VBT – Week’s Meditation 29

VBT – Week’s Meditation 29

Allow Yourself To Dissolve

In devotion you surrender yourself completely. And this surrender can be to a god who may not be in the sky or who may be, or to a master who may not be awakened or who may be, or to a beloved who may not be worthwhile or who may be – that is irrelevant. If you can allow yourself to dissolve for the other, you will be transformed.

Devotion frees. That is why we have glimpses of freedom only in love. When you are in love, you have a subtle freedom. This is paradoxical because everyone else will see that you have become a slave. If you are in love with someone, those around you will think that you both have become slaves to each other. But you will have glimpses of freedom.

Love is freedom. Why? Because ego is the bondage; there is no other bondage. You may be in a prison and you cannot escape. If your beloved comes into the prison, the prison disappears that very moment. The walls are there still, but they do not imprison you. Now you can forget them completely. You can dissolve into each other and you can become for each other a sky in which to fly. The prison has disappeared; it is no more there. And you may be under the open sky without love, totally free, untethered, but you are in a prison because you have nowhere to fly. This sky will not do.

Birds fly in that sky, but you cannot. You need a different sky – the sky of consciousness. Only the other can give you that sky, the first taste of it. When the other opens for you and you move into the other, you can fly.

Love is freedom, but not total. If love becomes devotion, then it becomes total freedom. It means surrendering yourself completely. So those who are of the feeling type, this sutra is for them: DEVOTION FREES.

Take Ramakrishna… If you look at Ramakrishna you will think that he is just a slave to the goddess Kali, to Mother Kali. He cannot do anything without her permission; he is just like a slave. But no one was more free than him. When he was appointed for the first time as priest in Dakshineswar, at the temple, he started behaving strangely. The committee, the trustees gathered, and they said, “Throw this man out. He is behaving undevotionally.” This happened because first he would smell a flower and then the flower would be put at the feet of the goddess. That is against the ritual. A smelled flower cannot be offered to the divine – it has become impure.

First he would taste the food which was made for the offering, and then he would offer it. And he was the priest so the trustees asked him, “What are you doing? This cannot be allowed.” He said, “Then I will leave this post. I will move out of the temple, but I cannot offer food to my Mother without tasting it. My mother used to taste… whenever she would prepare something, she would taste it first and then only would she give it to me. And I cannot offer a flower without smelling it first. So I can go out, and you cannot stop me, you cannot prevent me. I will go on offering it anywhere, because my Mother is everywhere; she is not confined in your temple. So wherever I will be, I will be doing the same thing.”

It happened that someone, some Mohammedan, told him, “If your Mother is everywhere, then why not come to the mosque?” He said, “Okay, I am coming.” He remained there for six months. He forgot Dakshineshwar completely; he was in a mosque. Then his friend said, “Now you can go back.” He said, “She is everywhere.” So one may think that Ramakrishna is a slave, but his devotion is such that now the beloved is everywhere.

If you are nowhere, the beloved will be everywhere. If you are somewhere, then the beloved will be nowhere.