Bhakti Yoga, the path of self-surrender; the thorny way through the emotions; the “blood of the heart,” is the short cut to Illumination, if such a thing could be.  But there is no “short cut”; nor yet a long road.

Some one has said there are as many ways to God as there are souls.  And yet, all persons who are on the upward climb, are demonstrating some one of these four paths, or a combination of the paths.  It is, however, a significant fact that we do not hear anything of the great intellectual attainments of the three great masters—­Krishna, Buddha and Jesus, but only of their great compassion; their wonderful love for mankind, and all living things.

St. Paul, who was probably an educated man, as he held a position of prominence among those in authority, previous to his conversion, laid particular stress upon the love-nature as the way of illumination.

And Jesus repeatedly said “Love is the fulfilling of the law.”  What is the law?  The law of evolution and involution; of generation and regeneration; when the time should come, that Love was to reign on the planet earth as it does in the heavens above the earth, then should the kingdom of which he foretold “be at hand,” and in conclusion of this to-be, Jesus promised that the law would be fulfilled when Love should come.

So Swami Vivekananda in his exposition of Vedanta declares: 

“Love is higher than work, than yoga; than knowledge.  Day and night think of God in the midst of all your activities.  The daily necessary thoughts can all be thought through God.  Eat to Him, drink to Him, sleep to Him, see Him in all.  Let us open ourselves to the one Divine Actor, and let Him act and do nothing ourselves.  Complete self-surrender is the only way.  Put out self, lose it; forget it.”

Let us substitute for the words “God,” and “Him,” the one word Love, and see what it is that we are told to do.

Love of doing good frees us from work, even though we labor from early dawn until the night falls; so, too, if we have some loved one for whom we strive, we can endure every hardship with equanimity, as far as our own comfort is concerned.  Few human beings in the world to-day are so enmeshed in the personal self as to work merely for the gratification of selfish instincts.  The hard-working man, whether laborer or banker, must have some one else for whom he struggles and strives; otherwise, he descends to a level below that of the brute.

This is the reason for the family; the lodge; the community; the nation; there must be some motive other than the preservation of the personal self, in order to develop the higher quality of love which embraces the world, until the spirit of a Christ takes possession of the human and he would gladly offer himself a sacrifice to the world, if by so doing he could eliminate all the pain from the world.