“If you would worship God, as the Giver of Bounties, then shall the prayer be answered, and further connection cut off, God having answered the demand.  So if you would worship God in simple love, He will send love.  The real devotee seeks to establish a relationship with God which will endure.  He will ask only to worship and love God, and pray that his soul may cling to God in divine reverence and love.”  Thus, say the Vaishnavas, “God serves as he is served, in absolute justice.”

Another salient point which the followers of Lord Gauranga emphasize, is the “All-Sweetness” of God.  This idea is impressed, doubtless that the devotee may not feel an impossible barrier between himself and so great and all-powerful a being, as God, when His Omnipotence is considered.  The idea is similar to that of the Roman church, which bids its untutored children to select some patron saint, or to say prayers to the Virgin Mary, because these characters were once human and seem to be nearer, and more approachable than the Great God whose Majesty and All-Mightiness have been exploited.

Be that as it may, the fact remains, that Lord Gauranga is said to have earned the devotion and love of some of the most learned pundits of India and, according to a recent biographer, “he had all the frailties of a man; he ate and slept like a man.  In short, he behaved generally like an ordinary human being, but yet he succeeded in extorting from the foremost sages of India, the worship and reverence due a God.”

The fact that Lord Gauranga “behaved like a man,” is comforting, to say the least, and presages the coming of a day when “behaving like a man” will not be considered ungodly.  When that time shall have arrived, surely there will be less mysticism of the hysterical variety and probably fewer hypocrites.

Very unlike Lord Gauranga, is the report of a writer of India, who tells of the effects of cosmic consciousness upon Tukaram, considered to be one of the greatest saints and poets of Ancient India.  Tukaram lived early in the sixteenth century, some years later than Lord Gauranga.

This Maharashtra saint is chiefly remembered for his beautiful description of the effects of Illumination, in which he likens the human soul to the bride, and the bridegroom is God.  This poem is called “Love’s Lament,” and might have been written by an impassioned lover to his promised bride.

The life of Tukaram, like that of the late Sri Ramakrishna Paramanansa, was one long agony of yearning and struggle for that peace of soul which he craved.  One of his chroniclers thus describes, in brief, the final struggle and the subsequent attainment of Illumination of this good man: