No Greater Love
Michael Turner
(c) 2009 - by Michael Turner
(Note: the following is based upon the transcript of a talk I gave on
the chapter, "No Greater Love" from Paul Twitchell's book, "Stranger
by the River".)
"'Love is the most sublime, having its origin in the House of God. In
whatever heart love blooms, that soul will be lifted and carried to
the highest abode of the Supreme Sugmad. All good virtues and
goodness itself will gradually find their true Home in the heart in
which love dwells, and all other qualities will wither and die.
So I tell you that where pure love dwells there forms a link with the
spirit of love current from its source, the divine fountainhead.'"
- Paul Twitchell, "Stranger by the River", pg. 120
This chapter keeps up the theme that Paul Twitchell has followed for
several chapters here, discussing love in its various forms. A couple
of chapters ago we discussed freedom, and how really the key to
spiritual freedom is love. It's not about waving some sort of magic
wand and freeing yourself of all your desires overnight. If you're
doing that, you are simply trying to use your intellect or willpower
to stop itself.
So what Paulji said was, that by doing the spiritual exercises, by
uniting our attention with the Ek, the Shabda, we raise ourselves up
above our desires, above our habits, our negative traits, into
spiritual freedom, which is the result of self and God-realization.
And so he keeps going back to this theme and approaching it from
slightly different angles, emphasizing and reemphasizing the
importance of love.
In this chapter, Paul looks at it from the perspective of sacrifice.
He uses the dramatic example of somebody whose grave they've come
across, who sacrificed his life to save the child of a wealthy family,
a higher caste family in India. And this was a pretty serious thing,
because in India the "untouchables" weren't even allowed to be close
to people of a higher caste, and here one of them actually saved the
life of somebody who was supposedly his social and spiritual
superior. But he didn't give it a second thought. The child was
drowning. He jumped in the river, saved the child and drowned
himself.
The point which is made is that we must be willing to sacrifice
everything for God, including our very lives if necessary. If we look
in the history of humanity we see examples in all faiths of people
willingly giving up their lives for the Lord. They do this because
they know directly that God is, and that soul is. Through their own
mystical awakening, they have seen that the Kingdom of Heaven is
within, and that shedding the body is no more difficult or threatening
than just shedding your clothes after a hard day's work and going to
bed.
This is not to say I encourage people to find reasons to exit the body
prematurely, or to be heroes all the time getting into dangerous
situations. Some people can take that a little too far. There's a
story in the Autobiography of a Yogi about Babaji, (a mystic who is
supposedly two thousand years old in the same body) living in a cave
up in the Himalayas, and a seeker climbed for days and days to find
him. The seeker finally pulled himself up onto this ledge and found
Babaji's cave with some disciples sitting around him, and he asked
Babaji, "Please give me Kriya Yoga initiation." (which is the path
that Babaji taught and Paramahansa Yogananda's group, Self-Realization
Fellowship, teaches). Babaji told him, "No. You're not ready." And
this fellow replied, "Well, I've been hiking, suffering for days and
days and days. My entire life has been committed to finding you and
finding God. If you're not going to give me initiation, my life is
meaningless. Why should I go on living?" Again, Babaji said,
"Sorry. You're not ready." In the end, the seeker basically said,
"If you don't give me initiation, I'm going to jump off this cliff,
because life is not worth living." And then Babaji said, "Okay. If
that's what you want to do, go for it!" So the fellow threw himself
off the cliff and, as legend has it, about three inches before he hit
the ground Babaji - in his astral body - stopped him, brought him back
up, and said, "Okay. Now you're ready for initiation."
Now the reason I'm discussing this story, besides its relevance to the
chapter, is that I've heard people since then describe stories of
being tested and being asked that if the master told them to jump off
a bridge, would they do it. And the spiritually correct answer is,
"Of course, Master! I'd do it in a second!" But being spiritually
correct is not dissimilar from being politically correct. No true
master is going to ask you to jump off a bridge just to prove your
faith. And if the question ever was posed, it would be hypothetical,
just to see where youre coming from.
So dying for the path is not a prerequisite. Dying for God is not a
prerequisite. All you have to do is die to live. And by death, of
course, we simply mean shedding the body on a daily basis, learning
how to consciously leave the physical form, as well as the astral and
mental forms, to be pure soul.
There are a couple of points here that I really like. One is simply
this point of sacrifice and service. A dramatic example of a
sacrifice is dying for somebody to save their life. But Rebazar Tarzs
tells Peddar Zasq that there are all kinds of ways in which we can
sacrifice ourselves. We do all sorts of things to help out our
brothers and sisters. We can do all sorts of little things throughout
the day in service to God and in service to humanity. We can't do it
expecting reward for it. We can't do it trying to spiritual brownie
points. But what we find is that, by serving each other, by really
listening to each other, paying attention to each other, loving each
other, we can become better servants of God. We can become better
children of the Divine by knowing that we are all brothers and sisters
in God. By serving each other in our own way (and each of us has our
own way of doing so), we open ourselves up more to Divine Love. We
open ourselves up more to the Harmony of Harmonies, and we become
distributors of It. We become willing participants with It, co-
creators with It, co-workers with It. It is one of the major means by
which God touches humanity. God sees life, in many ways, through the
eyes of souls. It touches souls through other souls.
And that is why I say we serve each other by simply being attuned to
God and being in each others presence. We serve each other by
laughing, by smiling, by being polite, by giving love, by giving a
hug, by opening a door for somebody (whether it's an older person, or
simply someone with an armful of packages), by not cutting people off
when were driving, by giving people the benefit of the doubt when
they cut you off. After all, maybe theyre in a hurry. Maybe someone
in their family is sick. Maybe they've had a really bad morning and
they're just not paying attention.
When we look at ourselves when we do rude things, most of the time is
because we're in pain, or we're distracted, or angry. And this is
simply a lack of attunement. Likewise, our brothers and sisters,
generally speaking, when they are in a negative space are operating
from the same perspective. And we need to understand that and not
shed violence and anger towards them when they give injury to us.
This is a great way of sacrificing ourselves and serving each other,
because we are sacrificing our pride. When Kabir says, "Cut off your
head, put it on a platter and present it to the Master." He is
talking about the ego, the chief of the passions, the vanity that sets
in especially with spiritual growth, the feeling that we're somehow
more evolved than other people, more special. Everybody is special in
the sight of God.
Those of us who learn to rise above body consciousness into the Holy
Spirit, those of us who learn to merge with It and unfold with It,
have a great responsibility. The responsibility is to use the
knowledge we gain, the wisdom we gain, the power we gain wisely. We
use it in service, and not destruction. Use it to build, to share, to
help other things grow. When we do this, we open up our hearts more,
our spiritual hearts, and low and behold what happens is that more
love pours in.
This is because the love of God, the wine of God, is infinite. It is
our spiritual hearts that are finite. Kind of like the Grinch in Dr.
Seuss' book. Remember that? Maybe his heart was just two sizes too
small. If we grow our hearts, and allow them to expand, more Divine
Elixir can fill them. The bigger the cup, the more wine it will
hold. The bigger the heart, the more love it will hold. And this is
the key to spiritual awakening. This is the key to spiritual freedom.
Its sometimes hard to grasp. Dont beat yourself up if you're not
the ultimate volunteer after doing a few meditations. If you can
simply look at the people you meet with a smile, a smile on your face
and a smile in your eyes, it clarifies things, it opens you up, and
the Divine Consciousness transmits to that person. And that is a form
of service.
It is also a form of sacrifice, because we are sacrificing our
distractions. Instead of buzzing around being obsessed with all of
our mental conversations and everything else, we are sacrificing what
were used to doing, what our habits are, and trying something new.
We start looking at people around us with fresh eyes and seeing that
spark of God inside them, and smiling at them, because we're seeing
God smiling right back at us, which makes us smile even bigger. We
dont do it with a desire to control anybody, to manipulate them, to
get a result out of them. We don't do it with gain in mind, or any
kind of motive. We simply do it because it feels good. It feels good
to feel God.
It's kind of like that bumper sticker: "Let go, and let God." When
you really feel God within, when you really start seeing God, it is
this great joy. You look forward to meeting people. You look forward
to being in the mix of humanity, because you can see these souls right
there, all around you, and you can just smile and share the love -
without ever even saying a word, except maybe "Please" and "Thank
you."
You'd be surprised at how many people will brighten up when you say,
"Thank you." Especially for little things. If somebody answers a
question or gives you something, instead of saying, "Sure," or "Cool"
or "Alright," say "Thank you. Thank you very much. I really
appreciate that. Thanks a lot." This in itself, because we're living
in a society of bad manners - and they're getting worse - this alone
can change people's attitudes for an entire day. My Master, Sri
Darwin Gross taught me that this was one of the most powerful
spiritual exercises possible. Just smile and say, "Thank you", with
love.
You want to help earth stop from going down the tubes? Be polite.
Remember your manners. Our mothers all taught us manners. We were
taught to excuse ourselves before leaving the table when we were
having a meal. We were taught to say Grace before eating a meal. We
were taught how to say "Please" and "Thank you," to say "Yes sir" and
"Yes maam" to people who are our elders, to show respect.
In the last thirty years we've kind of gotten into this thing of
discarding pretenses and shoulds and should nots and all these roles,
which can be good. Deconstructing old imprints can be a valuable
experience. But you have to be careful with this, because if you wipe
out all the old engrams and imprints so that you're clear, the real
question remains of what you are going to replace them with. What new
imprint do you throw in to replace the old imprint? And unless it's
an imprint based upon Divine Love, you might as well stay with the old
one.
The same is true in our society in general. Sure, we've liberated our
language. Sure, people probably should not be arrested on stage for
saying profane words. You know, Lenny Bruce went to jail many times
for using certain colorful language. George Carlin got in trouble for
it. I used to laugh my head off at it. But at the same time, now
we're in a situation where language on TV and the radio just keeps
degenerating more and more. It's like the old story about boiling the
frog. You all know the frog story, right? If you put a frog in water
and just keep slowly turning up the heat, it will boil alive, and
never even know it's boiling.
The same thing happens to society. The moral structure breaks down a
bit at a time. For instance, there is that bumper sticker that says
"(blank) happens." Twenty years ago you would have been pulled over
and given a ticket for having that on your car or your truck. These
are things that we do not need to see. Sure there's negativity in
society, but we don't need to add to it. Of course, at the same time,
you don't want to be a pious moralist, because that just gets you into
the game of being morally superior, and that doesn't help your
spiritual growth one bit either.
The important thing is, we need to do what we can to roll things back
a little bit on this planet. We've been teetering like a car on a
cliff for awhile going back and forth. Society's in the same
situation, because everybody's out trying to add to their own pleasure
principle. They're out trying to have fun, and they don't care at
what expense. So there is no sacrifice, and there's very little
love. It's not malicious. It is simply being obsessed with our
passions, being obsessed with our habits, and our self-fulfillment in
the sensual sense, in the physical sense. We're not just talking
about sex. We're talking about every facet of life where acquiring
more possessions is our primary point of focus.
And we can't go off on a harangue about the moral decay of society,
because there is nothing wrong with having toys either. You see,
there's a balance involved here. What we can do is little things. I
don't ask for big steps. I don't ask for people to change themselves
overnight, or change the world overnight. But what we can do out of
our love is to sacrifice things, little things, like being self-
absorbed to the point of ignoring other people, to wanting to get our
own words in edgewise first before listening to someone else to see
what they have to say.
And again, it comes back to simple gratitude and love. Even when you
get burned at work, when you get flamed, open yourself up to the
flames, expand yourself to the size of the solar system so that the
flaming coming at you is like a hummingbird's wing. It tickles, at
most. You absorb it and say, "Thank you." Because it is a way that
God is speaking to us, giving us a lesson in some way.
No greater love hath no man than to sacrifice himself for another.
It can be a little thing, like doing an errand before coming home,
even if you're tired, helping somebody out. Or simply just listening,
and saying, "Thank you." Doing these things will open our spiritual
hearts. They will open us up to the Spiritual Current, the Light and
Sound of the Word. They will make us more receptive to It, so we will
start to see the hand of God in life all around us. We will awaken
more to this Current of Life, of Light and Sound and Love, and it will
be easier for us to absorb ourselves into it.
The last thing Rebazar Tarzs says here is (I love this!), "To approach
the Source of Love, you must first approach and catch Its Spirit
Current, and follow its course back to the Godhead. The highway to
God lies within thine own body."
We get used to giving. By giving we release things. And by releasing
things we start giving up our habits. We start become detached from
our own self-gratification and sensual pleasures. And through
detachment we become less threatened when we have give things up
further and let go of things, and release karmic baggage. It's all
part of this letting go process. And when this happens, when we do
our meditations every day, we become more absorbed in the River of
Life. We pay attention to It. We honor It and supplicate ourselves
to It. We fall in love with It. We fall into Love. We let go to It,
and let It take us back Home.
"To approach the Source of Love, you must first approach and catch Its
Spirit Current, and follow its course back to the Godhead." In that
one sentence is really contained the essence of this entire path. You
can take away everything else in here, and you have the core of
Eckankar, the core of ATOM, the core of Sant Mat, the core of Surat
Shabd Yoga. It is the same essence that Julian Johnson read about in
"Radhasoami Mat Prakash" back in the 1920's before journeying to Dera
Baba Jaimal Singh in Beas, India. He was on a spiritual quest and
found a book that was published in India that had this very basic
thing. It spoke of the Ocean of Love, and said, "You have to catch
the Spirit Current back to this original well of Divine Love." The
ray merges in with Its Source. This is to me why this path is the
most logical, matter-of-fact and practical spiritual path in
existence, and the most direct.
But to do that, to let go to It, to catch the Current back to God, we
have to release all of our baggage, all of our attachments, and
sacrifice them on the alter of God, so that we can truly be free to
journey back without anything holding us back. And this starts with
the little sacrifices we make every day. Out of love for God, out of
love for our brothers and sisters, we learn to listen more, see
better, pay better attention to them, and do what we can to uplift
them, to help them out. For in knowing to love man, we know how to
love God. If we can't love our brothers and sisters unequivocally,
with an open heart, then we will never be able to love God and
experience God.
It doesn't matter how clever we are, or how smart we are, how many
secrets and tricks we've learned. It all comes back to love.
Any questions?
Okay, let's take a moment to meditate one more time. Sit up
straight. Close your eyes. Place your attention at the eye focus,
above and between the eyebrows. And together let us harmonize with
the return flow of the Spiritual Current by singing a love song to
God.
Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Thank you. May the blessings be!
Michael Turner
* * * * * *
"'True philosophy is that which leads the seeker to the region of
sublime love and teaches the way of traveling the regions where false
and untruths and comparative truths are prevailing, and reaching the
most sublime house of God.
So I tell you that the attainment of the knowledge and actuality of
love in the highest sphere of heaven is called true and perfect
salvation.'"
- Paul Twitchell, Stranger by the River, pg. 121-22
Google Groups: alt.meditation.shabda