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IDEAL OF LOVE.
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Therefore bhaktas make use of all the common terms associated with the common love of humanity, in relation to God and his worship through love. Some of the great writers on Para-Bhakti have tried to understand and experience this divine love in the following different ways. The lowest form in which this love is apprehended, is what they call the peaceful—the shanta (ATH). When a man worships God without the fire of love in him, without its madness in his brain--when his love is just the calm commonplace love, a little higher than mere forms, ceremonies and symbols, but not at all characterised by the madness of intensely active love--it is said to be shanta. We see some people in the world who like to move on slowly, and others who come and go like the whirlwind. The shanta-bhakta is like the former-calm, peaceful, and gentle. The next higher type is that of dasya (ere), or servantship. It comes when a man thinks he is the servant
