Love

Love: Love is the inner bond, the inner connection, the inner link between man and God, between the finite and the infinite. We always have to approach God through love. Without love, we cannot become one with God. If we go through our journey with absolute love, we can never fail to reach God or fulfil Him, either in our own lives or in humanity.

Love is the secret key that allows a human being to open the Door of God. Where there is love, pure love, divine love, there is fulfilment. Where there is no love, it is all misery, frustration and death. The first step in our journey is love, the second step is devotion and the third step is surrender. First we have to love God. Then we have to devote ourselves to Him alone and finally we have to be at His Feet and fulfil ourselves.

What is love? If love means possessing someone or something then that is not real love; that is not pure love. If love means giving and becoming one with everything, with humanity and divinity, then that is real love. Real love is our total oneness with the object loved and with the possessor of love. Who is the possessor of love? God.

Whom are we loving? We are loving the Supreme in each individual. When we love the body, we bind ourselves; when we love the soul, we free ourselves. It is the soul in the individual, the Supreme in each human being, that we have to love.

Nothing can be greater than love. God is great only because He has infinite Love. If we want to define God, we can define Him in millions of ways, but I wish to say that no definition of God can be as adequate as the definition of God as all Love. When we say 'God', if fear comes into our mind, then we are millions and billions of miles away from Him. When we repeat the name of God, if love comes to the fore, then our prayer, our concentration, our meditation, our contemplation are genuine. There can be no greater wisdom, no greater knowledge, than love. We pray to God. Why? We pray to God just because God is all Love. God is not like a schoolmaster with an iron rod who strikes us all the time. Just because God is all Love, all Compassion, we go toward Him and not towards somebody else. The supreme knowledge lies in love.

The world exists just because love still exists on earth. If this one divine quality left the world, then there could be no existence on earth. No other divine quality can create, sustain and fulfil God here on earth like the quality of love. Divine love does not mean an emotional exchange of human thoughts or ideas, but it means the fulfilment of oneness. At times it may demand highest Justice; at times it may demand infinite Compassion. Inside infinite Compassion, we shall feel the living breath of love. Again, inside the supreme Justice, we shall feel the living presence of love.

We cannot bind divine love with our human thoughts, ideas, or ideals, but we can bind divine love through constant self-sacrifice. Divine love is infinite, but we can bind the infinite in us through self-sacrifice. What is this self-sacrifice? Self-sacrifice is our constant eagerness and inner cry to be shaped only by the Highest in us, by the Inner Pilot in us. But even if we offer our heartfelt and soulful obedience to the Inner Pilot in ourselves, we have still not fulfilled our part totally. But if we can bravely and sincerely tell the Inner Pilot that it is He who will be responsible for our lives, for our realisation, and for our soul's manifestation on earth, then only will our role be totally fulfilled.

Love means acceptance. What are we going to accept? We are going to accept this world of ours which is around us and within us. If we don't accept the world, which is God's outer Body, then we are negating and denying God silently and secretly, if not categorically. After we accept the world, we have to serve the world that we have accepted. If we want to serve the world in the way that the world wants to be served, then we shall always remain in ignorance. At the same time, we will not be able to throw an iota of light on the world's inner and outer problems. We have to serve the world the way that our Inner Pilot wants us to serve. Then, we shall not only fulfil the Supreme in us, but fulfil the Supreme in the world.

We get a kind of joy when we identify ourselves with someone who is all fear. We go to help him solve his problem, and then we are caught in his fear. We go out to sympathise with others, so we suffer with them and then we cannot come out of their suffering. True, it is good to identify with others' suffering, but it is foolishness to identify with someone's problems when we cannot make him bolder or braver, when we cannot make him face the reality or help him see the divine strength in himself. What is the use of showing sympathy to someone when we cannot show him our warmest power or give him solid guidance towards the light?

How can we help our sisters and brothers of the world? We can help if we become all love for the One who is eternally All-Love. Let us love the One, the root of the tree. Then we shall see that the branches, the leaves and the foliage of the tree also will feel our love. Each individual who fulfils God and His creation embodies God's living Concern and living Sacrifice. And it is in this Concern and Sacrifice that God and man are both fulfilled.