University lecture — love and perfection¹

This evening, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to give a short talk on Love and Perfection. We are all sailing in the same boat, the boat of aspiration. One day this boat of ours will reach its destination, the Golden Shore, which is our ever-fulfilling and, at the same time, ever-transcending Reality.

Love and Perfection. Love is perfection and perfection is love. Love is the soul of perfection; perfection is the goal of love. Perfect love and perfect perfection are one and inseparable. Perfect love lies in our self-giving and self-offering. Perfect perfection lies in our liberation and eventual God-becoming. Love without perfection is a blind force; it can be a destructive force as well. Perfection without love is a precious jewel without a safe; it is impossible to keep that precious jewel.

Fulfilled love cannot and does not exclude perfection, for fulfilled love is itself perfection. Similarly, perfection cannot and does not exclude love, for fulfilled perfection necessarily carries love with it.

Animal love, human love, divine love. Animal love is not conscious of the soul’s life. Human love is conscious, but does not care for the soul’s life. Divine love is the flower and fragrance of the soul’s life. Love is reality’s life. Today we are nothing but reality’s life. Tomorrow we shall become Immortality’s life. Love and life grow together in the same family. Love offers its powerful arms to life, and life offers its soulful eyes to love.

God created the universe with His Silence-Power. He sustains the universe with His Sound-Power. In order to realise the highest Truth, our consciousness climbs high, higher, highest on the ladder of aspiration. When it reaches the highest pinnacle, we realise the Ultimate Truth, the Truth Transcendental, the Truth of the ever-transcending Beyond. In order to manifest the inner divinity that we bring down from above, we need the help of the cosmic Sound, the Sound-Power.

When we reach the Highest we become the realisation of Perfection. When we manifest the Absolute, we become the manifestation of Perfection.

Love is peace. Love is delight. When love illumines, it is peace; when love fulfils, it is delight.

We are all seekers. A seeker eventually becomes a Divine Lover. A seeker sees the ultimate Truth and cries for infinite Light, Peace and Bliss. But there comes a time in his life of aspiration and self-discovery when he comes to realise that unless and until he becomes a God-lover, he will not be able to fulfil himself. As long as he remains a seeker, God plays hide and seek with him. But when he becomes a divine lover and offers God his unconditional surrender, when he asks God to use him in God’s own Way, at that time God-realisation dawns in his life of aspiration and dedication.

All Masters of the highest magnitude showed us how love can be offered to mankind. When we think of the Son, the Saviour, we see nothing but a flood of love within and without. Once he was criticized mercilessly by some of his adversaries as he was walking along the road. His disciples asked him why he had to walk along that road when people were mercilessly abusing him. The Saviour replied that he had to give them what he had, and what he had in his heart was unconditional love.

The Buddha was prepared to give his life to save the life of a bird. In his heart of love, he felt his inseparable oneness with the life of a bird.

Gauranga, a spiritual Master, once was badly hurt by an adversary. He said to his adversary, “You have given me your anger, your passion, your undivine qualities. Since you have given me something, I also wish to give you something, and what I have is my illumining Love. I accepted from you what you had to give, so please accept from me what I have to give.”

A human being has two major instruments: the mind and the heart. The poor mind cannot grasp the meaning of love but the heart continually loves and the soul constantly supplies the heart with love. The mind finds it difficult, extremely difficult to love anything other than its own existence. And there even comes a time when the mind finds it difficult to love its own existence. It sees and feels a barren desert within and without it. But the heart feels it is the bounden duty of its earthly existence to accept the imperfections and limitations of the body, vital and mind as its very own. The heart, which has free access to the soul, has received this message from the soul, that unless and until all the members of its family become perfect, perfect perfection cannot dawn in the heart either. So the heart accepts everyone as its own and tries to serve, feed and illumine all the members of its inner family.

The heart comes to realise that human love — unlit, obscure, limited love — acts like an express train, whose destination is frustration. But divine love grows within us slowly, steadily and unerringly and proceeds like a local train slowly and steadily to its destination, which is illumination. The heart discriminates human love from divine love and then transforms the one into the other. Then, finally, it manifests divine love in and through each individual being and each creature in God’s Creation.

Love and perfection are one and the same. Perfection right now is a far cry, but today’s impossibility cannot remain impossibility forever. Today’s weakness can easily be transformed into tomorrow’s solid, adamantine strength.

The power that builds the palace of Truth is not the same as the power that destroys the palace of Truth. When we cry from the inmost recesses of our heart, we see the inner flame climbing up high, higher, highest, and the Grace from above descending. When we see the two of them meeting together on a higher plane of consciousness, we call that plane the plane of perfection. There union is perfection. When Grace descends, it descends in the form of God’s Smile. When our ascending cry and God’s descending Smile are fused into one, our love of Divinity and God’s Grace of Immortality become perfect in our life of aspiration, in our life of dedication, in our life of unity’s multiplicity and multiplicity’s unity.

Poetry selections

He paid three visits to God

He paid three visits to God:

    First time he went
    With a beggar’s humiliation.

    Second time he went
    With a seeker's humility.

    Third time he went
    With a lover’s oneness.

God questioned the beggar,
God smiled at the seeker,
God caught the lover.

I touched God's feet

I touched God's white Feet.
    Purity's flood I became.

I touched God’s green Feet.
    Beauty’s field I became.

I touched God’s blue Feet.
    Divinity’s sky I became.

I touched God’s gold Feet.
    Reality’s sun I became.

Even the thought

Even the thought of insincerity
    Is repulsive.

Even the thought of impurity
    Is destructive.

Even the thought of sincerity
    Is progressive.

Even the thought of purity
    Is conclusive.

Short story — the foolish, the clever and the wise²

"Master, lately I have been observing something very pathetic and, at the same time, a little amusing. I don’t understand why some of the disciples who have left you are now literally begging to come back. Please tell me, what made them leave in the first place?”

"My son, don’t you understand? It is so simple. Each one has a reason for leaving me. One has left because he has discovered that I am unrealised. Another has left because he feels that, although I do have realisation, I am not going to share it with him. He feels that I am a miser and want to keep my realisation all for myself. A third one has left because he has stayed with me for fifteen years without making any spiritual progress. Since he feels there is no hope of his making any spiritual progress or ever reaching my height, what is the use of staying with me? A fourth one feels that I am extremely partial. He has never seen anybody as partial as I. He feels that I show preference to some disciples who are far inferior to him in spirituality, who are absolutely undeveloped and impure. I show such interest in those people, but I have no time to look at him or even say a nice word to him, even though he is so spiritual and divine. These are some of the many reasons why the disciples leave me.”

“But why do they want to come back again, Master? These disciples who have found so many things wrong with you, why do they feel the need to come back?”

“Because now each one has been blessed with a different realisation. The one who decided that I was not a realised soul now thinks, ‘When I used to meditate with the Master, I used to have very deep meditations. But now that I am meditating alone, I feel nothing. Perhaps he really did bring down Light, Peace and Bliss.’

“And the one who felt that I was not going to give him realisation says to himself, ‘Is it possible for everyone at the Master’s ashram to be a fool? He has so many disciples. I thought that the Master would not give me realisation because he wanted to keep his realisation for himself. But how is it that his other disciples are not coming to this same understanding? If everybody else feels that the Master is a saint and I alone feel that he is a rogue, then I am stupid. The best thing is for me to go back to him again and see if I can receive something from him this time.’

“The one who left because he felt that he was making no progress and would never be able to reach my height now feels a new realisation entering into him: ‘All right, I may never realise my Master’s height, but I may at least get something if I go back to him, whereas since I left him I have not been making any spiritual progress at all. During the period I stayed at his ashram, at the times when I was not depressed or jealous, I used to get some inner nourishment from him.’

“The one who left because he felt I was partial now has gone to another Master. Now his feelings have changed. He thinks, ‘Now that I have gone to another Master, I am not getting even the little importance that I used to get from my previous Master.’ So he wants to come back. Each one thinks that he will get something from me if he returns, and this is why they now want to come back."

“Master, I really don’t understand how spiritual aspirants can behave that way.”

“Well, my son, I can make it more explicit. You see, in this world some people are fools, some are clever and some are supremely wise. People who have left me for various reasons are now coming back to me because they feel that they will get something. These people were fools when they left. Now they are coming back again out of cleverness, because they now feel that they were wrong before, and they will get something from me.

“But some people are wise. They will stay with me forever, just as I will stay with God. These people feel that the Master knows what is best and that the Master will do what is best for them. They feel that they are wise in always listening to the Master. They believe in the Master when he tells them that there is somebody infinitely superior to him, with whom he is in constant contact, and that is the Supreme.

“When they think of doing something wrong, they are terribly afraid that the Master will punish them or show them his indifference. This indifference is just like a death-blow to them. They also feel that if the Master makes a mistake, then his superior, the Supreme, will not fail to correct him, to perfect him and to do whatever He wants to amend the situation.

“It is better to be clever than to be a fool. If you are a fool and leave your Master permanently, you will ruin your life. But if you become clever and return to him again, you will definitely make progress again. But if you remain always wise, then you will get the utmost. Slowly and steadily you will go on making progress. Regularly, every day, you will get something from the Master. Even if you are not aspiring, just because you are with the Master you will get a little every day — even just one spiritual penny. But gradually all your pennies or all your dollars will accumulate and you will be a spiritually rich man.

“If you feel that one cent is nothing or that the coin is counterfeit and you leave the Master, still the Master will go on giving one cent or more every day to all the disciples who remain with him. Naturally their wealth will continue to increase, while yours will soon be entirely spent. So stay with the Master, even if you have no faith or very little faith in him, for you are bound to get at least one cent every day. And if you have real faith, tremendous faith in the Master, then instead of one cent you will receive a hundred inner dollars every day. Then you will make very fast progress and become a multi-millionaire in the spiritual world.

“People come to a Master and very often want to equal him immediately. Overnight they want to become as great as the Master, and they become jealous of him if it does not happen. But if you go to a big store and become jealous of the owner because he has many valuable things, does the owner lose anything or do you gain anything? You may try to steal something, and you may or may not be caught. But if you want to get something by hook or by crook in the spiritual life, it is impossible. You cannot deceive a real Master at all because he is one with the supreme Knowledge, with the supreme Vision. It is far better to be wise. If you can please the owner of the shop, what happens? He may give you what you want at a discount. And if you can please him still more, he may someday give you what you want free.

“The Master is very wise. He tries to please the Supreme, the Highest, all the time. Since he has realised God, he knows that he personally does not have the Infinite. Only the Supreme has everything in infinite measure, so he tries to please the Supreme in His own Way. Then the Supreme gives him the things that he needs. He just asks, and immediately infinite Peace, Bliss and Light pour down on him. And if the Supreme is extremely pleased with him, the Master does not even have to ask.

“If you also try to please your Master all the time, then I tell you he will give you everything in infinite measure — not only beyond your necessity, but beyond your imagination as well. The Master forever stays with his Master, the Supreme, who has infinitely more than he has. And, in turn, he asks you always to remain faithful to him, your earthly Master, who has a little more than you have. Stay unconditionally in the Heart of the Supreme, where you and He will become absolutely one, inseparably one. Do not be a fool and then become clever. Be wise from the very beginning. Once a little wisdom dawns on you, try to acquire more wisdom, abundant wisdom and finally infinite wisdom. Infinite wisdom alone can satisfy your eternal hunger.”

Song — Ekla ami tomar kachhe

[English Translation]

Alone I shall not go to You, Mother,
I shall not go.
Alone I shall not bind You,
I shall not bind You.
Your Heart’s silence-language and the illumined hope of this world and Your Heart’s nectar-flow
Are always boundless for us.
Alone I shall not go to You, Mother,
I shall not go.
With all I shall get You:
This is my life’s only aspiration, only meditation, only Goal.

[Bengali Transliteration]

Ekla ami tomar kachhe
Jabona ma jabona
Ekla ami tomai kabhu bandhbona ma bandhbona
Tomar hiyar mauna bhasha
Ei dharanir dipta asha
Tomar praner premer dhara
Moder lagi bandhan hara
Ekla ami tomar kachhe
Jabona ma jabona
Sabar sathe tomai pabo
Ei shudhu mor sadhana