True love for God is best described in Sri Aurobindo’s own words as below.
‘To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.’
He further elaborates
‘I must learn to love God not only in Himself but in all beings, appearances, objects, enjoyments, events, whether men call them good or bad, real or mythical, fortunate or calamitous; and I must know Him with the same divine impartiality and completeness in order that I may come to be like Him, perfect, pure and unlimitedāthat which all sons of Man must one day be. This, I cannot help thinking, is the meaning and purpose of the Lila.’
We see glimpses of the same in Sri Aurobindo’s life first as a lover of India, wherein he is ready to sacrifice everything in the service of India. Sacrifice and service are the right and left arm of love and surrender and self giving are its core. We see his love for one and all who worked for him and near him and his countrymen about whom he writes in his letter to Mrinalini devi.
Next we witness Sri Aurobindo’s love for Sri Krishna in his complete surrender and obedience for what is surrender if there is not within it an entire trust, dependence, reliance on the guidance and obedience. He had handed over his life completely in the hands of Sri Krishna and the Divine Mother and would not do anything unless he had the clear indication and the guidance.
We then see in Sri Aurobindo a lover of mankind for whose sake he undertakes intense tapasya to redeem earth and the fallen condition of mankind. To save an unreceptive and resisting mankind Sri Aurobindo renounces the personal realisation in his own body to hasten the collective realisation upon earth.
Sri Aurobindo’s bhakti is not what we usually understand through some outer ritual deeds and acts. It expresses as a complete giving of oneself to the Divine and His Work without making the least noise or show about it.
There is of course so much more but no amount of written or spoken words can do justice to it.
