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VII
LOVE Q: Can psychic love reach the Highest Truth by its own power? A: Yes, certainly.
Q: How can one know that he has full psychic love for the Divine? A: By the absence of ego, by pure devotion, by submission and surrender to the Divine.
Q: Is psychic love always turned towards the Divine? A: It is sometimes turned to the human person, but it never gets its true satisfaction till it turns to the Divine.
Q: Is not psychic love the same as divine Love? A: No. There is a human psychic love also marked by selflessness, fidelity and self-giving to a human being.
Q: Can human love if it takes a psychic turn not lead to divine Love? A: One can pass from one to the other.
Q,: Can divine Love not be expressed through human emotions? A: How can divine Love be expressed through human emotions? It becomes then human, not divine. If you mean there is something corresponding but much greater in divine Love, that may be.
Q: Can one not realise spiritual truth through psychicised human love? A: No—one only gets faint glimpses of something, one does not realise.
Q: Is it not that the motive which leads people to begin Toga is divine Love? A: No—there may be a human love turning towards the Divine. But Yoga begins from many motives, not love alone.
Q: Is there no emotion in the divine Love? A: There is an intense feeling—there is not what men call emotion,—for that is superficial and transient. The intensity of divine Love never creates a disturbance anywhere in the being.
Q: Is emotion an expression of Ananda? A: How does emotion express Ananda? Emotion may be one result of a touch of Ananda in the consciousness, but it does not express Ananda. Ananda is itself its own expression.
Q: What is the true way to manifest divine Love? A: By a more and more selfless turning to the Divine.
Q: Is it possible to receive Divine Love before full transformation ? A: Partly.
Q: Is love the only power of the psychic or there are other powers in it? A: In the psychic there are plenty of powers— faith, psychic sight, gratitude to the Divine, fire of aspiration and many others.
Q: Is there any "abhimān" in psychic love? A: None. Abhimān is sheer egoism.
Q: Is not ordinary human love a shadow of psychic love ? A: No, certainly not. Ordinary human love is vital, emotional and physical and always egoistic—a form of self-love. The psychic element is very small except in a few.
Q: Can there be any manifestation of psychic love in the physical? A: There can be—it must have no taint of sexuality in it.
Q: Is there any psychic love in animals? A: Their sexual love is vital-physical—the rest also mostly. Some psychic element does come in the higher kinds. Some animals have a psychic affection for men. Q: How to distinguish between psychic bhakti, mental bhakti and vital bhakti for the Mother? A: The psychic is made up of love and self-giving without demand, the vital of the will to be possessed by the Mother and serve her, the mental of faith and unquestioning acceptance of all that the Mother is, says and does. These, however, are outside signs—it is in inner character quite recognizable but not to be put into words that they differ.
Q: Is there no use of mental and vital bhakti in our Yoga? A: Who says there is not? So long as it is real devotion, all Bhakti has a place.
Q: Is psychic bhakti the same as perfect devotion ? A: It is the basis of perfect devotion.
Q: What is the difference between psychic emotion and psychic bhakti? A: Bhakti is psychic emotion, psychic feeling directed towards the Divine, the Guru, etc. Q,: What is the meaning of "Prem Bhakti" ? In what way is it different from simple bhakti? A: I suppose it is Bhakti with love as its basis; there can be Bhakti of worship, submission, reverence, obedience, etc., but without love.
Q: I often feel an aspiration to see all in the Mother and the Mother in all. Will it be fulfilled? A: To see all in the Mother and the Mother in all is a necessary experience in the Yoga. There is no reason why it should not happen.
Q: Often a very strong feeling comes to me that I am very far from the Mother. Why do I have this feeling ? A: It is the feeling of the physcial or outward being which is by its ignorance unable to feel the Mother’s nearness.
Q: How to overcome this feeling of being far away from the Mother? A: The Mother is always near and within, it is only the obscurity of mind and vital that does not see or feel it. That is a knowledge which the mind ought to hold firmly.
Q: What is the right way of maintaining a relation of harmony and good will with others? A: In the life of Yoga it is the psychic alone that can do that. The mind and vital can only do it with this or that person with whom it has a mental or vital affinity and it is not the real thing.
Q: If my love is associated with demand, is it vital love ? A: Yes, that is the nature of vital love. It is based on desire and the sense of claim or sense of possession; psychic love is based on self-giving.
Q :"If you love me, I will love you" ; is this not an expression of vital love ? A: Yes—bargaining vital love.
Q: "Even if you hate me and do not care for me, I will love you" ; can this be an expression of vital love? A: It may be the expression of a certain kind of passionate vital love—but it can also be the expression of a certain kind of psychic love too.
Q: "I will love you as much as you love me" ; what kind of love is revealed in this expression? A: It is not love at all—it is commercial barter. |