The manifestation of the love of the Divine in the world was the great holocaust, the supreme self-giving. The Perfect Consciousness accepted to be merged and absorbed into the unconsciousness of matter, so that consciousness might be awakened in the depths of its obscurity and little by little a Divine Power might rise in it and make the whole of this manifested universe a highest expression of the Divine Consciousness and the Divine love. This was the supreme love, to accept the loss of the perfect condition of supreme divinity, its absolute consciousness, its infinite knowledge, to unite with unconsciousness, to dwell in the world with ignorance and darkness.
<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/2-june-1929#p6</ref>
On the physical plane the Divine expresses himself through beauty, on the mental plane through knowledge, on the vital plane through power and on the psychic plane through love.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-divine-working-in-the-universe#p6</ref>
= Why is Love Essential? = It is as On the love of physical plane the Divine grows that the other things cease to trouble the mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/human-relations-and-expresses himself through beauty, on the-spiritual-life#p22</ref> In this love lie peace and joymental plane through knowledge, on the fount of all strength vital plane through power and all realisation. It is on the infallible healer, the supreme consoler; it is the victor, the sovereign teacher. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/01/december-16-1913#p3</ref> Love alone can work this miracle, for psychic plane through love opens all doors, penetrates every wall, clears every obstacle.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/01/december-16-1913#p1</ref> If the spirit of divine love can enter, the hardness of the way diminishes, the tension is lightened, there is a sweetness and joy even in the core of difficulty and struggle. The indispensable surrender of all our will and works and activities to the Supreme is indeed only perfect and perfectly effective when it is a surrender of love. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-the-sacrifice-ii#p11<15/ref> = How to Love? = And what is the first gesture of love? To give oneself, to serve. What is its spontaneous, immediate, inevitable movement? To serve. To serve in a joyous, complete, total self-giving. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/6-march-1957#p5</ref> A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it. In that fire all the emotions are compelled to cast off their grosser elements and those that are undivine perversions are burned away and the others discard their insufficiencies, till a spirit of largest love and a stainless divine delight arises out of the flame and smoke and frankincense. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-ascent-of-theworking-sacrifice-ii#p12</ref> == Bhakti and Love == Love, bhakti, surrender, the psychic opening are the only short cut to the Divine—or can be; for if the love and bhakti are too vital, then there is likely to be a seesaw between ecstatic expectation and viraha, abhimāna, despair, which will make it not a shortcut but a long one, a zigzag, not a straight flight, a whirling round one's own ego instead of a running towards the Divine.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-central-processes-of-the-sadhanauniverse#p18p6</ref>
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