* Extracts from Shree Maharajji's lecture *
Yesterday, I told you about the importance of the mind in loving the Beloved. It is the mind alone which has to love. You know what it means to love, even though you do not know how to do it correctly. Right now, you love for your own self-interest. You have to learn to love for the sake of the Beloved. Just add this knowledge to what you know already about love and loving. It is a very clear concept. Just as we love the world in order to attain worldly property, likewise we must love the Divine Beloved for spiritual attainments. Pay attention to both statements. Our past practice is to love worldly objects for the sake of worldly ends. Now, we have to love the “Divine Beloved” for the attainment of Divine love and nothing else. Other than this, the practice of love remains exactly the same. There are two modifications only. The first is that we must love for a spiritual end; and the second is that love should be directed towards Divine personalities – God and His Saints.
Why should we have a spiritual goal? The straightforward answer to this is that we are spiritual beings. We are not the body; we are the soul. If we were the body, it would have been proper for us to love material objects. But we are spiritual; we are eternal parts of God. Therefore, we cannot attain our happiness through material objects. What does “our” mean? It means “that which belongs to us.” And who are we? The soul. The body is not us; it belongs to us. When someone dies, we say, “He left the world today. Many people have gathered to pay final respects to his dead body.” What they are paying respects to, is the corpse. The soul has left. This corpse was there before, but because the soul was present we called it a live body and when the soul leaves we call it a corpse. The body is devoid of consciousness and is made of five gross elements. The combination of ether, air, fire, water and earth, goes into the making of our body. In fact, everything in the world is a combination of these five elements, and the body is just one them. As you know, there are different types of bodies in existence. Humans have a unique body. Animals have a completely different kind of a body. The body of a bird is again very distinct. You have seen many types of bodies yourself. Who has created these? We do not care to investigate who has created them; we are just fascinated by the different bodies and their unique features. Some creatures can live only in water; some can live only out of water; some can live both in water and on earth. This world is so awe-inspiring that we have not been able to comprehend what goes into the making of even a blade of grass. The greatest minds of the world have spent billions of dollars on research, but have not succeeded in knowing how the world came into being in the first place. The cause of this awe-inspiring creation remains a mystery. Look at a flower. How colorful it is! Who made this flower? A seed was planted in the earth and one day it became a flower. Did scientists have to make great efforts to grow a flower? No, not at all. The tree grew on its own; leaves came on the tree by themselves; branches came about; fruits and flowers grew by themselves. To build an aircraft, thousands of workers are employed in a factory. Still things go wrong with the machinery. On the other hand, this creation came into being by itself, without a visible creator. And it continues to be created daily. In the summer all the trees dry up because of intense heat. The entire forest looks barren. Then it rains and everything is green once again. No human interference is needed. You have witnessed a handful of these miracles in the world. You have no idea of the astonishing things that take place in the infinite universes? You have no means of knowing them? However, all these miracles witnessed in creation are a play of the five material elements.
