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Cosmic Consciousness by Ali Nomad

XV METHODS OF ATTAINMENT: THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION

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Some one has said there are as many ways to God as there are souls. And yet, all persons who are on the upward climb, are demonstrating some one of these four paths, or a combination of the paths. It is, however, a significant fact that we do not hear anything of the great intellectual attainments of the three great masters--Krishna, Buddha and Jesus, but only of their great compassion; their wonderful love for mankind, and all living things.

St. Paul, who was probably an educated man, as he held a position of prominence among those in authority, previous to his conversion, laid particular stress upon the love-nature as the way of illumination.

And Jesus repeatedly said "Love is the fulfilling of the law." What is the law? The law of evolution and involution; of generation and regeneration; when the time should come, that Love was to reign on the planet earth as it does in the heavens above the earth, then should the kingdom of which he foretold "be at hand," and in conclusion of this _to-be_, Jesus promised that the law would be fulfilled when Love should come.

So Swami Vivekananda in his exposition of Vedanta declares:

"Love is higher than work, than yoga; than knowledge. Day and night think of God in the midst of all your activities. The daily necessary thoughts can all be thought through God. Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, see Him in all. Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act and do nothing ourselves. Complete self-surrender is the only way. Put out self, lose it; forget it."

Let us substitute for the words "God," and "Him," the one word Love, and see what it is that we are told to do.

Love of doing good frees us from work, even though we labor from early dawn until the night falls; so, too, if we have some loved one for whom we strive, we can endure every hardship with equanimity, as far as our own comfort is concerned. Few human beings in the world to-day are so enmeshed in the personal self as to work merely for the gratification of selfish instincts. The hard-working man, whether laborer or banker, must have some one else for whom he struggles and strives; otherwise, he descends to a level below that of the brute.

This is the reason for the family; the lodge; the community; the nation; there must be some motive other than the preservation of the personal self, in order to develop the higher quality of love which embraces the world, until the spirit of a Christ takes possession of the human and he would gladly offer himself a sacrifice to the world, if by so doing he could eliminate all the pain from the world.

How natural it is to feel, when we see a loved one suffering, that we would gladly take upon ourselves that pain; the heart fills with love until it aches with the burden of it; this love enlarged, expanded and impersonal in its application is the same love with which we are told to love God, and to "do all for Him." Do all for love of all the other hearts in the Universe that feel as we feel when their loved ones suffer--that is the way to love God--it is the only way we know. We only know divine love through human love: human love is divine when it is unselfish and eternal--not fed upon carnality, but anchored in spiritual complement.

The story of Abou Ben Adhem ("may his tribe increase") tells us how we may know who loves the Lord. The angel wrote the names of those who loved the Lord most faithfully and fully, and coming to Abou Ben Adhem asked if he should write his name, and received the reply that he could not say whether he deeply loved the Lord, but he was quite certain that the angel could "write me as one who loves his fellow-men." And, lo! when the list was made and the names of all who loved the Lord recorded, Abou Ben Adhem's name headed the list.