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Ramakrishna Quotes on
Divine Love
- One is able to realize God just through
love.
Ecstasy of feeling, devotion, love, and faith –
these are the means.
- If you enter the world without first
cultivating love for God,
you will be entangled more and more. You will be
overwhelmed with its danger, its grief, its
sorrows.
And the more you think of worldly things, the
more you will be attached to them.
- The means of realizing God are ecstasy of
love and devotion – that is, one must love God.
- The one goal of life is to cultivate love
for God,
the love that the milkmaids, the milkmen, and
the cowherd boys of Vrindavan felt for Krishna.
- Faith and devotion. One realizes God easily
through devotion. He is grasped through ecstasy
of love.
- The bliss of worship and communion with God
is the true wine, the wine of ecstatic love.
The goal of human life is to love God, Bhakti is
the one essential thing.
- God cannot be realized through mere
scholarly reasoning.
- Try to cultivate love of God. You are born
as a human being only to attain divine love.
- Bhakti, love of God, is the only essential
thing. One kind of bhakti has a motive behind
it. Again, there is a motiveless love, pure
devotion, a love of God that seeks no return.
- One must go into solitude to attain this
divine love. To get butter from milk you must
let it set into curd in a secluded spot; if it
is too much disturbed, milk won't turn into
curd. Next, you must put aside all other duties,
sit in a quiet spot, and churn the curd. Only
then do you get butter.
- Repeat God’s name and sing His glories, and
keep holy company; and now and then visit God’s
devotees and holy men. The mind cannot dwell on
God if it is immersed day and night in
worldliness, in worldly duties and
responsibilities; it is most necessary to go
into solitude now and then and think of God. To
fix the mind on God is very difficult, in the
beginning, unless one practises meditation in
solitude. When a tree is young it should be
fenced all around; otherwise it may be destroyed
by cattle.
- The point is, to love God even as the mother
loves her child, the chaste wife her husband,
and the worldly man his wealth. Add together
these three forces of love, these three powers
of attraction, and give it all to God. Then you
will certainly see Him.
- The path of knowledge leads to Truth, as
does the path that combines knowledge and love.
The path of love, too, leads to this goal. The
way of love is as true as the way of knowledge.
All paths ultimately lead to the same Truth. But
as long as God keeps the feeling of ego in us,
it is easier to follow the path of love.
- What is needed is absorption in God – loving
Him intensely. The ‘Nectar Lake’ is the Lake of
Immortality. A man sinking in It does not die,
but becomes immortal. Some people believe that
by thinking of God too much the mind becomes
deranged; but that is not true. God is the Lake
of Nectar, the Ocean of Immortality. He is
called the ‘Immortal’ in the Vedas. Sinking in
It, one does not die, but verily transcends
death.
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