Reviews
"This book, based on the author's incredibly rich life experience, was written for Western seekers willing to listen to and deeply ponder the great spiritual truths found in the age-old tradition of Yoga and reflected in many other traditions as well. Swami Radha has definitely emerged as the leading interpreter of Yoga from within that tradition. She is someone who has done extraordinary work."
- Georg Feuerstein, PhD
" This book is filled with exceptional insights and engaging narratives of the spiritual journey. By intertwining Hindu wisdom with her Western identity, Swami Radha lends teachings that sometimes seem culturally foreign, a luster of familiarity."
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Publishers Weekly
"In these talks from the daily satsangs she had with her students, the late Swami Radha, gives practical and inspirational advice on service, surrender, intuition and the unconscious, and difficulties on the path. Her teachings combine psychological insights with traditional spiritual methods, making these talks particularly relevant for Western seekers."
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Yoga Journal
Excerpt
Love
Love is not easy to define. You may love somebody because that person accepts you, is nice to you, does you little favors and pays you compliments, or gives you presents and invites you to parties...because, because, because...When you love, there shouldn't be any because" and that kind of love is very difficult to imagine, never mind to live.
Mainly what we consider love" is a certain closeness with somebody or some people. That closeness we interpret as love." But if the closeness ceases, we feel we have lost all love. A great sadness occurs when somebody dies or is lost, because at this point we lose the gratification we were getting from the closeness.
But was that closeness truly love? We see situations in life all the time where two people love each other and everything is great. But it takes just one incident, one displeasing action, one thing that is deemed unacceptable, and love" goes out the window. Is that truly love? I wouldn't call it love. How many times does a woman reject a husband because he continually displeases her in one area, or a husband rejects his wife for a single displeasing characteristic? They no longer see the love that still exists in many other areas of the marriage.
The love we seek as human beings is an illusion. It's the fulfillment of the concept each one of us has about love. Instead of pursuing this illusion, I usually suggest that couples be good friends. If you can be each other's best friend, you will have achieved a lot.
I am amazed how quickly people will walk out of a relationship. Their idea of love is satisfaction, and they say, I am not satisfied any more. I have a need you don't meet," and they walk out.
Imagine if the Divine did that to us. We wouldn't survive. Do we please the Most High? We do many things from a certain sense of duty or as obedience, but that's not doing them for the love of God. We do very little for the love of God, and that is why we have so many squabbles.
I think the moments in a lifetime when we do something really for the love of God are so rare that you can count them on your ten fingers. These are moments when we rise above our personality aspects and really function through our essence. That's a particular state of mind and a particular state of consciousness, where we don't interact with anybody. When that happens, it's like a love affair between you and the Divine. But the reset of the time, you can only say that you are making the effort. Your effort is sometimes enough, and sometimes not enough, but you can't really say that you please God.
Perhaps there isn't any love other than truly Divine love, because to love us God or Divine Mother constantly has to overlook all our faults, mistakes, shortcomings, broken promises, and broken intentions. We are either scattered or we are rigid. When we are scattered, our devotion is just here and there, now and then - nothing, really. When we are all persistence and regularity, our devotion becomes routine and loses depth.
So what is our love for God? That is very difficult to say. We are of two natures. We have a tangible, physical body that live in a tangible, physical world which has its own reality. Then we live also in a mental world, where with our invisible thoughts we create a world of the unseen. We live in these two worlds, but most of the time we are not aware of doing so. When we go beyond our ordinary thinking world, beyond the world of our ordinary stream of thoughts, then we come more into a world of consciousness. But would you call it love for God" if you are very attracted to that other stream of consciousness? I'm not sure if I would use the term love." If you have an experience of that other state of consciousness, even just once, then that becomes knowing. You know that state exists and you want to experience it again. But I don't think we can compare that to what we call love.
When you are in a state of divine ecstasy, the word doesn't really matter.
© 1996 timeless
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