Sree Krishna, the Lord of Love

by Baba Premananda Bharati

The man who has solved the mystery of true pleasure that needs no re-eating and re-drinking to keep itself up, does not seek to find it in any food, or in any drink, or in any form or means of material enjoyments, knowing that it is the mind alone, affected by material objects, that cognizes pleasure or pain. The pleasure or pain which the mind feels on being brought into contact with the thought or influence of material objects is derived from those objects themselves; and so long as the mind is habituated to draw pleasure from such objects it cannot but come in for some sorrow, too, for objective pleasure is short-lived, and its cessation is sorrow in the least pronounced sense.

But we all want only pleasure or happiness; we hate pain or sorrow in any shape. If that is true, and nobody can say it is not, then what we practically want is eternal, unending pleasure; but we seek to find it in objects whose very constituents partake of changeful materials born more of pain than of pleasure.

If we can make the mind dwell upon some object which is eternally lovely and lovable, nay, even if we can imagine such an object, mentally create such an ideal object, and concentrate our mind exclusively upon it, then we can have a taste of that unending happiness which we all are seeking in vain to find in material objects. Then, dwelling on this Changeless Idea, the restless mind becomes fixed and calm; and calmness of mind being happiness, the mind is thus made happy by itself. Then it has known that happiness lies within itself, and within means independent of any concern with outside objects; then it finds that the coarsest meal gives as much pleasure as the daintiest of dinners, and that Adam's Ale is a more delicious drink than the highest-priced champagne. It has then learned to drink the champagne of the soul, the least taste of which makes one think the taste of the most delicious wine and food to be all tasteless.

But from such transcendental nonsense, as the materialist would call it, let us come down for awhile to analyze matter, the God of the materialist. Let us for awhile examine the making and the mechanism of the universe, and try to trace in the grossest matter the existence of this Perfect Love or Happiness.

I have already told you of the making of the universe, that it is made up of twenty-four principles; namely, Love, Universal Consciousness, Ego, Mind, the Ten Senses, the Five Objects and the Five Elements. I have also told you very briefly the process of creation from Love to earth. I need now tell you that every succeeding principle, as it is developed, contains the preceding principle or principles. A grain or earth therefore is as good as the whole universe in regard to its composition. There is but this difference between the universe and an atom of it, that in the universe all the passages of its twenty-four principles are fully opened, while in the atom all these passages are closed. But motion is the principal law of creation, of all creation, as every particle of it is ever moving in the form of change. The atom of earth, which is the smallest form of moving manifestation of Love through finer and grosser matter, moves backward now through grosser and then through finer forms of love-manifestations into the Ocean of Love again, from which it had originally started.

The process of this backward motion of material atom is the opening of the passages of its composing principles through repeated reincarnations. To develop from a grain of earth into a blade of grass is the first step, in which only one passage, that of Feeling, is opened. The blade of grass draws by the opening of this passage juice from the earth for its sustenance. Upward through myriad forms of life—shrubs, plants, vegetables, trees, lower animals, etc.—that atom travels, to develop into the first savage man, in whom the principle called Mind is for the first time opened, and along with it are opened the passages of Ego and Intelligence (called Intellect in individual souls); for all these three principles are close co-workers.

The most important stage of evolution is man himself, for in man alone are the passages of all these twenty-four principles more or less open. And hence it is that man is called the miniature universe. From savage man to civilized man, from civilized man to religious man, from religious man to spiritual man, from spiritual man to perfect, all loveful man, the process involves again innumerable incarnations. It is the perfect, all-loveful man, that reaches the original starting point and merges in the Ocean of Love called Krishna.

I am now about to put before you a proposition which at first sight may perhaps shock you; but I assure you that, if you can manage to get over the first shock, by the aid of an open mind and calm consideration, you may find that proposition to contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. My proposition is this: If this "formful" universe—if that word may be allowed—formful in every detail, has come out of God, or Krishna, or Love, can it be possible that that Source of the universe is perfectly formless? If formless, whence have these form-manifestations of that formless Deity come? How can forms come out of anything void of all forms? That is a hard nut to crack for Western theologians; while material scientists do not care to call that a nut at all, for they have learned to see nothing beyond matter.

I want you to think over this question with a view to draw the right deduction. Meanwhile, I beg to submit a few suggestions which may be of help in drawing these deductions. Forms coming out of anything formless is as absurd to common sense as it is to higher, otherwise called divine, or spiritual science. Therefore the producing cause of the universe, the first principle, is not formless, but has a Form. It has even a form like the form of a man, a form most perfect in every feature, a form of which the most exquisitely beautiful and divine human form is but a coarse, crude counterpart. Man has been made after the image of his Maker, says the Bible. The idea has been borrowed from the Hindoo scriptures, which in their principles are nothing if not scientific in propounding principles.

The Veda says that the Supreme Deity is both formless and with form at the same time. Just as the sun in its orb is the concrete centre of its abstract, infinite self in its manifestation of light and heat, so is the Supreme Deity, of which the sun is but a physical reflection, the Concrete Centre of His Abstract Infinite Self of His Effulgence, called Love, which pervades the whole universe and all space, as the basic principle of all Existence.