Please correlate the following concepts of soul's love towards God.

[Ms. Bhanu Samykya asked: Pādanamaskāram Swami, You said that

1. Human Incarnation of God is the sugar and soul is an ant enjoying the sugar.

2. Love is not the basis of test because finding truth is the basis of test. The fact is that any soul shows climax of love to God or any other soul if the fruit of such love from the other side gives happiness to the soul showing love to the other side. I.e selfishness is the basis of love even in the context of God.

3. You (soul) love God only to get happiness, benefits and protection from God. Such love is instrumental love and not the ultimate love.

Can You please correlate the above 3 statements? I'm confused by these above statements Swami, please enlighten me.]

Swami Replied:- 1) Since devotee gets bliss from God through the devotion, God is compared to sugar and the devotee is compared to the ant biting the sugar.

2) Selfishness on both sides exists in the case of souls. For example, wife loves her husband since he is giving happiness to her and husband loves his wife since she is giving happiness to him. In the case of God and devotee, such selfish love on both sides does not exist because devotee loves God for some worldly benefits whereas God loves the devotee without any selfish benefit since God is not in such need.

3) The love of devotee towards God is generally selfish for getting some worldly benefit. Such selfish love is not the real love to God. In such case, the real love is towards the worldly benefit that is to be obtained from God. This unreal love to God is based on getting the benefit from God and hence, God is used as instrument to achieve such worldly benefit. Hence, such false love to God is called as instrumental devotion.

The above three points are self-explanatory and do not need any correlation. All are independent concepts linked to each other in a single subject of the “reality of love”.

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