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From Om to Rādhārānī

Om is both a word and a sound. 

What is om the word for?

All meaningful words refer to objects that give meaning. Doesn’t the word ‘tree’ refer to a certain perennial plant with a wooden stem and branches covered with green leaves? Doesn’t the word ‘golden’ refer to a colour? Doesn’t ‘brave’ refer to a person without fear?

All words that give meaning refer to objects that have meaning. All words, perhaps, except for one. Om is a word, discrete and clear. It follows all the rules of grammar, all the rules of sense making. And it refers to nothing. 

And yet, it is a word that gives meaning. And yet, we all know that speaking or chanting the word om has noticeable effects on us, on our health, on our well-being, our happiness, our peace and our serenity.

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What is hlādinī-śakti?

hlādinī-śakti [energy, ability, strength, effort, power that brings pleasure, bliss, happiness]

The Upaniśads tell us that the divine, the soul, the self (ātma) existed even before the universe. Cosmic creation took place when that divine substance expanded into matter in order to create all existing things. The vehicle for that expansion—which is still going on everywhere and at every moment—is energy (śakti).

Energy is not soul, but without energy the soul has no being, no life, no relation, no attraction, no longing, no desire, no zeal. In short: no love. Energy is not the divine itself; it is what brings the divine into being through potency of love.                           

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Love and the guṇas

O mighty-armed Arjuna, the three guṇas born of material nature–goodness, passion and ignorance–bind the immutable living entity who dwells within the body 

Bhagavad-gītā, 14.5

The meaning of life is to love, its highest purpose is to love God. 

If every drop of love that dwells in our hearts emanates from the divine soul within us, then it is also the nature of that love to return to its source. This is our most natural tendency: to love our way back to God, driven by a loving energy that is equally divine.

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What is anurāga?

anurāga [affection, attraction, attachement, feeling, pleasure] 

Feeling flows. This is the simplest thing we can say about it. 

Feeling is not like like still water in an urn. Feeling moves or it is not feeling. 

And where does it flow? It flows from something capable of producing feeling to something capable of receiving feeling: from a heart to a heart, from a soul to a soul.   

The essence of feeling is to be of a soul and for a soul. If there is feeling it is because there are (at least) two souls, one to give and one to receive.

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Love and creation

The universe came into being as energy. Physicists and philosophers, theologians and mystics agree. The creator’s energy and the creation are one. Creation takes the form of energy. But what does it mean to create? 

Creation does not mean the simple replacement of nothing by something. Such a creation would be empty and cold, without life, movement or feeling. The universe would be desert before creation, deserted after creation.

This is because the creation of life does not mean the creation of things that live. It means the creation of the energy that causes life to live. A universe full of things without life is no different than a universe with no things at all. 

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What is bhāva?

bhāva [mood, sentiment, spiritual emotion, way of being]

Attention to bhāva is the miracle of Bhakti Yoga. It is both mystery and perfect clarity. 

From the ego point of view it is nothing: trivial, superficial, meaningless: a passing mood, a fickle feeling. But from the soul point of view it means a way of being, a way of living, an attitude, an understanding of, well, everything. 

For the soul-being bhāva is the calm of the heart, the sigh of the soul, the feelingless feeling that brings us, without effort, without strife, without pain, closer to ourselves, which is to say, closer to the divine. 

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Rādhā is the source of beauty

I walk on the beach in the setting sun. The air is soft. The sand under my feet is warm. The rush of the surf quiets, as the calm of the evening falls. I feel happiness, a soft and blissful feeling covers me, touches my material senses and my spiritual body.

What causes this feeling of happiness? What does it mean? Where will it take me? What does it ask of me? 

My first and most natural reflex is to think that I have come to the beach seeking this experience, that I know when and where and how to enjoy it. The sunrise is a fact, the beach is a fact, the heat and the light, and all the beauty I experience are part of this world. It is a world that I can experience at my pleasure, at my convenience, on my terms, according to my needs. 

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What is rasa?

rasa [juice, nectar, transcendental taste] 

Bhakti Yoga begins and ends with feelings. There is no other pure source of meaning and guidance. The path of Bhakti, through teaching of guru or others is always to find and follow the narrow path of pure feeling. 

Therefore the guiding question is not ‘what should I feel?’ It is rather ‘what is this that I feel and where does it lead me?’ Thought will never lead to feeling, feeling will lead to thought and then transcend it. 

In the ‘Southern Section’ of Bhakti Rasāmṛta Sindhu, Rūpa Gosvāmi defines rasa as ‘the indescribable wonderful relish that is beyond the power of human thinking and arises in the pure heart brightened by goodness’ (2.5.132).

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