Loving God in Deed and Truth
Chapter 1
Loving God in Deed and Truth
“Give me your whole heart, love and adore me,” says the deity in the Bhagavad Gita. He calls this “the deepest of all truths” as far as the supreme religion is concerned.1 But how can we show our love for God and our devotion to him?
2 ‘Devotion implies obedience to the divine will,’ comments Swami S. Radhakrishnan, because everything else we may offer God already belongs to Him.2 Guru Nanak likewise asserts that a person who ‘hears, obeys, and loves God in his heart’ has greater merit than one who simply gives alms or practices austerity.3
3 Do you agree with these comments? Most sincere people would. But before we can obey God, we need to know what his divine will is. Where should we look to find divine truth?
Is Self a Revealer of Truth?
4 Some Hindu sages maintain that spiritual truth is hidden in our hearts and is revealed through Yogic meditation or by the chanting of mantras. On the other hand, Swami Satprakashananda contends that meditation without previous knowledge of God “is likely to be subject to fantasy, which cannot remove ignorance and reveal the Truth.”4
5 Highlighting the limitations of human reasoning, Swami Vivekenanda states: “[The] questions, whether there is an immortal soul, . . . whether there is any supreme intelligence guiding this universe or not, are beyond the field of reason. Reason can never answer these questions. . . . Yet these questions are so important to us. Without a proper answer to them, human life will be purposeless.”5 Since we cannot answer these questions by human reasoning, where can we turn?
Sacred Scriptures
6 Leading Hindu sages have always said that scripture is the means by which God reveals his truth. ‘The scripture is the only source of the truths regarding the suprasensible,’ says Sankaracarya.6 The Gita also declares: “Let Scripture be your norm, determining what is right and wrong. Once you know what the ordinance of Scripture bids you do, you should perform down here the works therein prescribed.”7
7 As a bee that desires nectar must find a flower, so a person who loves God must search out His truth. Swami Prabhavananda says: “God is, above all, truth. The man who loves truth must therefore in the end love God; the man who does not love truth will never love God.”8
8 In your search for truth, is looking just to yourself the answer? Why not look beyond yourself and examine scripture? But there are many sacred scriptures claiming to be from God. How can you identify the one that contains His truth?
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Can Rituals Perfect Our Love for God?
“We must not confuse [gauni bhakti] with the selfsame rituals, such as repetition of God’s names, hymns, prayers and worship performed by the followers of the Path of Desire. . . . They want something of the sense-world in exchange for their worship. Love cannot grow out of such bargaining.”—Hinduism at a Glance, Swami Nirvedananda, 1979, page 94.
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Is man capable of determining by himself how best to serve God?
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‘The scripture is the only source of the truths regarding the suprasensible’