"Sahaj Marg means the yoga of Love."

(Chariji)

For removing various complexities of the heart, Lalaji Saheb asked the satsanghis to make friends of their enemies and the persons whom they dreaded, and directed them not to do to others which they themselves did not wish to be done by. He considered love to be the greatest tapas.

Real craving for God will be found only in one person out of thousands. What is real love for God? It is a state when the trinity of the lover, the beloved and love itself disappear.

Excerpts taken from Truth Eternal - Shri Ram Chandraji of Fatehgarh U.P.

Universal love, the very fundamental basis of religion having disappeared altogether, the religion which was generally considered to be a link between man and God, has now become a barrier instead. If we keep ourselves bound fast to a particular form or practice without a clear idea of its real significance and final approach, we are probably committing the greatest blunder. God is not to be found within the fold of a particular religion or sect. He is not confined within certain forms or rituals, nor is He to be traced out from within the scriptures. Him we have to seek for in the innermost core of our heart.

I once asked Master to reveal to me the secret of quick progress in spirituality. Master said, "Create love in yourself, and then see the progress. Really speaking, love can conquer all, and love alone can do this. Everything else, every other force or power, creates a reaction which is not favourable. If you are annoyed you transmit anger, and the other person becomes angry in turn. If you use physical force, that too creates resistance followed by a reaction on its own plane.

A mother is the very embodiment of love and affection. Only a mother's heart can bear with patience all troubles and miseries caused to her by her son, thinking all the while of trying to provide for her son's comfort and happiness. The same is the position of the real Master or guru who is the spiritual mother of the disciple. As such the guru is always on the look out for the spiritual welfare of the child, the disciple. It is due to the affectionate attachment of the guru with his disciple that the attention of the great Father with whom his spiritual mother (the guru) is so closely connected, is directed towards him, the disciple.
The function of a mother and of a true guru are closely similar.

Excerpts taken from Complete Works of Ram Chandra, Volume I - Shri Ram Chandra

To my mind a man has more time at his disposal than he has work for. Service and sacrifice are the two instruments to build up the temple of spirituality. Love is of course the foundation. Any kind of service done selflessly is helpful. Service carries with it a sense of worship, and we should be as busy with it as we are with our daily routine of life.

Excerpts taken from Complete Works of Ram Chandra, Volume II - Shri Ram Chandra

Some people talk of love while others complain of fear. To them, I have to say that fear and love both have the same centre. If we drag ourselves towards the world, things of fear begin to display their character, and when we are towards the Divinity, Divinity plays in Divinity itself. So, both the things are remarkable because they belong to the same centre. But we should be wise enough to take the right thing and reject the wrong one. This will be for our own good.
Real love develops in purer mind, having its Nature Divine. We can only know the unknown when we become unknown ourselves.

One thing which I like to introduce in our satsangh is that at 9:00 P.M. sharp every abhyasi, wherever he might happen to be at the time, should stop his work and meditate for fifteen minutes, thinking that all brothers and sisters are being filled up with love and devotion and that real faith is growing stronger in them. It shall be of immense value to them, which their practical experience only shall reveal.

All is the play of His love. Do not feel surprised if I say love and hatred are the same. Love is only positive thinking and hatred is negative thinking.
...I feel happy when the words 'universal love' come from the mouth of any person. Generally the saints of the day preach universal love but they do not find ways to tell you how it is acquired. Only remove the hatred, I say, and universal love is there. Suppose a man is a liar and he wants to get rid of this habit, he should start speaking truth because a sort of character will be formed with concentration at the bottom in a natural way. If you attempt to be attentive on lie to be removed, it would indirectly make it stronger and stronger because concentration is there by which they get power. So is the case with universal love. It is there like a silkworm in a cocoon.

Excerpts taken from Complete Works of Ram Chandra, Volume III - Shri Ram Chandra

Faith and love are sure medicines for all kinds of diseases of the mind and its weaknesses. It is the brave who conquer battles of life as well as attain bliss.

Excerpts taken from Letters of the Master, Volume I

One thing I read in Voice Real which touched my very core of my heart, that is, "I never thought what was my Master's was not mine too." How generous this is, how noble, and how great a Love! I now try to feel that all that is my Master's is also mine, by that very fact. All worries are gone, all tensions ended. Glory be to my divine and loving Master.

Almost in all the religions direct love with God has been preached. I always mean surrendering to God alone, which can only be acquired by DEPENDENCY AND LOVE.

Excerpts taken from Letters of the Master, Volume III

Master's impersonal love for his devotees is not shown in grand deeds, but the love is hidden behind every small, insignificant and often unnoticed act in the humble routine of day-to-day existence.

How to make the Almighty Master turn towards us. Master laughed and said, "You are asking me to reveal to you one more secret. I tell you this is worth a lakh of rupees! There is only one way. Love Him so much that He begins to love you. You must knock on His door so hard that He hears and opens His door to you. Then your work is over. The secret is Love. Who can resist it? God is only waiting to give Himself but it is a pity that no one turns to Him.

Really speaking, merging starts from love, and surrender starts from love and dependency. Don't try for surrender, because when you try the self is there. The real way is to be dependent.

Excerpts taken from My Master - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

Therefore, all past systems have tried to force the human being to conform to certain systems, and by the very nature of force there is always a reaction. That is a law of nature. But when something comes and puts itself into us, our attitude is to receive it and not to throw it back. So the Master's transmission works without resistance because it is the power of love, if we may say that, which is reflected back in us as the power of love. Hate breeds hate. Similarly when we are afraid we also breed fear in the other person. But when there is only love the reaction can only be love. So the only force in nature which, while obeying the law of nature, acts in our favour, is the power of love! In a sense all yoga is based on this creation of love, and this love manifests itself initially as a longing to reach our goal, or as a craving. So all that is necessary to begin the practice of yoga is to have this longing to reach our destination. I say this because people often ask us whether they are fit for yoga at all. My Master says our willingness is our only fitness. Nothing more is necessary.

Excerpts taken from Yatra, Volume I - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

"I want capable men and women to help me in the task ahead. No doubt the world will be Paradise, but for that we have to work very hard. What we have to do is only to have a strong grip always on Divinity. I never felt disappointed, and worked single-handed, and the result is before us all. I have full confidence in myself, with the Master's hand at my back; and it has always worked. The same thing I want from all of you.
Finally, love makes every task easy and paves the way for the shower of Master's grace to smoothen the way to the Ultimate Goal. 'Love is the hunger of human Soul for Divine beauty' according to Socrates; and 'Love is the inner awakening to Reality,' according to me. Love Him who loves all; and thus everybody is automatically loved through Him. Amen." [Babuji]

To my mind, the greatest teaching of the Bhagavad Gita is that a human being can start with God who is present on this earth merely as a human being, play with Him, eat with Him, sleep with Him, and yet by the Lord's Grace when his eyes are opened to that infinite vision which alone can make us see God, realise that that same friend of his, that the same sakha of his, is also the Almighty.

We always try to see God in some abstruse, abstract way, not realising that most often, or perhaps always, God presents himself to us only in a form in which we can recognize Him. That is the human form. So when Masters come to us, it is the Almighty Himself who comes to us. It is in a form which we can recognize, in a form which we can learn to love, from which we can receive our teachings. So, that is another great function of Masters when they come to us in their physical form.

Excerpts taken from Yatra, Volume II - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

Love is the greatest force. It must be humbly offered up to Him who alone is its true object-God or Master, whichever you may like to call Him. You must love Him in such a way that your love knocks on the door of His heart, telling Him that the lover is waiting outside. Then He begins to love you, and when this happens, all your problems of life are solved! Love Him who loves all." This is the greatest revelation of my Divine Master.

The Mission is the spiritual organization which He has created with His loving hands to shelter and succour us. His Divine teachings, and the efficacious, practical system of sadhana, the system of Sahaj Marg, perfected by our Divine Master, is there for our spiritual benefit, to enable us to reach the spiritual goal of human perfection, and Divinisation to the highest level ever open to humanity. It is His sublime Grace and Divine love that has made available to us such an easy method of practice which can lead us to that goal safely and speedily. It becomes our bounden duty to practise it assiduously, with one-pointed devotion, with our hearts full of "Love for Him who loves all," with unswerving faith, to enable Him, our Beloved Master, to lead us up to Himself!

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume III - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

Once, I was talking to him about justice. I was often worried about this idea of justice, especially from this Biblical story, where one son runs away and comes back after eighteen years and the father roasts a goat for him, as the welcome for that fellow. But the devoted son, who has been living with him for eighteen years, he does not get any special treatment! So, I said, "Babuji, there seems to be no justice!" He smiled and said, "Think it over." Then one day I found that I was sitting in meditation, trying to draw back into satsangh one fellow who had not appeared for six months. And then I cursed myself; I said, "I am doing the same mistake of which I had accused my Master; I am thinking of the man who is not here!" Now, you find when women are serving food, they are thinking of the person who is not there! They may have seventeen children; but if one child is outside, their heart will be on that absent child! So that is the nature of the heart, that the absent person draws our love more than those who are present! This has something to do with the heart which has no justice!

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume IV - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

Spirituality says, "Take back the key; unlock the door, walk out into freedom; liberate your God, too, when you liberate yourself! Because He is not a Christian God alone. He is not a Hindu God alone. He is not a Muslim God alone. He is the God of the animals, of the birds, of the fishes, of human beings and of races yet to be born in the future, of whom we know nothing today! And if you wish to participate in that splendour, in that divine existence which is all embracing, which is embracing the whole universe in its love-not a totalitarian ideological trip*my friend, you have to liberate yourself from this concept."

He [the Master] had to assume a human form which represented for us a centre for our attention, something on which we could focus, first our attention, then our aspiration, finally our love. We cannot love an abstract thing. We need a concrete thing to love. But once you have perfected your love for the concrete, the concrete disappears, the love exists.
So, the idea you know, especially from the West, that love needs a lover to love-it is true initially; not later. It is a failure if you continue to need the person to love. The person can disappear. But the love must continue to exist. It is almost as mysterious as needing a pot to hold water in it, and then being able to break the pot, but the water remains in it, without the pot to hold it.
So, the whole mystery of spirituality according to me is, that a person is needed to first of all make us capable of love; second, to attract that love towards himself; third, to disappear from the scene, so that the love can exist, even when he does not exist. This is the final test. And this is what Babuji has written, that: "Any moth can immolate itself in a living flame, but rare is the moth that can die in a cold flame." Can I consume myself in my love for a beloved, when the beloved is no longer before me?

Love, when it is personalised towards oneself it becomes selfish, love of the self for the sake of the self. When this is thrown outward, it becomes universal love, where we can love each other, with a pure impartial love; there is no partiality in it. I cannot serve somebody because he belongs to my community or to my village or to my nation. A human being is a human being wherever he may be born, and by virtue of being a human being, he or she is my brother or sister. So, these concepts of universal brotherhood are taught fundamentally in a spiritual situation.

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume V - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

So love means responsibility. But we don't want responsibility; therefore we don't want love. And unfortunately, pleasure being equated with love, when you can have pleasure without love and without responsibility, people have the pleasure and nothing else. And then they find that the pleasure turns to pain. Because everything in Nature is doomed to turn into its opposite. The only thing which cannot change into its opposite is love. Because love has no opposite. As Babuji has said, opposite of love is not hate. Absence of love is hate. This is something which we must clearly understand, because people often say, "Oh, love and hate are two extremes, cold and heat are two extremes." It is a stupid concept; western concept; psychological concept. The true thing is, where love does not exist, there hate exists. They are not opposites. When love comes, there can be no hate. It disappears. It is like, when the sun comes, there can be no mist or fog. It just disappears. Can we say therefore that the sun is the opposite of fog! In the presence of the one, the other cannot remain. We have this peculiar phenomenon in society that lack of love has brought about disintegration in families, disintegration in love relationships, disintegration in society, mutual disharmony, religious intolerance, social intolerance, national intolerance. And therefore we are at war, at all levels, within the family.

So, all these things which Sahaj Marg insists upon, is not to glorify the Master, He doesn't need our glorification; not to praise, He doesn't need our praise; not to love Him even, He doesn't need our love. What on earth for? For ourselves! We love Him so that we may love ourselves. ...If we are well-behaved, disciplined from inside, we adore the Master, worship Him as somebody who is unique in the universe, love Him not for what He can give us but for Himself, because in that love there can be no separation from the Beloved. One does not love, so that one gets something. One loves because one cannot help loving, even if that love is not reciprocated. As you know, in English there is that old saying, "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." So, one who is afraid of losing himself says, "No, no! I am not prepared for this loving and losing business, that is for the Englishmen." Well, don't love! But you will find you have lost yourself when you are unwilling to lose yourself, precisely because this miracle exists, that when you give yourself, you find your self.

When you say the Master has no time and space limitation, does it mean that I should be in His Presence? Yes. Not in His physical presence. I must be in the presence of His heart. My heart and His heart, there should be no difference, and when He looks, He sees me because my love is before Him. Then He says, even if you are not there, "Oh! I am thinking of so-and-so. He is coming to my mind frequently." Why? Because your love is reaching Him there.

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume VI - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

Master once told me the first law of spiritual life; "Love yourself so much that you cannot destroy yourself, but have to make yourself into that which you love." Then we will see the rest.

So, when the lover, the beloved and the love cease to exist, there is only something which you don't know what to call now, because even the two who have become one, have lost their individual identities.

...Like the lover, the beloved, and love have come together in one grand climax, yesterday, today and tomorrow have also to come together. The past, the present, the future have also to come together. This is what perhaps our philosophy means when it says: "Live in the present." It is not this present, as we know it. It is something in which the past, present and future will become one. I dare say, if you would be in that situation, you would not even know that it is the present. All that you can say is-Existence.

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume VII - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

So love has to be protected, cherished, nurtured, nourished in the secret of one's heart. He alone should know that he is beloved of this man or woman who loves him, nobody else. Now, that is a very tender, divinely romantic concept of the love between the Master and a devotee, you see, and therefore, the more people talk of the Master, you know, "I love the Master so much but He is not doing anything for me," it becomes a commercial sort of love, you see. "I love Him, He must do something for me"-love does not ask, love gives.
...So, dear friends, brothers and sisters, the secret of spiritual growth up to the highest is this: Permanent, growing, contact with the Master in secret, in a sacred atmosphere of the most sacred love. Nothing profane about it, and if that exists you are going to be one with Him, because that is what He wants, you see.

Yesterday I saw a quotation somewhere, "If you have something, set it free; if it is yours, it will come back to you." All girls, mothers, women must remember this. Learn to liberate those whom you love, whether it be your husband, or your children, they will come back! (laughter) This is meant for everybody, you see. The words of wisdom are for all.

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume VIII- Shri P.Rajagopalachari

So you see, here the Master is your map. He is the pathfinder. He is the guide who takes you through that, the bizarre convolutions of this terrain through which you have to pass. And this gratitude, when it is awakened first in your heart, it is something devastating, because you don't just find a man who has reminded you of your home, you find someone who loves you so much that he is prepared to tolerate your ignorance, your sickness, your stupidity, your greed, your vices, your sins, and yet touch you with His divine hand and say, "Doesn't matter; you are all this but you are nevertheless mine, because I am the home itself." So this gratitude turns into love. Now we don't even care for the original home, because the father I have lost is in front of me, and where is my home but with my father?!

Parents have to regulate their minds. They have to be wise enough to know that, "My child is mine; nevertheless it has his own existence." It has its own past samskaras in which we believe, you see. It has a tendency of growth; let me allow it to grow. See, my Master used to say that the duty of the parents is that of a trustee. A child is entrusted to you by God. Deal with it as a trust, honourable job well done, with complete integrity to the work that that has been entrusted to you. Don't interfere with the child. We have often seen children who cut buds of roses from the plants and want to open the flower by peeling off the petals, and it is dead. You see, unfolding of a mind is like the flowering of a bud, as delicate, as fragile, but as sure as that. Would we but trust Nature and let Nature take over and only provide an environment of love and warmth in which a bud can open, you would see the marvel and the miracle of every child becoming a genius. What is genius except complete expression of our inner potential?

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume IX- Shri P.Rajagopalachari

So this is the message of spirituality: Love. Love so well, love so much, love so absolutely that your heart becomes capable of receiving that which is ever-flowing for us, ever-raining down upon us, and then, in one second, the miracle is achieved that my heart is as big as the divine heart. And now, instead of receiving, it starts to give, and that is the real beauty of existence. Receiving, receiving, receiving, receiving! All our lives we are taking and receiving, and it is nauseating that people with millions want to receive more millions, people with billions want to receive more billions. Where is the end to this? Then when are we supposed to give something? When we admire our cows and our mothers-they eat a handful of rice and feed their babies with their milk.

Excerpts taken from The Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume X- Shri P. Rajagopalachari

In Sahaj Marg, because of the concept of Universal Love, the Master has no right to love individuals. He loves. He loves in a universal way. Anything which comes before Him partakes of that love of His. When it comes in His presence, it is subject to that Love, in the sense, not of subjection, but of, shall we say, an effect that it automatically has on you. It's like when you stand under a shower, you get wet.

Excerpts taken from The Fruit of the Tree - Shri P. Rajagopalachari

The only intelligent question we can ever ask the Master, "Master, what did you do to become what you are? Can I also do it?" If we have the intelligence to ask this question and if we have the will power to do it, nothing can stop us from becoming him. I would risk saying that even love is unnecessary. Because love does not make us what we want to become. Love only makes us want to become what we want to become. It is love which creates the longing. That longing makes us ask him this question. And that longing gives us the will power to do what we have to do. Therefore, love is not the end, but it is the beginning of the whole process. So many people ask, "Why should I love the Master?" [he chuckles] Not at all necessary, you see, unless you want to become like him.

Excerpts taken from Heart to Heart, Volume II - Shri P. Rajagopalachari

How to understand what is forceless force? Or if you want to translate it into mundane life, how to understand loveless love? It's a very necessary thing to be understood by at least our youth. You see, the elder generation is spoiled. What is loveless love? It means the perfection of love, the ennobling of love, to a state where the common understanding of love is no more existing, only the ultimate transcendental reality of love is existing. It's easy to understand what loveless love must be. But people will say, "But how can loveless love be really love, Chari?" Yes, it is. That is the only real love. If you bring it down to its, shall we say, material context, physical context, as I said once before: one four letter word changes into another four letter word: L-O-V-E becomes L-U-S-T. Now how can L-U-S-T be L-O-V-E?
So it is possible to understand the idea of a loveless love, if we are willing to understand. "No, no, that is all for philosophers, you see, for sixty-five year old people. But what about the young people?" Yes. Love is the same for the young as for the old.
...Now this you have to understand with your heart, because if you try to understand with your body, the body will say, "Nonsense, this is love. That, we shall come to when we are seventy, when this is no more possible." But, that is not negation, that is not renunciation. That is not understanding. It is like a robber saying, "I can no longer rob; therefore I have renounced robbery." It is when you can do something that you have to renounce it.

Love becomes a ritual, when there is only the actions of love but not the heart behind it. With the heart in it, everything is pure. Without the heart in it, everything is dirty.

Excerpts taken from Religion and Spirituality - Shri P. Rajagopalachari

We have been speaking about love and death, and some abhyasis have also wondered how morbid I can become by trying to link such apparently opposed subjects as love and death. Some have even expressed anger. "How can you talk of two things in the same breath?" So I would like to, perhaps, conclude this seminar by this final effort at trying to explain how they are not only related, but absolutely related. How there must be discipline in life, as well as in death. And that discipline is called love.

Excerpts taken from Love and Death - Shri P. Rajagopalachari

This is a very demanding tradition, a very demanding path. Evolution is the force of love pushing something, into the infinite. Like the power of a river which propels all the water in it towards the ocean into which it must merge. It brooks no interference. It cannot. It has to obey that law that it must ultimately merge in the ocean from which it has come, you see. If it doesn't it is a lake, a pond; and one day, like the Dead Sea, it will also stink. Anything which ceases to move dies. And if the spirit, if the soul is not in movement continuously, without rest, it will-in the only way we can express it-die.

Similarly, your love must expand and expand until you find, as Babuji said, this little tiny human heart must become a universal heart. When all the beings of this universe are within that heart, now whom will you hate, whom will you love? There is neither now. So all this question of loving and hating is only in the duality of existence. Ultimately everything fades. Then only He exists in each one of us thinking that "I exist". Eventually that too goes.

Excerpts taken from A Preceptor's Guide, Volume II - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

I have often joked that when you say, 'somebody fell in love with someone' it is a fall. We never say, 'he rose in love'. Actually we should rise in love, not fall in love. The love of the Master, when you fall in love with the Master, in this mundane sense, you are really rising in his love, in your love for him, ultimately the love for each other is in perfect harmony, matched. Then comes the possibility of the union that we call the laya avastha. Biologically we all know that two things cannot mate which are from different geneses or species. It's not possible. Similarly, how can a mere human being mate or become united with the Ultimate? To make that union possible which we call laya avastha, first we must love the Master so much that we want to become one with him, and we must become fitter and fitter. Ultimately when we are like him, then comes the grand finale of the union. So laya avastha is something for which we have to be fit.

Excerpts taken from A Preceptor's Guide, Volume III - Shri P.Rajagopalachari

The above quotes form a short synopsis from the Sahaj Marg Educational Series titled Love. To purchase the book, follow this link to the bookstore.