Love That Grows Ever Subtler and Deeper
Supreme love continually deepens, becoming subtler and more inward as it matures, growing without limit toward the Beloved.
Narada teaches in Sutra 55 that true love is 'ever-growing, subtler and subtler, and an unbroken experience.' Unlike worldly affections that wax and wane, divine love has no ceiling; it deepens endlessly, becoming finer and more inward as the devotee matures. Each taste of love only increases the thirst for more, in a blessed and unending expansion of the heart. This perpetual growth distinguishes spiritual love from the satiety and decline that mark sensual pleasures. Narada presents the path of love as an infinite journey into ever-greater intimacy with the Beloved. It anticipates the mystical teaching of 'epektasis' — the soul's eternal stretching forward into the inexhaustible infinity of God.
Love is ever-growing, subtler and subtler, an unbroken experience.
Narada's vision of endlessly deepening love parallels Gregory of Nyssa's doctrine of epektasis, in which the soul perpetually advances into the boundless infinity of God without ever reaching a final limit.
Narada Bhakti Sutras