Mad Love

Love. It is the inspiration behind all great poetry and works of art. It is love which makes a woman's face beautiful and love which makes a child's eyes come alive when it beholds its mother. It is love which drives us to create symphonies and to stop dead in our tracks along a deserted road to photograph a lonesome yet achingly beautiful field of purple flowers. It is love which leads us to connect with others, to touch, hold and to worship another. Love can drive us mad, lead us to pain, create a longing that is unquenchable, and it can ultimately lead us to the Divine. 

Bhakti is the Hindu word for love. Hence, Bhakti-Yoga is one of the four yogic paths that we can take to find our way to the Divine. In yoga, the way of the Bhakta is the way of love and devotion to the practitioner's particular idea of God--whatever that notion may be or how we may define the great consciousness from which we came.

Love is the yogic path that makes most sense for me because it encompasses all that I hold precious and good in humanity. Love is the inspiration behind every single thing we do, whether the love is misguided or not, it is our heart's way of expressing our desire for the Divine. Love is the way to light the candle inside our own hearts to find beauty and truth in not only the next world but in this one, in the here and now.

Love can drive a man to pay thousands of dollars to see a woman dance nude. Love can create a whole world devoted to beauty. It can end pain. It can make all things new. And it can also drive us utterly insane, off our heads, mad as a hatter! But if it drives us mad for God, mad to do good, mad to inspire others, mad to change the world, then how could such a madness be wrong?

Swami Vivekananda, one of the wisest and most beautiful spiritual teachers to have ever lived, offered this anecdote to describe the kind of madness I am speaking of,

"No Bhakta cares for anything except love, except to love and to be loved. His unwordly love is like the tide rushing up the river; this lover goes up the river against the current. The world calls him mad. I know one whom the world used to call mad, and this was his answer: 'My friends, the whole world is a lunatic asylum. Some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I am also mad. I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I. I think my madness is after all the best." (Bhakti-Yoga 111-112)

If it be madness that sets the heart on fire and makes one drink ever and ever at the fountain of love and beauty, then I shall drink on. I would rather nourish myself on that blissful sensation of fullness in love than anything else in this world. Wouldn't you?