"God is love, and love is God. And
God is everywhere. After seeing that God is love and God is everywhere, one
does not know whether one stands on one's head or [on one's] feet — like a man
who gets a bottle of wine and does not know where he stands. . . If we weep
ten minutes for God, we will not know where we are for the next two months.
. . We will not remember the times for meals. We will not know what we are
eating. [How can] you love God and always be so nice and businesslike? . . .
[People] are all mad. Children are
[mad] after their games, the young after the young, the old [are] chewing the
cud of their past years; some are mad after gold. Why not some after God? Go
crazy over the love of God as you go crazy over Johns and Janes. Who are they?
[People] say, "Shall I give up this? Shall I give up that?" One
asked, "Shall I give up marriage?" Do not give up anything! Things
will give you up. Wait, and you will forget them.
[To be completely] turned into love of
God — there is the real worship!...Such should be the love of God — without
asking anything, without seeking anything. . .
…Worship Him as dearer than all your
possessions, dearer than all your relatives, [dearer than] your children.
[Worship Him as] the one you love as Love itself. There is one whose name is
infinite Love. That is the only definition of God…
…Now, if the woman loves the man, she
cannot love another man. If the man loves the woman, he cannot love another
[woman]. Such is the nature of love.
… [Similarly], if a man loves God,
how can he love anything else? How can anything else stand before that
mighty love of God? Everything else vanishes [before it]. How can the mind stop
without going crazy to find [that love], to realize, to feel, to live in that?
…Finding love, you will never [want]
anything [else]...
At last, love, lover, and beloved
become one. That is the goal. ... Why is there any separation
between soul and man, between soul and God? . . . Just to have this enjoyment
of love. He wanted to love Himself, so He split Himself into many . . .
"This is the whole reason for creation", says the lover. "We are
all one. 'I and my Father are one.' Just now I am separate in order to love
God…”
All the ideals of love — [God] as [our]
father, mother, friend, child — [are conceived in order to strengthen devotion
in us and make us feel nearer and dearer to God]. The intensest love is that
between the sexes. God must be loved with that sort of love. The woman loves
her father; she loves her mother; she loves her child; she loves her friend.
But she cannot express herself all to the father, nor to the mother, nor to the
child, nor to the friend. There is only one person from whom she does not hide
anything. So with the man. ... The [husband-] wife relationship is the all-rounded
relationship. The relationship of the sexes [has] all the other loves
concentrated into one. In the husband, the woman has the father, the friend,
the child. In the wife, the husband has mother, daughter, and something else.
That tremendous complete love of the sexes must come [for God] — that same love
with which a woman opens herself to a man without any bond of blood —
perfectly, fearlessly, and shamelessly. No darkness! She would no more hide
anything from her lover than she would from her own self. That very love must
come [for God]. These things are hard and difficult to understand. You will
begin to understand by and by, and all idea of sex will fall away. "Like
the water drop on the sand of the river bank on a summer day, even so is this
life and all its relations."
All these ideas [like] "He is the
creator", are ideas fit for children. He is my love, my life itself
— that must be the cry of my heart! ..."
-
Swami Vivekananda
