23 Sep 2018
Shri Balaji asked: Namaste Swamiji, Kindly clarify this query on nature of God’s love. God is the father of all the souls and has infinite love towards the souls. God also has immense love for His devotees. But souls are of different levels from lowest sinful souls to topmost devotees. So is the nature of God’s love different in some way in the varying case of level of the souls? Sincerely, Balaji.
Swami replied:- God is Father of all souls in this creation and His love to souls is in uniform level only, which is the maximum most. But, the expression levels differ from one soul to the other as per the proper requirement and the difference in the love expressed may be qualitative or quantitative. I will explain this with the example of a wise father’s love towards his issues. Let us take a baby and an adult issue of the same father. The father or mother gives only milk to the baby and gives food of various sweet and hot dishes to the adult issue based on their digestion. Similarly, God expresses His love in various quantities to various levels of devotees as per the requirement. This will help the lower level devotee to develop and become higher level devotee. Students are given different classes like record break, distinction, first class, second class, third class etc., to various levels of students in order to encourage the lower levels to do further study, work more seriously so that the lower levels attain higher levels. Such difference shown in the degree certificates does not mean that such difference is due to difference in the love of the teacher towards students. If difference in the appreciation is not maintained in quantitative levels, there will be no inspiration for progress of devotees.
Love is expressed with qualitative difference also. Appreciation and reward is one form of love. Similarly, depreciation and punishment is also another form of love exhibited in various levels as in the case of appreciation as explained above. As the levels of rewards are based on different levels of merits or good deeds, levels of punishments are also based on different levels of defects or sins. Punishment must be understood as the form of love only. When an ignorant boy tries to put his finger in fire, his parents will scold and even beat him so that such boy will not repeat it again. Such scolding and beating by parents is taken as the love of parents towards that boy and it is not taken as anger or revenge or hatred towards that boy. Hence, the creation of hell represents only the real love of the Divine Father towards the soul. God is reforming the soul through punishments and divine preaching of spiritual knowledge by coming as human incarnations. The Manusmruti says that the souls punished here or in the hell will get rid of their sins and go to heaven for their merits and good deeds in par with good people doing only good deeds going straight to heaven (Santah sukruitino yathaa). A wise father acts like God towards souls in different levels of qualitative and quantitative expressions towards his beloved issues. A foolish father blind with blind love towards his issues expresses his love towards his issues in one qualitative form (appreciation and rewards) in the same quantitative level (same reward to all his issues irrespective of qualitative and quantitative difference). God is not such blind father like king Dhrutaraashtra, who is physically and mentally the blind father.
The love possessed by the Divine Father is qualitatively and quantitatively same on all the souls, which are His issues as per the Gita (Aham biijapradah pitaa). The love expressed on different souls is different qualitatively as well as quantitatively as per the proper need. Even if God is furious and punishes a soul, such anger is a form of basic love only since the aim of the Divine Father is only to develop the soul in materialistic path (Pravrutti) and in spiritual path (Nivrutti). If you see the possessed love only in His mind, you can very easily realise that He loves all the souls equally. But, you should not expect that the expressed love also should be in the same way. If it is in the same way, the souls do not progress at all and get easily spoiled.
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