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.
Energy, in one form or another, is flowing through all existing things. It is what makes the planets follow their orbits, what makes the plants grow, what makes our hearts beat.
In other words, to create does not mean make something exist, but to make something happen. It is the start of a movement, chain-reaction, between particles, between bodies, between thoughts, between feelings.
The energy of life is energy that makes life live. It is energy that makes life relate to life, living things that relate to other living things. The energy of life is the energy of relation, of one atom to another, of one body to another, of one heart to another.
The energy of life is relation. Life is a count to three: first one thing, then another, then the relation between them. The energy of life is that force that is always greater than the two things it connects.
And the energy of life is what causes the relation between the two things to evolve, to expand and contract, to grown and diminish.
The life caused by energy takes both material and immaterial forms. Both material and immaterial objects move and change, shift and evolve. What is mysteriously constant about the such change is that while energy easily changes form, from one thing to another, it is itself neither created nor depleted. This reality is captured in the modern 1st Law of the Thermodynamics: energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
There is no life without energy. Even the most apparently inanimate object, a handful of earth or a stone, is invisibly animated by energetic forces of attraction and repulsion. Both material and immaterial things are given life by this energy. In its lowest forms it is the attraction of atoms to each other, in its middle forms it is pleasure of thoughts and imagination, in its highest form, it is the attraction of pure hearts: love. In its highest form this energy flows through immaterial creation sparking feelings, desires, affections, attractions, powering our emotions, raises our spirits and lifting our gaze to full awareness of the universe as it is.
The more life becomes evolved, the more there is consciousness of this energy in all its forms: material, mental and spiritual. Consciousness of the soul is the quality of the jiva, the living, spiritual being. While this consciousness is always imperfect knowledge the jiva is blessed with the ability deepen awareness of the soul, and the flow of loving energy in the heart.
Love is the highest, most refined form of energy in the universe. The secret of the creation of the universe is that it was the creation of love.
Loving energy flows into countless different forms. It can be found in endless details and nuances, shapes and colours, moods and mellows. And yet even if this energy has a thousand shapes and forms, it has only one origin and one goal, Kṛṣṇa, the original creator of the universe and the enjoyer of all its glories.
Kṛṣṇa is the alpha and omega of energy, and therefore the alpha and omega of love. Everything that takes place between origin and end, every flow of material or spirit, every ebb and flow of energy, every shock of thunder or caress of the hand, every shout or whisper has its origin in Kṛṣṇa and has its goal to return to Kṛṣṇa.
The flow of energy in the universe may appear chaotic. But the purpose of spiritual practice is to increase awareness of the way that loving energy converges in the love of Kṛṣṇa. Since Kṛṣṇa is pure soul, the purest form of soul is love. If energy is the force of attraction and repulsion, its highest form is love. And if pure soul is pure attraction, if pure attraction is pure love, then pure love is love for pure soul, namely love for Kṛṣṇa (prema).
The higher is our level of consciousness, the greater is our ability to clear away impure forms of energy that stand in the way of the free flow of the energy of life. The greater our consciousness of the love in our hearts, the more spiritualised that vital energy becomes, and the more it is naturally directed toward Kṛṣṇa, the highest spiritual form of them all.
And yet the perfection of divine love was impossible to attain before the advent of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who not only preached the love of God, but lived the the extraordinary experience of loving God in the appearance of his very own body. He lived firsthand the reality that the goal of human life is not to serve Kṛṣṇa, the reservoir of all love, but to serve Kṛṣṇa-loving, embodied through Śrīmati Rādhārānī (prema).
Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu taught, and displayed through his life and actions, that no object of love, not even Kṛṣṇa himself, is higher than love itself. The perfection of the soul is not Kṛṣṇa, but love for Kṛṣṇa. This perfection of soul is embodied by Rādhārānī. The perfection of life is the loving flow that she makes real through her life.
In order to elevate divinity above and beyond the principle of God-as-love,
Love of God is greater even than God. This is the principle of devotional practice. Kṛṣṇa realised that in enjoying the adoration of all living beings he had failed to enjoy divine adoration, the experience of loving God, the experience of perm.
We too feel love everyday, sometimes noble sometimes banal, sometimes deeply, sometimes softly. The more our hearts our pure, the higher our feelings of love reach. But to feel the highest love for the highest being is seems out of reach.
Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu made it a reality. By appearing simultaneously as God-the-lover and God-the-beloved, he showed what loving divinely might look and sound and feel like in our material lives. He made prema — divine loving and love of the divine — a reality.
The purpose of our lives is to purify this original flow of loving energy, the part of prema, the divine love divine, that lies within us, our original nature at the creation. To purify the love in us means to remove the hindrances that block it from free and complete unfolding, and to let i flow toward its natural goal, Kṛṣṇa.
This perfect flow of unalloyed love of God is named Rādhārānī.
We have no greater purpose then to liberate the energy of love within us, to maximise its power, and to put it into the loving hands of Rādhārānī.
Prema-datta-nitai-gaura.