Daily Readings from the Works of Swami Venkatesananda


Insights & Inspirations (Venkatesa Daily Readings Vol 2) — Gurudev Is Love

September 20, 2023

Gurudev Is Love

 Sivananda and Swami Venkatesananda at his side.  September is the month of Gurudev Swami Sivananda's birth. He descended into our midst, became one of us without condescending to do so. Love does not condescend. Love radiates. Love shines. Love is. Into our every-day life love infuses a glory, a glow, a divinity. Love makes life divine.


     Life continues to be life. Divine life has no external trademarks, but the spirit is unmistakably divine. When life becomes divine, the spirit is of love. Spirit cannot be described. A description of love is its destruction. It is. It glows. We could not fail to see it in Gurudev. He was love. He is love. Where there is true love, there Gurudev is present.


      This spirit of divine life which is love was present in every one of Gurudev's thoughts, words and deeds. Nothing in His life was labored, strained or artificial. Everything was the flow of this love. There was wholeheartedness in everything that He did. When He spoke to you, you were sure that He cared for nothing else in the world. When He worked (whether writing letters or books, giving instruction about printing or dispatch of books, discussing the affairs of the ashram or the world-wide community of disciples) every detail was lovingly attended to, as if nothing else mattered. He made no distinction between means and ends.


      All this is description. Volumes have been filled with descriptions of His divinity. On His own birthdays people came from everywhere and right in front of Him sang His glories and 'told Him' (and us) how His grace had transformed their lives and saved them. And He sat there, nodding His head, smiling or making appropriate responses as if they were singing someone else's glory, the glory of God as love who dwelt in their own hearts and flowed towards Him. He radiated love; and He basked in the warmth of this universal love which had its fountain-source in Himself.

      It is happening today, regardless of His physical presence or absence. His physical personality was magnificent and magnetic. If He walked through a market He would attract everyone's attention, even if they had never heard of Him or of a swami. It was not merely the physical proportions, but there was that something in Him. That something is, even now, and it will continue to be, as long as there is love in the human heart - for Gurudev is Love.

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