SHRADDHANJALI ON THIS GURUPURNIMA A LIMITLESS LAKE OF SWEET NECTAR OF LOVE Our Gurudev Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath is the personification

of love. He is love incarnate. He loves everybody and everything. He loves those who are his disciples or devotees and have come near him but he also loves those who have avoided him and whom he has never seen. He loves the strong and the weak; he loves the old and the young; he loves those who worship him but he also loves those who constantly denigrate him; he loves the human amid the animals, the animate as well as the inanimate; he loves everything, because he sees himself in everything and everything in himself: Yo ma pashyati sarvatra, sarva cha mayi pashyati. Ahimsa to him is not absence of Himsa but love. In the presence of love, Himsa just evaporates. He cannot tolerate even a mosquito or a snake being killed in his presence. He is as kind to a hungry dog as to a hungry person and, when he feeds a dog, he is so happy that he looks as if he is feeding God himself, as he sees God in the dog. He is there like a limitless lake full of sweet water, nay nectar, and one can drink out of it as much and as often as one desires. He makes no distinction. Are they not all Gods? He often quotes the following (from Gita): Mamevansho jeevloke jeevbhute sanatana. So there is God in everything, animate or inanimate, and it is a privilege to serve God in any form He takes. He never turns away any person in difficulty; he must relieve his distress. Even a thief or a murderer receives his kindness and he asserts that he has come more for their sake than for the sake of the good. And the more downtrodden is one, the more blessing he gets from him. He welcomes everyone, irrespective of caste, nationality or station in life, and gives him a warm place in his heart. Even inanimate objects get due share of his love. Once in his Gurus house, coming from his bath, he hung his dripping towel on the cloths-line. Some one, who saw this, enquired from Sri Param Guru Deva why had Probodh hung the dripping towel and not wrung out the water first. Sri Param Guru Deva, who understood his disciple well, said, Prabodh is so tender that he cannot hurt even the towel. And so he has been all his life. He cannot kick away a stone or an obstructio n. He must softly remove it with his hand and deposit it carefully at another place out of harms way. No drooping plant escapes his notice. He must get it watered to revive its strength. He is never angry. With whom will he be angry? Are they not all himself? Not only does he speak lovingly and touch tenderly but he radiates love from all over his body which is but the personification of solidified love. He gives love as widely as possible by giving Naam, which is nothing but God, who is nothing but love. A limitless lake of sweet nectar of love he is. But he is more than that. He is not static in his love, he is dynamic. If people cannot come to him to get their share of his love, he will go to them to give it. In order to distribute his love as widely as possible, he moves about like a hurricane, from place to place, to take Naam to every doorstep. In that process he defies time, he defies age and he laughs at medical advice. He is a phenomenon which medical science cannot define. He is of the heavens or higher than heavens, he is of Vaikuntha itself. He has come to this earth out of his sheer love for the suffering humanity to relieve its distress. We pray to Him that we may cool our burning hearts by the enlivening touch of his living love.