Religion in the New Age by Swami Kriyananda

Author:Swami Kriyananda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crystal Clarity Publishers
Published: 2013-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Can Love Be Universalized?

A friend of mine in India once said to me, “My servant's son was recently murdered, over the debt of a mere few hundred rupees [hardly ten dollars]!

“I know,” she continued, “that we are supposed to love everybody, but how is it possible to love someone who has committed such a vicious and pointless crime?”

Love, under such circumstances, may not be the first word that springs to mind! I told her, of course, that she can love God impersonally in all. Unfortunately even that, by itself, might have seemed too abstract to her, for I don't recall her as an especially ardent devotee.

That lack may have been even deeper in her, for if she was like many people, she had quite possibly asked herself, “How lovable can God be, anyway: He who allows injustice apparently so to thrive in this world?”

I didn't bother to remind her that it was surely that boy's karma to be slain-an explanation which, although valid, if given at such a time would have been tantamount to saying, “He deserved to be killed!” Yes, no doubt he did deserve what he got, for such is the Law of Karma. It would have been small comfort to tell her so, however, and even less comfort to the boy's poor mother. Perhaps in some former life the boy actually slew his present murderer. But how could I, at that moment, even hint at this possibility?

One thing I did say was this: “Why not reflect on the many lifetimes it takes the soul to reach perfection? This fact alone, surely, should help all of us to feel deeply for other human beings, fellow-sufferers with us on the same journey. We are all struggling-some of us more consciously than others-toward that common goal.”

Paramhansa Yogananda stated, in his commentary on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, that the meaning of one quatrain (rubai) is that many of the souls that appeared as separate egos at the beginning of this Day of Brahma (which lasts for billions of years) will still be wandering in delusion at the end of that vast time period. God is manifested, however, in every human being. The one Divinity is asleep, as it were, in us all (asleep, that is to say, to our own awareness).

Eventually, the destiny of everyone on earth is to find the essence of his being in God alone. The forms we inhabit, and the qualities we acquire during our sojourns on earth, are often in themselves far from lovable. To hate any form or any quality, however, is to affirm it as a reality to ourselves. The changeless divine essence in us all is Bliss, which is infinitely lovable.

Both lovable and inspiring is the truth that the desire for bliss is the hidden motivation behind every action, both wise and ignorant. Look upon all beings, therefore, as struggling through trial and error toward their own deepest truth. This was what Jesus Christ meant when he said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.

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