Love for God means love for all.
Human love is not perfect. But if you do not have a major transfusion of human compassion, you can never have divine love. Only when you learn to truly love will you understand that love is the Lord of life.
No matter how much sadhana you do, first you have to understand the law of equality of love: the sun shines for all, the moon pales its light for all and the breeze blows for all equally. There is no disparity except when the individual self declares: “This is mine, this is mine; this is not mine.”
In ancient days there were people who could see the face of God. Someone once asked me why people could not see His face anymore. I replied that one must stoop a little to fetch water from the stream; nowadays no one can stoop so low.
Many prophets have come to this earth. The prophets of today can become builders of heaven, music makers or dreamers of discourse, but without love all hopes will finally crumble to dust. Many times they have tried to establish their world over the world created by God and have called it religion. Where are they today? In their shattered state of madness they have quit this world. This is why I call them quitters and not prophets of love. They have merely tangled humanity into various knots. One prophet professes something, another teaches knowledge, still another teaches yoga. They teach this and that philosophy, but only the prophet of love can help to transform the sufferings of humanity. The world is suffering because no one knows what love is, although we all have the same capacity to understand the true meaning of life.
Love for a human being is different than love for God. Love for God means love for all. There is one life force in all human beings, animals and even plants. This is life itself. But you have no time to love life itself because you are too busy loving those things you think are essential for life. Loving things of the world first, without knowing the reality beneath all these different forms and names, is not going to help the human race. The day you are awakened to the highest knowledge you will really start to love. Once you become aware of love itself, that which is eternal and not subject to change, death and decay, you will be able to love all things.
Love for life, love without an object, is the highest of all loves.
We all are like small light bulbs. When a bulb is broken, nothing happens to the electricity. Similarly nothing happens to the life force when we disappear from this earth. You do not want to accept this because you do not want to understand the whole process. Birth is mingled with death; they are one and the same thing. You should accept this fact and live here and now. Enjoy every bit, every moment and every part of life. Your past experiences and future imaginations distract you and have caused you to forget the whole purpose of life. You have forgotten that life is something eternal and you are part of eternity. No matter which culture, religion, or philosophical background you come from, you all have one and the same purpose of life, and that is to attain perennial happiness, everlasting bliss and peace. When the love of the world is changed from a sense experience to a soul experience, it will be founded on the love of God.
There is something beyond religions. Religion is an act that is humanity’s relationship with God. It is essential in the preliminary stage but surely does not allow one to be one with the whole. It is like being a moth that eats Kashmir wool trying to prove to other moths that Kashmir exists. God’s existence in reality does not depend on our proofs. There is something wrong with the philosophers and theologians for they have the curious notion that God is a kind of hypothesis that could be analyzed and discussed. God to me is a real annihilating fire and indescribable grace. I accept both. Everywhere in the realm of religion I have encountered locked doors. If ever one door should chance to open, I was disappointed by what lay behind it.
My religion knows neither hope nor fear. It dwells in the calm of the spiritual universe, which nothing but the human heart can comprehend. When the dew drop in the grass mirrors the heavens, why can’t the human mind and heart?
When one’s whole being is saturated with the idea of love from head to foot, then every pore of the body becomes alive to cosmic consciousness.
Your outer individual shell will remain exactly the same, but your inner light will expand to universal consciousness. That individual flame of love will become a forest conflagration and will burn up the precarious weed of selfishness. In love, you want to give and feel great joy in giving. Truth will automatically come to you if you learn how to love selflessly. The language of love comes from the soul through the heart.
Reprinted from The Ancient Traveler: Writings on Love, by Swami Rama
