Daily Offerings from Alokda

‘What is love?’ – asked a disciple of the Master.

The Master replied: “Tell me what is not love?”

And then to make it clearer he took them to the nearby fields where a farmer was tilling the soil while another was sowing seeds. Yet another was watering the plants while someone else was plucking them. 

“Here look,” said the Master. “The farmer who is tilling the soil is doing a labour of love even though the soil may not like this touch of hardness that it must bear, the upsetting of its layers of sand that has settled over the centuries.” He continued, “And the farmer who is putting the seeds in the womb of darkness and pouring over it the waste of earth is also doing a labour of love, for the seed is still hard and must soften through all this darkness and waste till it is ready to receive the Light.”

“And when it sprouts, the farmer puts a fence around it and prunes and limits its freedom lest it is not eaten away by the animals that sprawl around. The delicate and tender plant may find it hard to bear the touch of his scissors but this too is love.”

“And when the plant has grown and the fruits and flowers are ready, he carefully selects them and sends them away so that the flowers and fruits of his sacrifice reach out everywhere and bring new blossoms and more fruits and flowers. This too is love.”

‘But what about the plants and the earth’, – asked another.

The Master stood silent awhile as if lost in the wonder of love that he found everywhere. When he came out of his reverie, he spoke again: “The earth holds these and many other countless possibilities silently in its bosom. It waits for the right farmer and the right season, it bears the hard touch of the farmer’s plough so that one day the flowers and the fruits that it hides in the mud may emerge out of its dark womb and be offered to the sun. What else is this but love?”

“And the seed lets go of its hard crust, the plant of its shelter under the earth, its sap rising upward as an invocation to the sun and its fruits and flowers give themselves freely to the bird and the bee so that through their droppings more fragrance and more sweetness can arise out of the earth. What else is this but Love?”

And the disciples stood speechless in wonder and a fresh waft of air moved amidst them, – the wind that gives life force to the plant, dries up the farmer’s sweat, brings about the seasons by following the paths of the sun and carries the pollen far and wide for fresh blossoms. And the Master spoke not but the disciples heard in the winds a hymn of love whisper softly a song of hope in their hearts and a renewed joy in their souls.

Alok Pandey

We have stepped into a New Age. The past century challenges the old views and ways of life and to a large extent has either destroyed it or else is replacing it with a completer and more inclusive view. Each and every field of life and sphere of human endeavour is witnessing this change, this shift of paradigms towards a more comprehensive understanding. But even as this is happening and the debris of past imperfect forms is being cleared, it is important to be cautious of two things. First, in our hurry and eagerness to create we should not end up creating yet something imperfect and give it the name of newness. There is an attempt in certain quarters, for instance, to pitch their tents upon the grounds thus cleared and sell their products each as the new one. Such a ‘newness’ is at best a passing phase, an experimentation of sorts, before the true things can come up. The second danger is that the old thing may be passed off as the new with some minor adjustments or merely a change of label.
It is here that we need to exercise caution. For newness is often (mis)understood as something that is in fashion. It is also understood as something that dazzles us suddenly and caters to man’s grotesque need for an impossible miracle, impossible because it seeks for a miracle without fulfilling the conditions. But such miracles do not last and cannot be replicated for the larger good. A true and lasting miracle could take roots only when the conditions under which we live and labour are changed.

But what are these conditions but the very state of consciousness that we live in. If we regard the universe as a projection of the One Infinite Consciousness then each finite is only an embodiment of a certain movement or poise of this One consciousness. It is this binds us and creates the conditions we live in. Just as we are bound by the state of sleep and dream respectively and become subject to the conditions that exist in these states, so too our waking state itself is a partial and limited consciousness and subjects us to all that we create ad experience in this world. To recreate or create afresh and anew we must first change the consciousness in which we live or rather with which we are presently identified. We need to deepen, widen, heighten ourselves till the boundaries and limits of our individual consciousness begin to overflow on each side into the Infinite. It is this that will create the truly New in us, a new being who will see, understand, live and act from a new and vaster poise. It is raising the human in us to a larger pitch and scale, as it were, rather than multiplying more methods and techniques in the name of newness.

How can we do that? Therein lies the real challenge of the new cycle of evolution that calls upon us. Not to merely repeat the old formulas under new names, not even to merely tinker and polish the surfaces of life but to discover a new possibility and way of being that has never been so far! Time presses towards this change, our souls are called to this great adventure, the winds blow in its favour, the ground and soil of human nature is ready. All that is needed is the leap of faith and the courage to endure the process of change. The change is not outside but within us and it is happening. Only we must look and work in the right direction, and press and persevere till the moment comes when the limited circle of consciousness in which we had locked ourselves open at some vantage point and we begin to breath infinity and work out the dreams of eternity in and around us. This is the new possibility, the possibility of creating a New world that awaits us at this hour. Or shall we say that the New world and the New possibility have already arrived. All that they need is a steady will to enter into it, or better still allow it to enter into us.

We need to make the definitive choice, – whether to belong to the old world built with blocks of ego and division, watered by ignorance and desire whose best bloom is a precariously held temporary gain, a happiness mixed with suffering, a pain that can be ameliorated but not cured, a palliative at best. Or else to be born anew into the True and the Vast with its bloom or intuitive knowledge and spontaneous power of action, and behind it all that delight which is the batch and mark of the New Consciousness, the Delight that sets our souls free and rebuilds for us a life free of the stress of suffering and sorrow.

Alok Pandey

Attachment and love are close companions in their origin and yet different in their working and result. Both spring from the heart, – attachment from the surface heart whereas love from the deeper heart, the heart behind the heart so to say. It is like a seed that has an inner core, from where the tree or the plant emerges and drawn by the light reaches its true fulfilment. Attachment, on the other hand, is the outer crust, the capsule protecting the seed and providing it with all the experience needed while it waits to emerge. Meanwhile, the seed casts its roots down in the soil tying it to the earth nature.

Attachment, therefore, comes first and in the absence of the experience of love, it is mistaken for love. Yet it binds people only to the surfaces. Its sticky threads cannot go deeper into the soul. Besides it remains susceptible to all the forces that move on the surfaces of life tying all creatures in a see-saw crisscross pattern of the dualities of happiness and sorrow, joy and grief, ‘love’ and hate. These experiences eventually burn the outer crust as one begins to feel the inadequacy of it all and turns inwards and upwards. Then the true journey begins and love is ready to be born.

Attachment has its roots in physical nature and hence it easily tends to gravitate downwards towards lust, greed for more, various kinds of emotional and vital hungers, will to dominate. It develops easily with physical proximity and tends to slowly die down with distance. Nature uses this for its inferior purposes of keeping us tied to the forces of lower nature and the surfaces of life. The strings of attachment can start casting their web through any of the surface movements such as physical appearance, affinities, play of surface emotions, charm etc. But these things cannot endure for long when one has arrived at a certain inner development. Our being tires of the surfaces and seeks the Permanent, the True, the authentic, the Real and not replicas and imitations. When thus we begin to seek for the true, the beautiful, the lasting good, then love begins to emerge.

Unlike attachment, Love has its roots above into a higher spiritual nature. Therefore it always pulls us upwards at first through an idealised emotion uplifting human love towards some reflection of beauty and truth. But then finding this too inadequate it turns still higher or deeper towards its Source in the Divine through bhakti devotion. It is then that excessive attachments become an obstacle since they keep us tied to the sweet little longings and the small little pleasures that one derives through the bonds of ignorant earthly attachments. Since our emotions are locked into the objects and people we are too attached to, little is available to turn upwards and inwards. Detachment from the surfaces of life, from the rich relationships that satisfy the ego-self, is therefore advocated by almost all who have walked the spiritual path. This detachment however is not indifference, though it may seem so at one stage. It is a preparation clearing the ground for a deeper, truer, higher love to emerge.

When that happens then new bonds begin to emerge, no more directed by the needs and demands of the ego but by the cry of the soul reaching out to answering souls, the drawing together of kindred souls, of God-lovers and God-knowers and God-servants who meet in the ground. of the spiritual self that continues beyond the pyre and the grave.

Finally love always ascends upwards even when it ties itself to the earth. It binds earth to the heavens making our earthly life taste some harmony and bliss that is native to the higher worlds of Light and Truth Immortality. Its sign is a spontaneous giving flowing naturally from the inmost depths of the soul rather than demands and expectations to which our ordinary life is so prone.

To be attached is to remain tied to the ordinary earth nature. To love is to soar upwards, ever upwards beyond the highest heavens, beyond even the gods.

Alok Pandey