Commentary on the Odes of Solomon
– by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Love, Hope, and Joy
I will give thanks unto Thee O Lord, because I love Thee.
O Most High Thou wilt not forsake me, for Thou art my hope.
Freely I have received Thy grace, I shall live thereby.…
(The Fifth Ode of Solomon)
The right motive
“I will give thanks unto Thee O Lord, because I love Thee.” Praise and thanksgiving are the usual (and cheapest) ego-bribes offered by the ignorant to their misconceptions of divinity. Yogananda remarked in one of his talks that whenever he heard people exhorted to praise God he thought of a pampered and vain person that had to be continually pleased through flattery. This entire creation has been spread out for us–not for our enjoyment, but rather for our evolution into conscious and perfect sons of God. If we simply thank and praise God for the beautiful scenery, the food we eat, and suchlike (what to say of thanking God for killing our enemies and those we consider “the wicked”!) this is no real thanks at all. To really thank God we must use His creation for the intended purpose: our ascent to divine consciousness. That is why David sang: “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.” In other words, seeing the blessing of God David has determined to drink of the cup of immortality and be saved from all limitation and ignorance that attends relative existence. The purpose of a school, however excellent its physical facilities may be, is to learn and leave. A person who does nothing more than wander the halls from term to term rhapsodizing over how fine everything is and expressing appreciation all the time is simply a fool. He is a disgrace to the school. So are we a disgrace–and ingrates–to God’s goodness if we do not avail ourselves of this very birth to liberate ourselves from further birth.
But the odist says love is the motive for his thanks. What, then, is love of God? Certainly not the petty liking that arises from our egos or the terrible predatory passion so often mislabeled as love. The most accurate analysis of the nature of love is to be found in Swami Yukteswar Giri’s The Holy Science, where he demonstrates that love is a positive magnetic (not sentimental or lustful) attraction which brings the lover into union with the beloved. And this union is not a mere joining or touching which may be undone, but a merging of identities in which the lover experiences the beloved as his own self. This is only possible between the individual spirit (atma) and God (Paramatma).
“Among those who are purified by their good deeds, there are four kinds of men who worship me: the world-weary, the seeker for knowledge, the seeker for happiness and the man of spiritual discrimination. The man of discrimination is the highest of these. He is continually united with me. He devotes himself to me always, and to no other. For I am very dear to that man, and he is dear to me.
“Certainly, all these are noble:
But the man of discrimination
I see as my very Self.
“For he alone loves me
Because I am myself:
The last and only goal
Of his devoted heart.
“Through many a long life
His discrimination ripens:
He makes me his refuge,
Knows that Brahman is all.
How rare are such great ones!”
Love is not blind, it is perfectly clear in its seeing; therefore Krishna calls a lover of God one who is characterized by viveka, by discrimination between the unreal and the Real, between the temporal and the Eternal, between not-God and God.
“Love” that is really hate
Since we have brought the Gita into the picture (and it may be well asked whether there is any aspect of spiritual life into which the Gita may not brought to great profit), let us take a look at a misunderstood aspect of spiritual life–that of bhakti. Under the banner of the so-called “bhakti movement” in Hinduism, bhakti has been degraded to self-centered “relish” for God expressed in the most unrestrained and irrational emotionality that is little more than aberrative lust and greed dressed up as virtue. Though pretending self-forgetfulness in devotion to God, it is in reality narcissism of the most blatant type. It is ego-worship (ego enslavement, really) of the worst kind, for: “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” Bhakti is indeed devotion, but devotion in the sense of intelligent and intentional allegiance, faithfulness, loyalty, constancy, and steadfastness. A bhakta (devotee) is one who has chosen God, not in an abstract or verbal manner, but in the resolve to seek and find God in order to become one with Him. The puerile dictum: “I do not want to be sugar I want to eat sugar” should be enough to reveal the horrible ego-greed and ego-lust that spawns most “bhakti” today. God is not for the devouring or dominating–one of the basic drives of the “bhakta” as seen by the many myths in which through “serving” and “loving” God, God becomes the abject servant-slave of the “devotee.” Certainly a worthy person seeks to love God, but for the right reason based on the knowledge of one’s self and God. In the book of Revelation the liberated souls sing unto God: “Thou art worthy.” A true bhakta lives out this statement through his arduous practice of yoga–that which will bring him to God and make him one with God. To be devoted to God is to be dedicated to God, not licking on Him like a lollipop in the hand of a greedy child. To love is to seek, to find, to become one. As Swami Sivananda said: “Bhakti begins with two and ends with one.”
The Sanskrit root of bhakti is bhaj, which means to love, to adore, to revere, and–most significantly–to share in. And so the sequence is: we love, reverence worship, and share in the Being of God, for in both Greek and Sanskrit the word translated “worship” literally means “draw near.” Sri Ramakrishna likens the true devotee to a salt doll that enters the ocean and melts-merges with it so it can no longer be separated from the water. Yet it is present in the water, it has not ceased to be or lost its identity, as the salt taste proves.
Forsaken?
All right, we have considered one distortion of the popular “bhakti movement,” so let us look at another: the outrageously blasphemous idea that the changeless ever-loving God can turn from us in pique or a spiteful desire to make us desolated because of our sinfulness and in this way awaken us to how bad we are. This is an extremely cunning–and therefore extremely evil–ploy, because it shifts all the blame onto God for our feeling separated and far from Him. It is not we who have made the separation, but God. He is at fault! And of course, since it is all His doing, we can do nothing but “surrender” to Him and wait for Him to get over being miffed or sadistically delighted in making us squirm and “reveal” Himself to us. As Yogananda said: “God is not hiding from you; you are hiding from Him.…He never denies us–we deny Him.” Pretending that the only thing preventing our union with God is His whimsy is indefensible and betrays a heart that loathes God, a “spirituality” that is nothing less than sociopathy. Therefore the odist continues: “O Most High Thou wilt not forsake me, for Thou art my hope.” In another talk Yogananda says that looking back on his life there is one thing he has learned above all: God never forsakes His devotee. How could he? It is not in His nature to do so. But in “devotional” religion of all kinds it is God Who is responsible for our fallen status and His non-cooperation that perpetuates it. While whining that we are all sinners, they yet declare that we, being helpless, are blameless! This is wilful schizophrenia. Is it any wonder, then, that those adhering to this manifest nothing but madness in their spirit? And it is all up to God to kiss it and make it well.
God, “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning,” is our hope because “He abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself.”
Life
We hear a lot of talk about life, perhaps more in advertisements than in ordinary conversation. Everybody declares how much they want to “live life” and so forth. “If I have but one life to live, let me live it as a Clairol blonde” was a slogan from the nineteen-fifties that has pretty well set the tone for subsequent affirmations about “life.” But what is life? It is nothing else than consciousness, the sole attribute of spirit. So to live is to be conscious, awakened in our own spirit to the greater Life and Consciousness that is God. That is why the odist further sings: “Freely I have received Thy grace, I shall live thereby.” In the New Testament, the Greek word translated “grace” is charis, which means to be calmly joyful. Interestingly, it has the definite connotation of being impersonal–that is, the grace-filled rejoice, not in their egos, but in God. It also has the implied character of happy optimism. Charis also means to live out that divine joy. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts,” from which that light of grace shines out into the world. So to live is to be in divine joy, not drunk on the false inebriation of the ego, but alive and awake in the vision of God that comes about from union with God. “In sacred joy I live, in sacred joy I melt,” declared Yogananda. There is really only one “thing” after all: God.More on the Odes of Solomon:
Odes of Solomon – text
Commentary on the Odes of Solomon:
1. The Crown of Life
2. Clothed in Love
3. The Changeless God and Ever-changing Man
4. Love, Hope, and Joy
5. Avoiding Evil
6. The Song of the Holy Spirit
7. Rejoice in the Lord!
8. The Meeting of the Two
1) Psalms 116:12,13
[Go back]
2) Bhagavad Gita 7:16-19 [Go back]
3) Matthew 6:23 [Go back]
4) Revelation 4:11; 5:9,12 [Go back]
5) “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.” (Isaiah 59:1,2) [Go back]
6) James 1:17 [Go back]
7) II Timothy 2:13 [Go back]
8) “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14). [Go back]
