Parables of Rama
by Swami Rama Tirtha | 102,836 words
Stories in English used by Swami Rama to illustrate the highest teaching of Vedanta. The most difficult and intricate problems of philosophy and abstract truths, which may very well tax the brains of the most intellectual, are thus made not only simple and easy to understand but also brought home to us in a concrete form in such an interesting and ...
There was a man called Majnun. He was called the prince of lovers. Nobody ever loved as he did, but his love was for the personality, the body of his lady, and it was thus that he could not see her. This poor fellow did not possess the secret; yet he was the ideal lover of the whole world. He became crazy and went mad over his great disappointment and the poor crazy prince left the father's house and roamed about in the forest. If he saw a rose, he would rush to it thinking it to be his beloved one; the cypress tree he kissed it thinking it to be his beloved one; he came up to a deer and thought it to be his beloved one. That was his feeling; he had transformed these little bodies into the body of his beloved one, seeing that everywhere. His object of love was material and he suffered through it. This poor fellow knew not where to find true Happiness or God. Blessed is he who realizes the Truth like that Majnun, who realized his lady-love in the trees, in the animals and in the flowers. The poor fellow at last fell senseless in the forest, and his father searching for him came upon the spot where he was lying. He picked up the poor boy, wiped his face and said, “O my beloved son, do you recognise me? Majnun was staring vacantly, and he looked and looked, but to him there was nothing left in the universe. Majnun's whole frame was saying "What is father, what is father?" The father said, "My beloved son! I am your father, do you not recognize me?" He said, "What is father!" Meaning - is there anything in this world but my beloved one?
So long as Majnun was alive, he could not see his beloved one. But Majnun was brought into the presence of God, and God said, "O fool, why did you love so much a material, a worldly object? Had you loved me with a millionth part of the intensity of love which you wasted upon your lady-love, I would have made you the Archangel of Heaven." It is related that Majnun answered God in this way: "O God, I excuse you for this; but, if you were really so anxious to be loved by me, why did you not come as my beloved lady? If you had the desire to be worshipped you should have become the object, the lady-love."
You must have the same intense love of Truth. You must love your Atman; you must think It, the beloved one. Love It; feel, feel It, as Majnun did, and nothing else must come to you except It be presented to you as the beloved Truth. You must see the beloved Divinity in It, nothing else.
Realization means the same love of Truth as this fellow had for his material object, for the flesh and skin. When you rise to that height of Divine love, when you rise to such a degree that in your father, in your mother, in everybody you see nothing but God, when you see in the wife no wife but the Beloved one, God; then, indeed you do become God; then, indeed you are in the presence of God.
MORAL: Intensity of love means forgetfulness of everything else except the Beloved one. Such intensity of love with Divinity of Truth leads to Self realization.