Swami Prakashanand Saraswati, a revered spiritual leader, emphasized that the soul’s deep yearning for Divine Love is a reflection of its eternal connection with Krishn. He taught that true fulfillment comes from transcending the illusions of worldly desires and aligning one’s mind and heart with the divine presence. Through sincere devotion and purification, one can bridge the gap between the soul’s longing and the realization of Krishn’s love.
As Swami Prakashanand Saraswati describes…
“The soul is a fractional existence of a power of God whose divineness is blemished because of its eternal association with Maya, but its natural instinct to find Divine Love is still persistent. That’s why your soul is always looking for Divine Love and that love is Radha Krishn.
The desire for Divine Love comes from deep within us, somewhere beyond the mind. The mind picks up the longing for Divine fulfillment and tries to satisfy the constant urge of the soul with people, places, and things in the world where the possibility for Divine contentment doesn’t exist. This situation has prevailed since eternity. Yet, in life after life, we fail to understand this condition.
When we sleep deeply or become unconscious our mind is not there, but we are. There is some awareness unknown to us that continues to function, a continuum of existence.
Scriptures tell us our soul is beyond the mind. They say it is never born and never dies. It is eternal, something constant, enveloped in change.
What is dead when a person dies? Something that was activating the inner functions is gone, the life force disappears and goes somewhere else. When life leaves, things die. The life in things is the eternal soul. The body is part of the outside matter, the ever-changing world that has no life of its own.
Since we are eternal souls that never die, we suffer disappointments and carry our love, hate, prejudice, good and bad karmas from life to life as long as we are in the world. Thinking about it deeply makes us wonder about a way out of the situation.
Scriptures say our life, soul, and self belong to the Divine world. We belong to God, are part of Krishn like a drop of water is like the unlimited ocean. They say God and soul are similar. This is true of a Saint.
A worldly soul is enveloped in maya, the lifeless energy from which we create attachments in the world. Our mind, body, senses, ego, intellect and emotions are all mayic phenomena that hold our consciousness and bring our awareness back on ourselves and into the world. We are not conscious of God, we are in body or intellectual consciousness. When we think, we can’t go beyond our mind because our mind is that part of us that is doing the thinking and understanding.
The soul is beyond the mind; maya is beyond the soul, and God is beyond maya. We can’t fully understand ourselves or the world until we realize God and see through His eyes. We can’t imagine the situation as it really exists, but we can think of it and have a correct understanding based on the scriptures.
The soul is continually communicating its desire for love, beauty, God…, but that desire comes from the soul, and the conscious mind can’t grasp the exactness of the demand. When the mind becomes completely purified through devotion and service and is graced by God, it receives the Divine knowledge which the Vedas express: Soul and God are similar.
Through His Grace we recognize our Beloved and say, “Oh Krishn, the difference between You and me is finished. I see You as my Lord, and I am your servant.”
Just like our soul has given life to this body and mind, so Krishn has given life to our soul.
“God realization is not the consequence of any practice. It is a Divine gift which is received through His Grace when a devotee’s heart and mind conceive an unbreakable oneness with his Divine beloved, Radha-Krishn, where even the desire of love dissolves in the loving feeling of His absolute nearness.”
In conclusion, Swami Prakashanand Saraswati elucidates that the soul’s eternal quest for divine love finds its true fulfillment in the presence of Krishn. Through the purification of the mind and devotion to the Divine, one can bridge the gap between the soul’s inherent longing and its ultimate realization of God.