6 Love
It’s not really that love makes the world go around; love is what makes the ride interesting!
What is love? In a nutshell, love is the Divinity within you.
When a person knows himself, when he can really dive within and discover the love within himself, then only can he project that love to someone else.
We go through various facets of love to reach Divine love, which is ours. We are born with it, but because of the limitations of our mind and heart, we cannot yet express it. As the cobwebs of the mind are cleared, as the closed heart is opened more, the divinity of love will begin to shine through, and continue until it can shine through completely.
Love is neither born nor created. It is a world of existence in itself. To know this existence requires total sacrifice and surrender of oneself to the bigger Self that is within us. The beauty lies in that while probing the “innerality,” we also appreciate the externality.
To be able to live truly, to be able to love in totality, you have to find completeness within yourself first, because love is an expression of what one is.
What is real love? Can love really be cultivated? No, never—love is a happening. Love is like the fragrance of a flower. The flower does not transmit fragrance consciously. It is the nature of a flower to give fragrance, and that fragrance is love. It is the nature of fire to give off heat, and heat, spontaneously given by fire, is love. We do not cultivate love—we cultivate qualities within us that are conducive to making love come. In other words, everything is a preparation for love to come.
A good person naturally has love, compassion and sympathy in his heart. He has the impetus to want to always be good.
Love can be walled up. Get rid of the walls! Meditation and spiritual practices are the surest means of breaking down these walls and opening the heart so that the heart can flow in its own divine glory. Each one of us can do it!
In studying various religions and extracting their essence, we find people devoted to Krishna, to Christ, to Buddha, or to another master. This devotion is solely for the purpose of the devotee; it is not for the sake of the master. It is through devotion that the devotee becomes one with the ideal of devotion. Then the lover, the beloved, and the love become one. Then nothing is necessary. You have to walk on the path, but once you have reached the goal, walking is not necessary.
Real, sincere love of an enemy, will change that enemy.
I would prefer someone to love me, rather than to rationalize me. Which is better, which is more joyful?
As we do our best to live a good life, many things develop. Bhakti and love develop as we perform right action. In right action there is so much love that our very action becomes a dedication, and that dedication becomes an offering. That very offering is none else but devotion and love.
There is some truth in the saying that love is blind, because true love knows no analysis.
Love knows neither physical chemistry nor mental chemistry, but is an inner quality that just shines forth.
When someone says, “I don’t love such-and-such a person,” the fault is not in the object. The fault lies in the subject, because the subject has failed to recognize what love is.
Understanding does not require analysis. Analysis can only bring you acquired knowledge which is far different from inner knowledge. Inner knowledge is wisdom. Love is always expressed in the wisdom that blooms from within, for the sake of itself, to glorify itself. That is love.
The secret of being able to love is to lose oneself totally. We stop thinking, “I am the center of the Universe.” Not I, but Thou. That is knowing what love is. When the peace comes that passes all understanding, all analysis, and all rationalization, then you start knowing what love is. So the prerequisite of love is to be able to love yourself.
The secret of happiness is not in belongings, but in belonging.
There are various levels of love, ranging from the very grossest to the highest spiritual level. One can love in a very limited way by physical means only. One can love in a higher form where body and mind are involved. The highest level comes when mind, body and spirit are involved. That forms the totality of love.
The root of worship lies in the subject, not in the object.
The totality of love can only be expressed if we are total. In achieving the totality of love, one has discovered the secret of the universe. One has become one, in at-one-ment with the universe. Therein lies the completeness of love.
The kind of love which is most common with 99.99 percent of people is a kind of business: “I give you this and you give me that in return.” Pure love requires no return. When a sage says he loves the world, humanity, and every creature, he does not expect any return for it whatsoever, because he loves for the sake of love. That love within him is so powerful that it just expresses itself. In other words, he can’t help loving because he is love.
Remember this, the moment I start analyzing my love, love ceases, because I have taken love to the mental level. The mind cannot love, it can only appreciate the mechanics of love. Love is the welling of the heart. The heart feels the closeness and oneness where your heartbeat spontaneously feels the heartbeat of your beloved. But once the mind enters and analyzes even a heartbeat, the heart stops beating in the flow of love. Love knows no analysis.
It is very easy to say, “Judge not that ye be not judged.” So simple to say, but so difficult to do; because you can only stop judging if you can really love. Love never judges, it just loves, it just is.
The mind is limited, while the heart is unlimited. When we combine the greater development of the mind with the opening of the heart, then the few days that we are on this planet will become more joyful and smoother.
When love flowers in our hearts, and as our souls begin to blossom out to the world, we fulfill our destiny as human beings and the purpose for which this life has been given to us.
How valuable this life is, and how well it can be used. One day, when we leave this world, we want to be able to say, “Well-lived this life, well-lived.”
What do we teach, basically? We teach of the essence of the human being; and that we call love. Divinity is best expressed by that quality.
What happens in the mechanics of love: The mind and the heart hold hands.
When a person can really experience, really appreciate love, then his life becomes worthwhile. The essence of our teaching is the development of this love; how to unfold the inner core of your being so that you will not only express, but live love. Love is to be lived.
Religions differ at lower levels, but the meeting ground of all religions, at their highest level, is that God is love and love is God.
Love is a celebration. Everything is celebrating all the time. The flower is celebrating, the tree is celebrating, the grass is celebrating. Everything is celebrating, celebrating the glory of its own creation, of its own manifestation.
Man is not born to suffer. The human being is born to enjoy. It is our inherent right, for joy is within us. We are children of light. We are the manifestation of that eternal essence which can only be called love.
Know that if you are happy (or unhappy) today, you will be unhappy (or happy) tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after. Love is beyond all happiness and all sorrow, because happiness and sorrow are transitory.
If you want to become lovable, become loving first. For if you are loving, automatically you become lovable. You have a magnetic pull. Your very presence creates an atmosphere of love.
You can discard the entire Bible if you can just remember one thing: Love thy neighbor as thyself. That is the most important teaching. That is the cream, or butter, that is churned up from this vast vessel of milk.
But to truly love thy neighbor as thyself you must recognize the oneness between you and me: there is no you and me.
Unfoldment of the spirit is expressed as unfoldment of love.
If I want to make you happy there is only one thing I can do—love you. I could appeal to your logical mind, but that is not what we want. All kinds of things please our minds. Your mind will agree with a certain theory or philosophical proposition, but as time goes on you will find that theory to be of no value to you, and change it. The mind is fickle. Mental contact has very limited value. The greatest contact that can be made is not from mind to mind, but from heart to heart.
As we go deeper through our meditational and spiritual practices, the movements of love become less and less. Then the reality of love is known . . . stillness.
Whatever the case might be, there has to be nonattachment. For example, all of you sitting here, I love you passionately, deeply, profoundly; you can’t measure it. And yet, I am nonattached to you; for it is not I that is loving you, as you. It is the Divinity within me which is one with the Divinity within you. That oneness, that fusion, is love.
The perception of a self-realized man is on such a vast scale, that the ordinary mind cannot comprehend him. If you want to see the top of one tree, you must stand on the top of another tree. Standing down here you don’t get the proper view. To really understand the total man we have to become total ourselves. The total man always has love and compassion in so much abundance, it extends to the whole earth, it extends to infinity. Nothing can weaken that love or compassion!
This is a collection of quotes from satsangs of Gururaj Ananda Yogi