Swami Prakashanand Saraswati is a revered spiritual master who illuminates the path of devotion and Divine love. His teachings emphasize the necessity of surrendering the heart and mind to God in His personal form. This discourse is the second part of his speech on “The Loving Form of God.”
According to Prakashanand Saraswati:
It is very important to understand that to receive Divine love you have to dedicate yourself to God. Gita says, ” येयथामांप्रपद्यन्तेतांस्ततेवभजाम्यहम्।” Bhaj means dedication. Krishn says, “Those who come to Me, whatever they have in their mind, accordingly I present Myself for them.” This is the meaning of that particular verse. They come to Me, that is important. It means you have to reach God in your heart and mind. It means dedication. Dedication cannot be to something abstract.
You can Read: Prakashanand Saraswati on Divine Love: The Soul’s True Desire – Part 1
Those who think that God cannot be personified, I ask why. Is your God incapable? You will say no. Then why can’t He be personified? Because your mind doesn’t accept it. It means you think that what your mind accepts is God; the rest is not God. That is not logical. The material mind cannot understand the Divine form. He is everything. You cannot say, “This thing is not God”. God is everything. He is Divine energy. He is Divine radiance. He is personified. He is Divine love. He is everything.
To find His Divine love, you have to dedicate yourself to God Who has form. His personification is not as you imagine. It is different. But you have to offer your heart. To Whom? To an abstract power? There you stop. Sometimes you are willing to find God. “Yes, I want to find God.” But you are trying to dedicate to Whom? If your mind thinks that God is only abstract power, abstract cannot be perceived. Abstract cannot be experienced. An abstract cannot be obtained. Because you are not abstract. So that can be a great mental block that you have to remove. You have to come from this point to that point where you dedicate yourself to God and long to find His vision in your life. But why not now?
What is it that is pulling you back from finding Divine love? There is something in your mind that sometimes doesn’t let you understand that God can also be personified. There is something that stops your mind from accepting it. There is something that checks a devotee’s heart from understanding that God can come now, that Krishn can appear now. What is that something? It is the negative reserves in your mind.
What is a negative reserve? You have read many books which are anti-God. You have done many actions which are against the laws of the government and society. These things are called sins or transgressions. You have done those things in this life, in your past life, and in uncountable past lives. They are all in the base of your mind. Any action you do, any thought that comes into your head, leaves its imprint on your mind. So, in the base of your mind there are uncountable imprints like this. So all those negative actions’ imprints are called negative reserves. Those negative reserves check your mind from going toward God.
How to overcome them? There is only one way. Dedicate yourself to God. Nothing else. Because through dedication you will improve your positive imprints. You have both negative and positive imprints in the mind. There is no one in the world who has not done any devotion. You have done all kinds of devotions in various lives. That is also your positive imprint. So, you have both negative imprints and positive imprints.
Develop your positive imprints, and the negative imprints will become weak. That is the only one way. But if you try to intellectualize, there is no way. You will develop negative imprints again, and again, and again. Cry for Him. Cry for His Grace. Him alone. That will purify your heart, put a positive imprint in your mind, and lead you toward the path of dedication. In this way, any person who is determined to find God, and understands that this life is a golden chance to find the love of God can start devotion and enter into divine love consciousness any time he desires.