 Wednesday, April 13, 2005
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LOVE
Meher Baba
Of all the forces that can best overcome all difficulties, the
greatest is the force of love, because the greatest Law of God is Love,
which holds the key to all problems. This mighty force not only enables
one to put the ideal of selfless service into practice, but also
transforms one into God. It has been possible through love for man to
become God; and when God becomes man, it is also due to His Love for His
beings.
Love is dynamic in action and contagious in effect. Pure love is
matchless in majesty; it has no parallel in power and there is no
darkness it cannot dispel. It is the undying flame that has set life
aglow. The lasting emancipation of man depends upon his love for God and
upon God's love for one and all.
Where there is love, there is Oneness and, in complete Oneness, the
Infinite is realized completely at all times and in every sphere of
life, be it science, art, religion, or beauty. The spirit of true love
and sacrifice is beyond all ledgers and needs no measures. A constant
wish to love and be loving and a non-calculating will to sacrifice in
every walk of life, high and low, big and small, between home and
office, streets and cities, countries and continents are the best anti-
selfish measures that man can take in order to be really self-ful and
joyful.
Love also means suffering and pain for oneself and happiness for
others. To the giver, it is suffering without malice or hatred. To the
receiver, it is a blessing without obligation. Love alone knows how to
give without necessarily bargaining for a return. There is nothing that
love cannot achieve and there is nothing that love cannot sacrifice.
Love for God, love for fellow-beings, love for service and love of
sacrifices; in short, love in any shape and form is the finest "give and
take" in the world. Ultimately, it is love that will bring about the
much-desired universal leveling of human beings all over the world,
without necessarily disturbing the inherent diversities of details about
mankind.
All the same, in order to burst out in a mighty big spirit to serve as
a beacon for those who may yet be groping in the darkness of
selfishness, love needs to be kindled and rekindled in the abysmal
darkness of selfish thoughts, selfish words and selfish deeds.
The light of love is not free from its fire of sacrifice. Like heat
and light, love and sacrifice go hand in hand. The true spirit of
sacrifice that springs spontaneously does not and cannot reserve itself
for particular objects and special occasions. Love and coercion can
never go together. Love has to spring spontaneously from within. It
is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force and it cannot
be forced upon anybody, yet it can be awakened in one through love
itself.
Love cannot be born of mere determination; through exercise of will,
one can at best be dutiful. One may, through struggle and effort,
succeed in securing that his external action is in conformity with his
conception of what is right; but such action is spiritually barren
because it lacks the inward duty of spontaneous love.
Like every great virtue, love, the mainspring of all life, can also be
misapplied. It may lead to the height of God-intoxication or to the
depths of despair. No better example can be given of the two polarities
of love and their effects than that of Mary Magdalene before and after
meeting Jesus.
Between these two extremes are many kinds of love. On the one hand,
love does exist in all the phases of human life; but here it is latent
or is limited and poisoned by personal ambitions, racial pride, narrow
loyalties and rivalries and by attachment to sex, nationality, sect,
caste, or religion. On the other hand, pure and real love has also its
stages, the highest being the gift of God to love Him. When one truly
loves God, one longs for union with Him, and this supreme longing is
based on the desire of giving up one's whole being to the beloved.
True love is very different from an evanescent outburst of indulgent
emotionalism or the enervating stupor of a slumbering heart. It can
never come to those whose heart is darkened by selfish cravings or
weakened by constant reliance upon the lures and stimulations of the
passing objects of sense.
Even when one truly loves humanity, one longs to give one's all for
its happiness. When one truly loves one's country, there is the longing
to sacrifice one's very life without seeking reward and without the
least thought of having loved and served. When one truly loves one's
friends, there is the longing to help them without making them feel
under the least obligation. When truly loving one's enemies, one longs
to make them friends. True love for one's parents or family makes one
long to give them every comfort at the cost of one's own. Thought of
self is always absent in the different longings connected with the
various stages of pure, real love; a single thought of self would be an
adulteration.
Divine Love is qualitatively different from human love. Human love is
for the many in the one and Divine Love is for the One in the many.
Human love leads to innumerable complications and tangles; but Divine
Love leads to integration and freedom. Human love in its personal and
impersonal aspects is limited; but Divine Love, with its fusion of the
personal and the impersonal aspects, is Infinite in being and
expression. Divine Love makes us be true to ourselves and to others and
makes us live truly and honestly. Thus, it is the solution to all our
difficulties and problems; it frees us from every kind of binding;
purifies our hearts and glorifies our being.
To those whose hearts are pure and simple, true love comes as a gift
through the activating grace of a Perfect Master, and this Divine Love
will perform the supreme miracle of bringing God into the hearts of men.
All the same, human love should not be despised, even when it is fraught
with limitations. It is bound to break through all these limitations and
initiate an aspirant in the eternal life in the Truth.
God does not listen to the language of the tongue which constitutes
Japs (mental repetitions), Mantras (verbal repetitions), Zikra (either
kind of repetition), and devotional songs. He does not listen to the
language of the mind which constitutes meditation, concentration and
thoughts about God. He listens only to the language of the heart, which
constitutes love. The most practical way for the common man to express
this language of the heart, whilst attending to daily-life duties, is to
speak lovingly, think lovingly, and act lovingly towards all mankind,
irrespective of caste, creed and position, taking God to be present in
each and every one.
To realize God, we must love Him, losing ourselves in His Infinite
Self. We can love God by surrendering to the Perfect Master who is God's
personal Manifestation. We can also love God by loving our
fellow-beings, by giving them happiness at the cost of our own happiness, by
rendering them service at sacrifice of our interests and by dedicating
our lives at the altar of selfless work. When we love God intensely
through any of these channels, we finally know Him to be our own Self.
The beginning of real love is obedience, and the highest aspect of
this love which surpasses that of love itself is the aspect which
culminates into the perfect obedience or supreme resignation to the Will
and Wish of the Beloved. In this love are embodied all Yogas known to
saints and seekers.
To love God in the most practical way is to love our fellow
beings. If we feel for others in the same way as we feel for
our own dear ones, we love God.
If, instead of seeing faults in others, we look within
ourselves, we are loving God.
If, instead of robbing others to help ourselves, we rob
ourselves to help others, we are loving God.
If we suffer in the sufferings of others and feel happy
in the happiness of others, we are loving God.
If, instead of worrying over our own misfortunes, we
think ourselves more fortunate than many many others, we are
loving God.
If we endure our lot with patience and contentment,
accepting it as His Will, we are loving God.
If we understand and feel that the greatest act of
devotion and worship to God is not to hurt or harm any of His
beings, we are loving God.
To love God as He ought to be loved, we must live for God
and die for God, knowing that the goal of life is to Love God,
and find Him as our own self.
Love is a gift from God to man.
Obedience is a gift from Master to man.
Surrender is a gift from man to Master.
One who loves desires the will of the Beloved.
One who obeys does the will of the Beloved.
One who surrenders knows nothing but the will of the Beloved.
Love seeks union with the Beloved.
Obedience seeks the pleasure of the Beloved.
Surrender seeks nothing.
One who loves is the lover of the Beloved.
One who obeys is the beloved of the Beloved.
One who surrenders has no existence other than the Beloved.
Greater than love is obedience.
Greater than obedience is surrender.
All three arise out of, and remain contained in, the Ocean of divine Love.
The gift of understanding is more precious than any other attribute of Love
— be it expressed in service or sacrifice.
Love can be blind, selfish, greedy, ignorant, but love with understanding
can be none of these things. It is the Divine fruit of Pure Love, the rare
fruit or flower of the Universe. It has been called "The Sweetest Flower in
all the world!" Age cannot wither it.
It grows more lovely as it casts off its outer garment, disclosing its unseen
beauty within.
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