and not two.

Baba

If we have to tell something about the ‘one’ and only one, maybe it feels first like, what to tell?

How do I experience it in my life? It is a matter of experience and insights if we know how to understand it or not. On the level of the senses it doesn’t make sense. We look through our eyes at the world and what we see is that everything changes and we know from science that everything is relative.

We open our eyes and see only differences. It is a universe of multiplicity and diversity, not one person is the same as the other and we think it is amazing that there are that many different characters and bodies and such an endless variety.

So how do we understand the principle of oneness seen out of Veda and the teaching of Baba.

It was in the air during a Darshan in Ooty and it said, ‘I am that’.

Love exists for Love and nothing Else

Love exists for love and nothing else. It is spontaneous and imparts delight. Everything is permeated by love. Love sees with the heart and not the eyes. It listens not through the ears but by the tranquillity of the heart. It speaks not with the tongue but out of compassion. Compassion, kindness and love are separate words that mean the same thing. Love has many synonyms. Love can emanate only from the heart and not any other source. Love is immortal, nectarine, blissful and infinite. A heart filled with love is boundless. Just as rivers with different names and forms merge in the ocean and become one with it, love in many forms enters the ocean of the heart and gets identified with it.
Baba 

If we are in the mind, we will see everything but love. In touch with the Atmic Principle we get aware that it is love in disguise. The sun is always shining, but when the sun is covered by a think level of clouds, we will not be able to see the sun. 
The sun is love and if it is covered by the mind and the mind playing its game, we cannot see the sunlight, but only clouds. Nevertheless, we know the sun is always there, but we cannot see it.  

The Atmic Principle is Always with Us

Love is not something which enters your lives midway. It is the Atmic Principle which is always with you at all times. You should not allow this love to change from moment to moment. You must transmute all your thoughts into expressions of love. To regard whatever actions you perform as an offering to God is the best form of sādhanā (spiritual discipline). Whatever good deeds or spiritual acts you may perform, if they are not suffused with love they are worthless.
Baba

How do we see it in our own life. We have to listen to Baba's words. 
In the beginning I was wondering what it was about, I knew I should see it in my own life and go on no matter what obstacles are there, but it was not yet understood and confirmed, so I went on and questioned whatever came up in my mind and it felt strange sometimes, but we went ahead anyhow. One day I remembered that I had as child joy came up when I heart my mother's voice and it is the same with my daughter, I got aware that it was the same joy and the conclusion was, if it was the same joy it could not get lost. I had lost nothing with my mother and I didn't need to be sad or attached or whatever, because the same principle was alive in my own daughter and it will be alive in her children and it is alive in all. 

No Virtue Greater than Love

In this world, no other virtue is greater than love. Love is Truth. Love is Righteousness. And love is wealth. This world originated from love, is sustained by love and ultimately merges in love. Every atom has its origin in love. There are innumerable powers such as atomic power and magnetic power in this world but the power of love surpasses them all. Life bereft of faith and love is meaningless and useless. For humans in this world, love is life and love is everything. It is from love that the five elements (pancha bhūtas) have emerged. It is love that shines brilliantly in every individual. But human beings, not being able to comprehend the significance of love, at­tribute physical relationship to it. The love of a mother toward her child is vātsalya (affection). The love that exists between wife and husband is moha (infatuation). The love that exists among friends and relations is anurāga (affection). The love toward material objects is ichhā (desire). Love directed toward God in totality is known as bhakti (devotion).

Baba

If everything is love and we know it and we cannot see it anyhow or at least it had not been there and got lost somewhere, what to do? 

Why is it like that? Baba said once in an interview, follow the master, fight to the end, finish the game. 

Now my experience is after following the master that the reason why it was not there as love is coming also up as 'insights' and that is the following step. 

The Mirror of Love and its Reflection

Everything is based on love and love alone. The human being is born in love, is sustained in love and ultimately merges in love. Love is the basis of human life. But you are forgetting such true love and are getting carried away by the worldly and physical love, which is not love in the true sense.
Baba

This is a wonderful experience if we get aware that there is only love. After some months in Prasanthi with Baba there was all over love, but it was kind of awkward to get back in my country and to not find love anywhere. Baba said 'love only' and once in an interview I answered, but that is difficult in my place.
He didn't agree. I had the experience of the higher self in the dream and it was white lite and beauty and love only. So he was right, in that sense it was not far a way and I understood that it was close by in the higher self, cut it was not possible to put it into practice, because in my family we could try to put love and they went along with it, but it was not reflecting back as love.

We are Part of the Whole

The attraction that the vast Brahman has for the añu (atom) is the attraction of the whole for the part. It is the basis of all love—the love of the mother, of the father and son, of the friend, the spouse and even of the devotee towards God. The jīva (the individual self) loves the Brahman or the totality of which it is part. See all as parts of the same whole to which you belong. Then there can be no hatred or envy or greed or pride.
(Baba)

In a study circle we tell what comes in our mind about a certain thought, of course, it is a Baba thought. 
We can share and exchange, but it is the non-argumentative exchange of view, thus we tell what we think, but we do not expect to be corrected or commented, the other is also telling what he thinks about it and we share without that we know better or that we criticise and that is how our inner awareness is growing. 
We call it listen, think it over and absorb and in writing it down it is an ideal tool to think about it, because it is hardly possible to write it down without thinking it over and what we will notice by writing it down is that we get on a deeper level and begin to see it in our own life.

Love - The Basis of Creation

Love—The Basis of Creation

See in Me yourself, for I see Myself in all of you. You are My life, My breath, My soul. All of you are My Forms. When I love you, I love Myself. When you love yourselves, you love Me. I have separated Myself from Myself so that I may love Myself. My beloved ones, You are my own Self.
(Baba)

This is for me divinity speaking, the awareness of 'I am the One'. 
There is only one. To be able to talk on that level of consciousness, no difference between us. We are all the same. Only one love, only one being and that is divine. We are all part of that big oneness and we separated ourselves from him that he can love us.
We are all his own self, but that is again in duality, there are two the lover and the beloved, or better three, the lover and the beloved and love. 
That is a wonderful quote of Baba's words.