- The real thing is that you must love God the way a mother loves her son, a chaste wife her husband, and a worldly man the things of the world. When your love for God has the combined intensity of all these three, you will see Him.
- Love for God is very rare. If you have single-minded devotion to God, like a wife has for her husband in the beginning, only then do you develop love for God.
- When you have ecstatic love for God, you forget external objects, you forget the world. You forget even your own body which is so dear to you.
- The important thing is to love God, to have longing for Him. Then you may take whatever path you like, whether you believe in God with form or God without form, whether you believe that God incarnates as a man or not.
- When you mix with other people, you should be affectionate to them all, be one with them, have no grudge against anyone, whether a person believes in God with form and does not believe in the formless or accepts the formless and does not believe in God with form.
Love for God
- There are two characteristics of ecstatic love. One is to forget the world, to become unaware of everything external in the love of God. Chaitanya Deva would think that it was Vrindavan when he was in any forest and it was the Jamuna river at the sight of the sea. The second characteristic is to have no attachment to the body one holds so dear. The conviction of the body as the self fully disappears.
- You must love everyone. Nobody is a stranger. Hari dwells in all beings. Nothing exists without Him.
- Love you must, for God abides in all. But when you come across a wicked person, salute him from a distance. Chaitanya Deva did the same thing. He would restrain his spiritual feelings in the presence of those of a different nature.
- Prema means loving God in such a way that one forgets the world. To such an extent that one even forgets the body which is so dear. Chaitanya Deva had prema.
- Ekangi is one-sided love. For instance, water doesn’t care for the swan, but the swan loves water.
- Sadharani prema is that in which the lover desires his own happiness irrespective of whether or not it makes the other person happy. This is like the bhava of Chandravali. As for samanjasa love, you want to make your counterpart as well as yourself happy. This is a superior kind of love.
- The highest love of all is samartha. It is like Radha’s love. She was happy only if Krishna was happy. In this kind of love one feels that the other person must be happy, whether or not oneself is happy.
- Worship, oblations, sacrifices and such Vedic rites are of no use whatever. When you develop love for Him, all these actions of worship are mostly unnecessary. As long as there is a lack of breeze, there is the need of a fan. But if the southern wind blows, the fan may be put aside. What need is a fan then?
- When one develops intense love, one sees everything filled with God. Just like in severe jaundice everything appears yellow.
- When one develops love for God, one likes to talk only of Him. One begins to speak and to hear only of one’s beloved.
- Single-minded devotion leads to love for God. When love for God matures, one goes into bhava. When it becomes intense, one goes into Mahabhava. And lastly one develops prema.
- Prema is a cord which ties one to the Lord – He cannot escape when one develops prema. An ordinary man can only attain bhava. Only an Ishvarakoti can have Mahabhava and prema. Chaitanyadeva attained it.
Intense Love
- Without intense love, you cannot realize God. Without loving God, you cannot attain Him.
- When intense love for God comes of itself, rituals like repetition of the name, and so on drop off. When you are mad with love for God, how can you perform rituals?
- What love and devotion the gopis had! They would be seized with the madness of love just to see the tamal tree! Such was the fire of separation burning in Radha’s heart that tears from her eyes would dry up from its heat – the tears would just evaporate.
- Love Him. ‘Lord, can one ever know You without loving You, by only performing worship and sacrifice?’ Pray! Cry! Weep out loud to Him in solitude that you may gain such attraction for Him, such love for Him!
- When the splendour of love manifests within, God-realization is not far away.
- What does the splendour of love mean? Discrimination, dispassion, compassion, service to the holy, company of the holy, chanting the name and glories of the Lord, truthfulness – all these.
- Just as the tiger devours other animals, similarly, the ‘tiger of love’ swallows lust, anger and such other enemies. Once you develop love of the Lord, lust, anger and the rest disappear. The gopis (milkmaids) had developed such love for Krishna.
- The path is to cultivate discrimination, nonattachment, and love for the Lord. What kind of love? Such love that you yearn for Him with heart and soul, the way a cow runs longingly after her calf.