Sree Krishna, the Lord of Love

by Baba Premananda Bharati

If they need little food they also need little rest. And when they need it, they just lie down on the cool carpet of the fragrant grass, for they have no other bed than this, because in the Golden Age there are no houses whatever on the face of the earth. We build houses for the same reasons that we wear clothes, and these reasons are absent in the lives of the Golden Age people. Their bodies need no protection from the weather, nor do they need external comforts, for they think more of their soul than of their body.

Their home is wherever they live and rest, its roof is the high vault of Heaven with its azure canopy, Mother Earth the floor, the trees its walls; Nature's bowers are their boudoirs. All created beings are their family, the whole earth their country. And the whole earth is one large, beautiful garden, the richest and most beautiful garden of flowers and fruits and songbirds. But more beautiful than the garden are the divine men and women who sanctify its soil by their walking, at whose approach near them the trees worship them with showers of flowers and offers of their fruits as love-gifts.

This is the long-forgotten, and now misunderstood, misinterpreted Earth-Garden of the Golden Age called in the Old Testament the Garden of Eden. They are all now trying to locate it, some people in Syria, others in Egypt, others elsewhere, ignorant of the fact that the Garden of Eden was located upon the whole earth. The word "Eden" even is the corruption of the Sanscrit word "ādhān" (Home). The whole earth becomes this "Adhān"—the Home of all humanity, of mortal souls, the Pleasure-Garden for angels on earth to roam about and sport in. This Garden is the physical manifestation of a higher plane, created as the abiding place of mortal man in temporary state of spiritual perfection. They live a perfectly natural life, feeling themselves as parts of Nature, breathing in unison with the breath of sky and air and tree and grass and beast and bird, their souls in tune with the souls of gods and angels and Infinity Itself.

Among themselves they feel a Oneness which only the most sublimated souls, who have realized their at oneness with the all-pervading Spirit, can feel. All humanity feels as one man, and the only distinction they find in this Oneness is in the little difference in the formation of the male and female bodies, although this outward perception of this external difference in some details of the physical structure does not influence the feeling of unity within. Still the difference creates this much distinction that the women and men sec and feel that they are the complements of each other and the difference in bodily structure expresses this fact. All men feel all women are as one and all women feel all men are as one, so that, such is the feeling of unity which pervades the Golden Age people of the earth that all men and women of that age can be called as One Man and One Woman. This is the state of the human society indicated by the story of Adam and Eve. Adam is the typical man and Eve the typical woman of the Golden Age. Even the names bear testimony to this fact. The word Adam is a corruption of the Sanscrit word "Adim" which means primeval, so that Adam means primeval man. The word Eve likewise is a corruption of the Sanskrit word "Hevā" or primeval woman. "Hevā" means life and love—mother of creation. From Mother Nature all things evolve, through the mother all things come to life, therefore is mother "life." The life of all things is motherhood—Life and Love combined is Mother. Mother! It is the music of the spheres—Life and Love—the grandest sound, the music of the Creator, one grand chord in the Music of the Universe. Love and Life—O Blessed sound, the Lord's Own Music—sweet, profound!

The spiritual beauty of these primeval people—the Adams and Eves—shows itself in their physical forms. Their physical forms, symmetry and expressions are ideally beautiful; these fashion and shine forth the spirit of harmony which dwells within them. It may be in truth said of them that they are made in the Image of God, and the truth of this statement grows upon us when we remember that they live and feel that they live in the Essence of Love—live and breathe and have their being moved spontaneously by the Spirit which is the inmost life and force of all Existence.

This is living on the Tree of Life and eating the fruit thereof mentioned metaphorically in the Old Testament. Love, Universal Love, unmixed, Absolute Love is the only Life. When we lose sight of this Ideal, this substance of life, we fall. So long as our minds are filled from within with this Love, this Radiance of God, and we think, move and act by its influence and promptings, so long do we really live the Life which is our real heritage from God. The Golden Age people live this life moved by the Spirit within them, the Spirit-Life that makes life an ecstasy unto itself. This Life of Joy Absolute is illumined by its own Light by the aid of which they sec all Nature as through a transparent glass, they see everything with the ensouled mind's eye— not by the physical eye—for they live within that ensouled mind and rarely come out to the surface called the physical plane. When they do, they feel as if the experiences of that physical plane are, as it were, the experiences of a dream, while the experiences of the ensouled mind they feel as the Reality, the only Reality.

I have already said that the three Cardinal Attributes, (Sattwa, Rāja and Tama) Illumination, Activity and Darkness, are the joint parents of the Principles which compose all creation. When the forces of these Attributes fall into equilibrium, the dissolution of the universe takes place and the equalized Attributes merge into one another and become transformed into a substance quite different from their own. That substance is called Shuddha Sattwa—Pure Illumination. In Sattwa there is a mixture of some Rāja and Tama; in Rāja there is a mixture of some Sattwa and Tama: similarly, in Tama, there is some mixture of Sattwa and Rāja. In Shuddha Sattwa, the Sattwa is free from the other two attributes. Krishna (Absolute Love) is Purest Sattwa. The equalizing of the forces of the Attributes transforms them into Pure Illumination no doubt, but the transformation is temporary. Krishna (Absolute Love) is Permanent Purest Illumination. But even the temporary attainment, by the Attributes, of the Shuddha Sattwa state makes them for the time being the same substance as this First Principle and brings about their absorption into it as long as they keep in that state. This is almost exactly as the germ of a tree remains merged in and becomes part and parcel of the kernel of its seed. And as when the seed is put into the soil, the action of germination separates from that kernel the germ which then grows into a tree, so when in time the forces of the merged Attributes fall out of equilibrium by Rāja (Activity) asserting itself, they get separated and manifest themselves into the Universe. At first the activity of Rāja is feeble and Sattwa predominates. Out of predominant Sattwa springs the Mind, Rāja brings forth the Ten Senses and Tama the Five Essences and the Five Gross Forms of matter. And all objects and animals and men and gods and earth and heaven are but different degrees of blendings of the Three Attributes.

The Satya Yuga (Golden Age) at the beginning of creation is so full of Sattwa (Illumination) that all Nature is made of materials almost transparent as ether. The matter of this first Golden Age is so fine that it would be invisible to the eye of our gross flesh of this distant Kali (Iron Age). Even in the last Golden Age, Nature was made up of such fine matter that it would look, to our gross vision of this day, as pictures of light.

Why is Nature in the Golden Age so ethereal? Because the Attribute of Illumination is predominant in that cycle. All is Illumination, within and without. Through this illumination the Golden Age people see the Steady, Changeless substance which is the Life and Light of which the outer universe is but the shadow. And with the spirit of this Changeless Love and Life and Light in One before their mind's vision, they cannot but feel that its distorted, changeful manifestations called objects are made of fabrics of which dreams are made of. Even they themselves are etheric and irridescent, not visible to the physical eye of the Dark Age, but always visible to the inner eye of men of any age—to the eye of the highly evolved man whose sight is more spiritual than physical. Ether is cognized through etheric vibrations—light alone recognizes light.

For the First Quarter of the Satya Yuga or Golden Age (One Thousand Divine Years) this perfect state of Universal Holiness prevails on earth and among mankind. This is the original of the recorded vision said to have been seen by St. John the Divine as embodied in Chapters 20, 21 and 22 of his Revelations. This is the Millennium spoken of in the Holy Bible when Satan (Sin—Tama—Darkness), it is said, will be bound and cast into a bottomless pit, shut up and set a seal upon, and holiness will become triumphant throughout the world. This means the predominance of Sattwa (Illumination) in man and Nature and Tama (darkness) will be drowned under it. The people will live on the fruits of the Tree of Life—in the Essence of Love. They will live face to face with God, that is, in perfect realization of His Spirit—Love. This Millennium will begin with the First Quarter of the coming Satya Yuga (Golden Age), the New Divine cycle which will be ushered in after the expiration of the Kali Yuga (also called Iron or Dark Age) we are now living in. That time is far away yet, how far I shall in a succeeding Section attempt to indicate.