This is a selection of texts from the Oral Teachings of Swami Lakshmanjoo that explore why love is essential on the spiritual path.
“This internal voyage will be long and arduous. I advise you, therefore, not to envy your spiritual brother or sister. Be without avarice and hate. This path is tortuous like the path of a maze or a labyrinth. Concentrate on your journey alone. Do not find fault or concern yourself with others. Love is the answer and the key. Through love you can find the way through this maze. This is a very difficult journey, and the goal is not easily attained.”
Extract from Self Realization in Kashmir Shaivism – Talks on Practice, by Swami Lakshmanjoo
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Here is an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita Audio Series (Lakshmanjoo Academy Archives) Chapter 2, verse 68.
nāsti buddhirayuktasya na cāyukrasya bhāvanā /
na cābhāvayataḥ śāntiraśāntasya kutaḥ sukham //68//
The one who is ayukta, who is not aware of his nature, ayukta means who is not absolutely present to his nature. This being present to his nature is just to be aware of your nature. Because when we do breathing exercises this awareness fades off. We don’t know where we have reached. That is not the thing. It should not happen like that.
You must be yukta. Yukta means always aware, always aware of what you are doing. When you are maintaining one-pointedness, maintain that one-pointedness altogether. Don’t lose it. Don’t let it get lost in between, i.e., just after a few seconds it is lost, it is lost to everybody. But you have to find out; you have to be alert there. Ayuktasya, who is not alert, his intellect is not established, his intellect is wavering, shaky.
Nāsti buddhir ayuktasya, and that one who is ayukta, who is not alert, he has not love for it. He has not love for that practice. When he has not love for practice, how can he get peace?
Na cābhāvayataḥ śānti, when he does not get peace how can he get that absolute . . . ?
JAGDISH: Bliss.
SWAMIJI: . . . state of blissful state? When your alertness, awareness is lost, it means you didn’t love that practice; you do not love this practice. If you would have loved it, then that awareness would have persisted, it would have remained, so that mind would not have gone astray at once. It goes at once everywhere. That means there is not too much love.
DENISE: How do you create so much love?
SWAMIJI: Just love it, love your practice.
(Laughs . . . !)
When you love your practice, bas, you will do it. It is not in the hands of God. It is in your hands.
Create love!
Create love for God!
End of excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita Audio Series (Lakshmanjoo Academy Archives) Chapter 2
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Now Swamiji talks about HOW TO love. This is an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita Audio Series (Lakshmanjoo Academy Archives) Chapter 6, commentary of verse 16.
Just like routine, just like routine like.
ERNIE: Like a job.
SWAMIJI: Job?
ERNIE: It is not a job.
SWAMIJI: No, it is not routine, i.e., that you have to concentrate for two hours, three hours, bas, you will go and get yourself freed from meditation period. No, you should meditate with love, with affection, with love towards meditation. You should be attached to meditation then something, some good fruit will come out.
That is madbhakta. Madbhakta means you must be devoted to meditation. It is not only meditation that is to be done – meditation with love, with affection. If you tell your wife, “I love you very much,” externally, and internally you are not loving her, [then] you are deceiving yourself and her also. You should love with love. In the same way, you should meditate with love, with attachment for meditation.
It is why saints never tell lies. They tell whatever they feel. They say like that. So in the sayings of saints, you should not put doubt in those sayings. Admit them, take them for granted. Because they are madbhakta, they are attached. Whatever they do, they do with attachment.
You’ll take tea detached, in a detached way. You’ll take tea and talk nonsense, talk about that skylab*.
Skylab has bothered me very much.
DEVOTEES: (Laughter . . . !):
SWAMIJI: What will happen with these trunks at that time?
DENISE: I don’t care.
SWAMIJI: You don’t care!
Then, one-pointedly when you meditate with devotion and with love towards meditation śāntiṁ nirvaṇaparamāṁ matsaṁsthām-adhigacchati (verse 16), then you’ll be sentenced, you’ll be directed to that supreme peace of God consciousness. And supreme peace of God consciousness will be the carrier . . . will be the carrier. You won’t hold supreme God consciousness. Supreme God consciousness will hold you. You know there is much difference. You have not to hold supreme God consciousness. Supreme God consciousness will hold you. When supreme God consciousness once holds you, finished, you have nothing to do. You are rising, rising, rising, rising . . . there is no gap then. No gap remains during one meditation and another meditation. You are meditating always. That is nirvāṇaparamām śāntiṁ.
Matsaṁsthām, and that śanti (peace) is situated in Myself, My supreme nature, and you will achieve that.
. . .
There is a story I read in middle school. [One saint,] he slept . . . (I don’t know what happened; I don’t remember properly), he slept and found that light was shining in his room and an angel was sitting before him, and he was writing, he was writing the list of those whom God loved.
ERNIE: The angel?
SWAMIJI: The angel before him was writing the list of those whom God loved.
He said, “please see, is my name also there?”
He said, “No, your name is missing, your name is not there”.
He told him, he requests him to, “put my name [that], I love my people”, to put my name that, “I love my people, I love this . . . the whole universe I love. I don’t love . . . I don’t know God”.
The next day he found his list on the top . . .
DEVOTEES: His name on the top.
SWAMIJI: His name.
GANJOO: Write me as one who loves his fellow man.
SWAMIJI: So this is the real position when you love God. If you don’t love, if you hate people, you hate God. You actually hate Him. Because God is existing in each and every being. So if you hate people you are taken, you are carried away from God consciousness.
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*On July 11, 1979, with Skylab (US space station) rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station’s booster rockets, sending it into a tumble they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean.
Source: Bhagavad Gita Audio revealed by Swami Lakshmanjoo,
Archives of the Lakshmanjoo Academy
Copyright © John Hughes
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