THE SUPREME LORD OF LOVE

 

George Arnsby Jones, Litt.D., Ph.D.

 

Before the creation of the universe  of mind and matter, God was an ocean of all consciousness. His nature was all love and all bliss, and he was sufficient unto himself. His basic form was love. No other being existed, and all was love. All creation was the result of love. The soul of man descended into the realms of mind and matter as a result of love, and the path of return to his true spiritual home is the mystical path of love. Every electron, every atom, every particle of dust in creation is imbued with love. There is no void, no place where love is not, no place where love is non-existent.

 

The meaning of supreme love, which is of God, is only apprehended when the lover merges himself with the object of his love. It is a surrender of the self to the Beloved. “I have become you, and you me.” Was the joyous affirmation of Shamas-I-Tabrez. “I have become a body and you have become my soul, my very life; so much so that none can say we have a separate entity.” Kabir also referred to this merging with the divinity of love: “Now I am one with thee and feel satiated and blessed…. Having reached the highest abode, I am  one with Him; so much so that one cannot distinguish Kabir from God.” And Christ affirmed: “I am my and father are one. He that seeth me hath seen the father.”

 

When the lover gives away his heart of love, he casts his gaze upon his beloved and transmits waves of loving devotion towards him. He sees no faults or errors in the being of the Beloved; he has become a servant of the beloved, and separation from the beloved brings despair and anguish. “The home of the Beloved is far off,” lamented Farid ud-Din Attar. “The road which leads to it is filled with mire on account of rain, but the lover has only the thought of the Beloved in his heart. When he walks on such a road his clothes become wet and he slips at every step on account of the mud. But he does not care and goes forward somehow. He does not wish to break the continuity of his love, and he cries out: ‘O God! This rain should be torrential rain and this blanket of mine should be drenched.’ With these words he goes on to meet his beloved so that his love may not wane.”

 

Love of the supreme Lord, who himself is all-love, necessitates constant remembrance of the Lord. “O God if it pleases you, then only does one really and truly try to love”, proclaimed Guru Nanak, “and the love of your devotees is constantly directed towards you. In such a state of love they do not care to sleep. They are not arrogant, because their minds are fully concentrated in your remembrance.” The lover becomes forgetful of his own petty self and concentrates his intense love for the Lord at the seat of the soul behind the two eyes. “if the thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”, said Chirst; and Guru Arjun stated: “The blessed form of the Master is in my forehead. Whenever I look within, I see him there.”

 

When the lovers attention is focused at the seat of the soul, his love is like a small drop of water that has suddenly become transformed into an ocean of consciousness. Love thus concentrated within the sanctuary of the soul becomes the greatest force in the cosmos, and a true lover of the Supreme Lord emerges as an emperor of emperors. He loses himself in the bliss of merging with the Supreme Lord, and thus he becomes a liberated soul, freed from the wheel of births and deaths. In the BhagavadGita, Lord Krishna states: “Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you give, whatever you worship, whatever penances you perform, O Arjuna, surrender them all to me; because by doing so you will be free from the consequences of actions, traversing the path of Renunciation, you will attain liberation and will merge with me.”

 

This liberating of the soul through love is no meaningless abstraction; it is a dynamic and conscious vivifying of the soul’s energies – which are the essence of God – that enables the lover to merge himself for ever in the consciousness of the Supreme Lord. “Give thy body and mind to him who has no desire of his own,” said Kabir; “With no thought of the self, be established in him; after the mind, what then remains? Not even the body…… Along with body and mind part thou with the seed-mind; O Kabir     ! Only after hearing the Master one becomes fearless; place the seed-mind at the altar of the Lotus Feet of the Master. O Kabir! Now one sees nothing but the Luminous Form of the Master!”

 

Love is a universal symphony whose melodies and harmonies can never be adequately described in words. Love is an agony of inexpressible sweetness. He who has attained the heart of love would never be able to forget this experience even if he lived a billion more lives upon this planet. A true saint, a mystic adept is one who is intoxicated with the love of the Supreme Lord, and if we look deeply into the eyes of such a holy man, we may discover what the nature of true love is. “You behold the face of the Beloved with the eye of love,” said Hafiz, “for the luster of his eyes spread from pole to pole.” And Maulana Rumi has also informed us: “The face of a saint is the answer to every question, because in his presence all our difficulties are automatically resolved without even mentioning them.”

 

Love transcends intellect, reason, knowledge and emotion; and the highest saint is one who has become merged with the Lord of Love, and who is thus an embodiment of the Lord of Love. “if you wish to meet  the Lord ,” stated Maulana Rumi, “go and sit at he Lotus feet of a saint; because his company, even for a moment, is better than a hundred years of sincere prayer.” Surrender of the self in love demands that the mind should become as clear as a polished mirror, cleansed of all stray thoughts and desires. If we entertain thoughts of greed and desire in our hearts, we can never attain the heart of love. “Devotion consists in withdrawing one’s love, ideas and thoughts from worldly objects,” stated Shandlya rishi, “and in thinking of the Lord alone, and keeping oneself wholly engrossed in this thought. It leads to lasting communion or contact with the Lord, by withdrawing one’s attention from the objects of the world.”

 

It is through one-pointed love alone that mystic adepts attain communion with the Supreme Lord. Love does not vacillate between condition of begin in love and the condition of being out of love. True love is eternal. If there comes a condition of loveliness in the life of any person, then there was no true love in the first place. “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” Wrote Williams Shakespeare in one of his most beautiful sonnets, thus proclaiming an eternal spiritual truth. Love is not conditioned or altered by the fluctuations of the emotions, because a true lover is constantly engaged in adoration of the beloved. “Whoever has love, has found him,” wrote Tulsi Sahib, a great Indian Saint, in his Ghat Ramayana. And he continued: “Without love nobody has achieved anything on this path.”

 

God is omnipresent and permanent, and love – being of the essence and essential nature of God – is also omnipresent and permanent. Once the magnetic power of love is firmly established in the heart of the spiritual aspirant, it can never be banished from his consciousness. Mira Bai, another holy mystic, has said: “The world is happy with the intoxication of wine, but I have drunk deep form the fountain of love and devotion. Day and night I am intoxicated with its bliss.” Condemned by impious bigots Mira Bai drank a cup of poison as if it was the sweetest elixir of life. Love has been a condition of all the ages, for there was never a time when love did not exist. But man is the pinnacle of God’s creation in this world, and so he is able to experience love in all its fullness and sublimity.

 

The love of a God-realized mystic adept is of the love of God; and if the devotees of the  mystic adept love him too, they will experience the majesty and splendor of the Supreme Lord. But such devotional love must be given without any thought of personal reward, as Guru Arjun Singh has pointed out: “We should worship God day and night. In this there should be no lethargy and negligence. And the way to worship of the Master with love and devotion having abjured pride and obduracy.” And Guru Ram Das has confirmed such an attitude of selfless devotion to the mystic adept; “only such service as is acceptable and pleasing to the Master is rewarding. And if he is pleased, all our evil karmas are obliterated. Indeed, by serving the Master we achieve God-realization. But if a person serve the Master for his own personal gain, that service goes unrewarded.” And Kabir ahs also said: “whoever is prepared to sacrifice himself can drink from the cup of love; but neither a greedy person not a selfish one can do so, even though he may swear by love and talk of love.”

 

An awakened soul, purified in the living waters of love, is the beautiful friend of all beings. To the spiritual devotee such a saint is the living embodiment of all loving friendship. “Beloved, I can think of no other,” said Ansari of Heart, “for in thy love I care for none else. My heart is thy dwelling place, for it has no room for any other.” And Bu Ali Kalander, another eastern sage, affirmed: “There is no room in my heart save for my friend, for none else can enter the private chamber of the King.” Such an abiding love has no room for duality, as Bu Ali Kalander further stated: “When I took two steps on the path of love, shorn was I completely of the distinction between belief and disbelief.”

 

God is beyond duality, and love is beyond duality. True love, therefore, cannot debase the lover, for it is wholly a power of spiritual elevation. Love ennobles and sustains the lover; it has as its true essence a simplicity and purity of motive. It sustains life throughout the entire cosmic universe; and even in the darkest depths of the lowest astral hell there is a redeeming spark of love. And the most depraved entity may be saved, if he would but reach out for that liberating flame. Love is a cohesive and unifying force; we are bound together by ties of love, whether we realize this or not. Love dissolves all evil tendencies and purifies the errant soul. Our faces reflect our state of mind, our wealth or poverty of love. Pleasures or pain, love or hate, health or disease, are mirrored in our expressions. A lover of the Supreme Lord betrays his love by the rapturous currents of love which emanate from the eyes.

 

God is love; and the creative word that brought forth the spiritual, causal, astral and physical universes is of the nature and essence of love. Love is the rainbow bridge of celestial light and supernal sound that the pilgrim soul traverses in order to reach the Abode of Love. This rainbow bridge is that creative principle of love to which great mystics of the past have referred as an abstract spiritual sound. Moses heard this inner sound when he stood alone upon Mount Sinai; Jesus heard it when the power God’s love manifested to him in the desert wilderness; Lord Krishna is portrayed as playing the flute of the spiritual sound in the Hindu scriptures; Lord Shiva, whilst in deep meditation in the fastness of his Himalayan cave, heard the same sound. It is the eternal symphony of love; and it is the only true path back to the abode of love.

 

Bells and gongs in temples and churches are meant to symbolize this inner spiritual sound, thus providing an outer reminder to the spiritual aspirant and devotee to dedicate himself anew to the path of love. Needless to say, this truth has been forgotten or ignored by the professional practitioners of religion. The word of God is love in action; and it is no mere coincidence that in the revelatory scriptures of all the major religions there are frequent reference to the word. The Upanishads refer to this creative sound as Udgit; the Vedas term it Sruti or Akash Bani; in Hinduism it is known as Naak; Islamic writings refer to it as Kalma; the Sikh scriptures denote it as Bani or Shabd; and in the terminology of the highest mystic adepts it is known as Naam or Shabd. In the scriptures of Christianity the following statement is made in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with the God, and the word was God.”

 

Through the grace of a competent mystic adept, the aspirant on the mystical path of love may contact the audible life stream, or sound current, as it is sometimes called. The mystic adept gives the devotee an initiatory experience of the sound current and reveals meditational techniques, which he must follow daily. The devotee is directed to sit in loving remembrance of the mystic adept, who is an embodiment of the Lord of Love, and to focus his inner attention at the seat of the soul in the body. This seat of the soul is also referred to as the “Third eye”. The mystic adepts refer to this third eye by its various oriental names: Tisra Til, Shiv Netra; Divya Chakshu; Brahmn-rendra; Triambka; Trilochana; Nukta-I-sweda; koh-I-noor; and so on.

 

At the time of initiation the mystic adept gives the  aspirant a spiritually charged verbal formula, which symbolizes the inner journey ahead of him and also provides a system of protective “passwords” on the spiritual planes. The formula is not repeated aloud, but is enunciated mentally. This inner technique also assists the devotee in collecting his scattered thoughts and holding his attention at the seat of the soul, the third eye center. This process of inner concentration automatically draws the soul currents towards the spiritual center in man. These currents are ordinarily dissipated all over the body through the minds preoccupation with the external world. The inner withdrawal of the soul is greatly helped by the repetition of the verbal formula. This repetition is termed simran by the mystic adepts.

 

“Real simran for a second cuts asunder the bondage of birth and rebirth,” stated Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru of the Sikhs. And Kabir compared simran to a rosary of the mind, which is far more potent than any outer rosary: “if you say the rosary of the mind you can have communion with the Master. When the soul has not become motionless of what use is counting on your fingers? You are counting on your fingers with you hands, but you mind is still strutting about. This is all futile.” Simran is the only technique suitable for contacting the divine sound current of love; and, as SwamiJi recorded in his treasure house of spiritual literature, Sar Bachan: “Save Shabd (the sound current), there is no other way to effect release from birth and death.”

 

when the devotee’s inward attention is centered with loving devotion at the seat of the soul, he begins to perceive the inner light, and the process of spiritual ascent is accelerated. The seeing of inner light leads in turn to inner hearing, and the devotee finds himself linked to the resonant strains of the sound current, the audible life stream. His ears are closed to external sounds, and he rapidly becomes absorbed in the supernal music of the spirit. He is drawn upwards into another realm of experience – a world that has far more reality than the gross physical world. Through is transcension of physical consciousness is achieved whilst living in the everyday world, and with minimum effort and difficulty.

 

As the devotee progresses on his inner journey, he finds that each level of ascent is more beautiful and more real than the last. Eventually, he meets the mystic adept – his spiritual preceptor – within and finds that the one whom he considered as an exalted human teacher on the physical plane is truly a radiant guide on the upward journey. Ultimately, he unravels the final mystery and finds that his spiritual guide and preceptor is one and the same as the Supreme Lord of love. Indra Mati, a fifteenth century queen of India, was a disciple of Kabir; but even this spiritual disciple could not grasp the fact that the humble poet-saint was God incarnate. After she had complete a course of spiritual discipline, Queen Indra Mati ascended to the spiritual heights, and when she reached the Realm of pure love she found that Kabir himself was seated on the throne of the Supreme Lord. When she returned to physical consciousness, she remonstrated with her spiritual mentor. “Master! Why did you not tell me beforehand that you yourself were the Supreme Lord?” she said. “I would have accepted you as such, right from the beginning.” Kabir smiled gently. “How else could I have convinced you, other than with evidence of your own spiritual consciousness?” he said.

 

 The world scriptures may tell of the divinity of the Supreme Lord; but the proof must be experienced by the individual soul. Under the guidance of the radiant form of the mystic adept, the aspiring soul is drawn upwards by the audible life-stream – the divine word or shabd – and ascends form region to region, plane to plane, divesting its outer sheaths, or subtle bodies, until it is revealed triumphant in its true nature of complete spirituality. It enters nature of complete spirituality. It enters a realm of consciousness where it recognizes that it is of the same essence as the Supreme  of love, and that the aspiring soul, the mystic adept and God are not separate entities but are one. In this realm of splendor there is naught but an ineffable ocean of all-consciousness, all love and all-bliss.

 

Thus the spiritual aspirant cannot become the recipient of the full blessings of love and knowledge of the Supreme Lord unless he receives these gifts from one who himself has become a living embodiment of the Lord of love. “In the sky has arisen a meteor”, proclaimed Guru Nanak; “only the blessed one with the grace of the Master can behold its splendor. Through the word, the Guru shows the way and the seeker attains fulfillment.” These blessings are bestowed by the special grace of God through a mystic adept, who is living pole of the spiritual power of love. Even when the whole world is immersed in darkness and destruction the loving devotee will constantly see the radiant form of the beloved before him.

 

People who depend on rituals for their prayers are those whose attitudes are fossilized into formal sterilities, but the prayers of a true lover rise beyond the state of ego or form. They are said in the stillness of his own soul, when he has risen above the consciousness of the lower world. And his prayer is a simple expression of love for the beloved. “Both within and without, live in his remember him inwardly as well as outwardly. In his worship make no one else a partner, for God is one without a second.” And Kabir has said: “Remember the name of the Lord with the same intensity of love as the fish has for water; for the fish cannot stand separate from water, else it dies.”

 

The spiritual aspirant is joyful in his remembrance of God and of the mystic adept, who is manifestation of the Supreme Lord. If such a lover of God loses his worldly possessions he knows that he has lost nothing. But if he has lost time that should have been spent in meditation and loving remembrance of the Supreme Lord then his loss is experienced in desolate pangs of separation. The true lover is no longer a slave to his emotions, for if love is served dutifully by the emotions, the fragrance of the lover’s spirituality permeates all about him. Heart reaches out to heart, and all are blessed with the healing currents of love. The supreme Lord , who is love, infuses the lover with constant awareness of his grace. This consciousness is transcendental and universal. Man, animals, birds, insects plants, trees and flowers respond to it. The entire cosmos is a hymn of praise to love, and we who are born into this world bring with us the gift of love.