"The foundation of a spiritual association
with the Master is love."

All religions preach love. It has formed the major theme of the world's output of great poetry. At the individual level everyone seeks it in his or her own life. Love has been responsible for heroic deeds, for acts of great courage and valour, and for much of the world's artistic output. It is probably quite true to say that behind every act of human endeavour lies this search for love. And its glorious working of unsurpassed beauty is in the manifestation of faith - faith at all levels culminating in the spiritual life where love finds its supreme flowering and glory in the search for the unknown Ultimate.

If you wish to go to the Paratattva, the ultimate, how can you possibly love a formless, nameless, qualityless, attributeless thing; you cannot call it a thing; a thing must have some substance. So He in His mercy comes in our hearts and it is very easy to love myself. That is what we are doing all the time. Selfishness means love of myself in a lesser way, in a grossly materialistic way, if you pardon me in saying this, in a stupid way. It is a self love based on the form, the figure, the flesh and blood, of a lusty, passionate, selfish, pleasure-seeking, egoistic, power-seeking individual. If I could become a little more selfish and penetrate into the heart of myself, and love that which is inside me, I become attained. So this is the message of spirituality - 'My son, God is in everything but if you worship Him in a form, you are limited by that form.' Spirituality does not design form worship; spirituality has never designed because it is in the atoms as it is in the universe*. Any object must be fit for worship.

So we have to find that which can bring a beneficial thing in our life, make us progressively grow into Him, which is the Lakshya [goal] of our Sadhana. And because He is eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent but nevertheless formless, nameless, attributeless, therefore, I cannot seek Him. A guru comes and says, 'My son, meditate. He is in your heart too.' If you believe He is eternal, He is everywhere, why do you not seek Him here, where He is always available, whether you are in bed, sitting in the latrine, at the dining table, or in your office? Can you separate Him from you? 'No.' Then seek IT here. So this is the simple logic of the spiritual existence, the simple way.

What is love?
I have often felt that love is a way of expressing one's concern for the other. Suppose you love your child. How do you express your concern for that child? Mere love is not enough unless it is backed by concern. It is almost like having paper currency without gold-backing behind it. In modern days, perhaps, it reflects the inner psychic existence of the human being that we have love without being backed by performance, that we have paper currencies without adequate gold-backing. Perhaps it is the reflection of the inner on the external. That is a speculative thing. But if love does not relate or release concern for the one whom you love, it is an empty shell parading with love, but there is no love behind it. For instance, I cannot say, I love my neighbour and when somebody is sick I say, well, let them call the doctor. Somebody comes and asks for the car because the man who has fallen on the street is struggling for existence - to take him to the hospital - I say I don't want to be involved. How can this be love for the neighbour, when I cannot concern myself sufficiently to put everything I have into his welfare?

In today's selfish world, self-centered world, corrupt world, it would be extraordinarily rare to find a human being, who takes a genuine interest in another person. Superficial interest, we all have, you see. We pretend to be brothers and sisters. Even in the family, I mean blood brothers and sisters, even there, it is much a matter of pretence - father and daughter, father and son, brother and sister, except perhaps in the case of the mother whose poor female heart is overburdened with love. So they go through the pangs of love, pangs of pain of separation. The women are unable to throw it away. If they could, I am sure they would. Even in the west, I have found - where there is a lot of cold-heartedness, heartlessness - even there the women are not able to throw away their fundamental capacity to love or shall I say the fundamental quality of love. They have not been able to throw it away however much they would like to go without love. Because love is a problem, you see. When you love someone, you have to accept responsibility.

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 responsibility, people have the pleasure without responsibility, people have the pleasure and nothing else. And then they find that the pleasure turns into 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.

Now in love we have many things. It is not merely an emotion as psychologists say. It is not merely ecstasy as lovers feel. It is not merely something to talk about as philosophers talk about or speculate. In its true form, in its ultimate form, love is something which embraces some very fundamental principles. This is founded on old Indian philosophy which says that unless certain things come together, love cannot exist. The first is purity. Purity means not merely purity of the body or of the mind, but purity in every aspect of our being, in every aspect of our existence; purity of thought, purity of action, purity in our interpersonal relationships, purity of the house not at the cost of the environment but while keeping the environment also pure, all this is necessary. So we have to balance this purity between the inside and the outside. The inner cleaning and the outer cleaning should go side by side. That brings us to the first step which is essential - a very vital and all embracing concept that this purity has to pervade every form, every aspect of our life, every function of our life.

How should love be?
Our love must be like the lamp - the light of the lamp - it doesn't judge that upon which it falls. It illuminates everything in its presence, a lump of cow dung or a saint. It has no distinction. Like the sun, it shines on all. It doesn't say, "Oh, here is a saint let me shine fully on him." The saint will run away, you see, because he can't bear its heat. "And here is a sinner, I won't shine on him at all." Has the sun this choice? Then how can we have the choice?

When we go around saying, "Oh I love you, I love human beings. I love you because you are the creation of God," it is most suspect. Because love is something which is so sacred, you see, that we cannot possibly afford to speak about it. It becomes profane the moment it is expressed. There is a truth enshrined in the Indian Upanishad which says that love must be like a seed; if you cut open the seed to see what is inside, you destroy the life that is within it.

Similarly, if you try to exercise your abilities to probe into love, you will destroy love. This is why they say love is enshrined. In a shrine, you have an object which is kept away from the profane gaze, from the profane touch. Nobody can approach it. From a distance you can worship it. Love is to be worshipped, not to be enjoyed. This is something that Western culture needs to know very badly. Love is not for enjoyment. Love is an ennobling force, an elevating force, an evolutionary force. And when you use it in a depraved, profane way, it ceases to be love and it turns into its complementary four-letter word 'lust'. Please remember that love must be there, must shine from you, but not be spoken about. That is why God is silent - perhaps one of the reasons.

How to love?
Go into the heart, establish yourself in that heart, don't seek to posses but go in and become the tenant of that heart. So all this grappling and groaning and grumbling, you know, from the outside, it only brings about imprisonment of the beloved, therefore a desire to escape from the embrace of the beloved and therefore a broken heart! This is the hint for the westerners who are always crazy about love. A very necessary thing, but if you love from the outside, it is always doomed to failure. You may possess but you will never be the ruler of that which you possess. To rule something you must be inside.

We are human beings. If you have love here, if your heart is no longer a heart but is an object of eternal love purified by love, filled with love, therefore undying - love never dies; hate dies, prejudice dies. They are here for the nonce, few days, few years, maybe even a few centuries, but love prevails, prevails till the very end of time, for eternity. Therefore one who has become love is also, ipso facto, eternal. This is why we say God is love and if you are love in that sense, you are divinised. So this is what we have to try to become. Our business is to purify this heart, remove all the grossness, the hatred, the prejudice that is now the only occupant of our heart, so that the love of the Master may flow into it.

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.

You must love in such a way that you are not conscious that you are loving. When we reach that stage all these aggrandisements of the Master, eulogies, praises will stop. We will speak the truth about the Master.

Kindling love
A lover is one who loves. Lovers are not made. They have to create love. You can dig a well, but the water must spring up by itself. You don't pour water into a well and draw it again. So, what is the fun in expecting the Master to put love into your heart, and then take that love from you, as if it is your love for Him. So please understand very carefully that Sahaj Marg means the Yoga of Love. And if it is not blessed by that love between the Master and the abhyasi, it is a futile exercise, from which we should resile at the earliest possible moment, because it is going to be a waste of time, not so much for us, as for that poor man who is struggling for us. Let us at least show Him this much consideration, that we don't waste His time and His efforts.

We must feel ourselves connected with the Supreme Power every moment with an unbroken chain of thought during all our activities. It can be easily accomplished if we treat all our action and work to be a part of Divine duty, entrusted to us by the Great Master whom we are to serve as best as we can.

So when we are in deep love, we shall naturally feel impatient to secure nearness with the loved object. When we are greatly in love with any of the worldly objects its idea comes to our mind again and again, and we think of it over and over again. Now in order to develop Divine love in our heart, we have only to reverse the process. If we remember God frequently or for the most part of the day, we will automatically develop love for Him, which if continued with earnestness will create impatience in our heart to secure union at the earliest. Another way of developing love with God is to play the part of a lover as if you are enacting a drama. But it is only for those who are almost incapable of finer means. The method though artificial, will shortly bring you to reality and feeling of true love and impatience will begin to agitate your heart.

Creating love
Meditation is only a process. Constant remembrance too is a process. It is designed to create love for the Master. So one who claims that he is constantly remembering the Master but has no love for the Master, is really not in constant remembrance. It cannot be true, because as Babuji said, "We remember those whom we love." Here by remembrance we try to create love and when love comes, remembrance as an act ceases. It goes underground like the bed of a river on which the river flows. We only see the river, we don't see the river bed. But without the river bed, the river cannot be there.

So, the remembrance must be in such a way that it promotes love. It makes the heart, you know as they say, beat faster. The anguish of separation grows and grows until a person is ready to burst with longing! Until that stage is achieved, my dear brothers and sisters, there is no hope in spirituality. No hope in the sense that the higher gifts of spiritual realisation which the Master only can bestow on us, remain beyond our grasp.

By trying to remember Him, remembering Him constantly, we create love for Him. Then we obey Him, His principles, His teachings - not because it is some imposition of the Lord, or some authority that He has established Himself to be, but because we love Him. We wish to please Him with everything that we do. We wish to become what He is, or what He wants us to become.

So, we must try to cultivate this love for the Master. For that, a great deal of personal contact is essential. You know, you have the four stages - Salokya, Sameepya, Saroopya, Sayujya* [progressive stages of nearness to God]. So when are we going to create this love? We are only playing with forms and names, pretending to love - most of us. But even that is good because Babuji said, "By pretending to love, real love can come into effect." So, at least let us start with the pretence that we love, and try to make that into reality. So, for this purpose, as I say, constant meetings are essential. I used to wonder why Babuji travelled so much. It was only so that he could give an opportunity to the abhyasis to be with him. He didn't have to be with them. They had to be with him. So, since everybody cannot go to see, he was graceful enough or shall we say gracious enough to come to us periodically, so that he gave us an opportunity of being with him to enable our love for him to grow. Therefore frequent meetings are essential.

How is love made to grow?
The most important thing, in our Sahaj Marg sadhana at least, is the devotion, the personal loyalty, the love for the Master. I have also found there were some people who were extraordinarily devoted to the Mater - for say a few years - and suddenly for no reason at all their devotion fell, their love seemed to vapourise and their progress stopped and automatically they slipped, because it is the law of Nature that either you move up or you fall back, you cannot stay static at one point. Either you rise or you fall.

So we have to be careful about the idea that 'We loved the Master therefore we shall always love Him' - that idea is wrong. A fire has to be kept burning by adding more fuel; the car has to be kept moving by keeping the foot on the accelerator pedal you see. If you remove your foot from the accelerator pedal because the car is moving, it will automatically come to a stop. That is why you have the accelerator. It is not enough just to start the engine and start moving and then remove your foot! So, even love - shall we say, in the boiler language - has to be stoked, has to be kept burning. And now, how to do this? How is love to be made to grow? Many people have this funny idea that if you love, that is enough; you cannot love more. How can I love some person more today than yesterday; and how can that love be more tomorrow than it is today? But it is a miracle of love that it seems to grow and grow and grow you see, and like all things either it is growing or it is diminishing. There too there is no static point where there is a base, a zero base for love at which we can remain; go up when we choose, come down when we choose. That is not the truth. That too is a vertical line, either we are going up or coming down.

So let us not have this very facile assumption that, "it does not matter if I am not rising, at least I am where I am." There is no where I am." I must move; either I move up or down. This is an inexorable law, please remember this very carefully. It applies to progress, it applies to love. If I don't love my Master more and more everyday, I am going to love him less and less everyday and at one time, which will be very soon, that love is going to vanish. I have seen this happen time and again. People who are willing to give their life for their Master, suddenly they disappear. You ask them what happened, some disenchantment with the Master," No, no, he did this, he did that," or some alternative attraction, which diverts our love away from the Master, to itself or to himself or to herself which is so easy. The mind is so easily diverted away from the main purpose.

Now we have this difficulty to understand how a man can, or a woman can, think of love. But I may, very humbly suggest that, that is the phenomenon of modern life, that all human beings want love, and to be loved, and to love. But love, I think, by and large eludes us, because more often it remains at the mental or emotional levels and does not really come out of the heart, does not touch the heart, does not find its seat in the heart. And my Master's definition of the absolute love was that, "The lover should not even know he or she loves." Because as long as we know there is love, it is again a subject matter of knowledge, not so much of feeling. And at the highest level the identity between the lover and the beloved should dissolve. And when that does not happen, what is love?

And yet, at yet higher levels, at spiritually elevated levels, love cannot be personalised any more. It is no longer that, one can say, "I love you," to an individual, or even to a group of people, but a person is transformed into love itself. Such a person no longer loves in the usual sense, but he becomes love. And my Master said, "God is love in that sense." He does not love Jack or Robin or Lucy, but He is love. And if you have the ability, and the willingness, and the yearning to be in His presence, then you will feel that He loves.

So therefore, you see, the whole thing of bhakti yoga became transformed. And I was able to understand one of these great mystifications of thought, which in the West we are often asked, "If God is love, why is there so much misery, so much violence, so much criminality, so much of everything: disease, warfare?" My Master's answer was, "Because they are not in the presence of God." So when we remove ourselves away from His presence, and go further and further, it becomes impossible to feel that love.

So from the simple understanding, you see, that to know honey, I must taste honey, I must be with honey, and to have the real taste I must be healthy. I came to the greater understanding that for a yogic relationship with the Maker, with the Creator, we have to be in the presence of that which we want to learn or understand. And we must be clean, absolutely clean, to receive that. Otherwise it is like looking at something with coloured glasses on, and we can only see what this glass shows us, not reality which is beyond.

Now if we are afraid of God, God realisation cannot possibly be there. I mean, even in simple human terms, if you love somebody and you are afraid of that person, how can love exist? Love must remove fear. Again in the Christian tradition it is said, "Perfect love casteth out fear.' Love and fear cannot exist side by side, cannot exist simultaneously. And in any relationship, when we say we love but we are also afraid, it only means that the love is either not there or not strong enough.

Love has to be so much enlarged, so much universalised, that eventually there is a sort of resonance between your heart and the big heart that we call God. And it is not that a human being can ever be God. It is not possible, but we can be divinised, so that anything that happens there, is resonated in our own hearts. And this is how the great saints are supposed to have received their divine knowledge, divine wisdom, divine guidance, divine instructions.

Love thyself first
The beginning, the first step, I would say, is to treat others as if they were you. Love them as much as you love yourself. Love first. One who cannot love himself, cannot love others. This is not a joke, it is the truth. All those who talk here about the inability to love the Master, why love a Master, love a wife, love a husband, anything? Love is love. The object may change. One who cannot love something cannot love anything else, precisely because they have not love for the self.

So one who is afraid of mistakes will never do anything; one who is afraid of the truth will never say anything; one who is afraid of love can love nothing; not the Master, not his wife, not his brother, not his sister - because he cannot love himself. So, if you say in the Divine Realm everything begins with the Self, I dare say that in the human realm also it begins with the self. If I cannot forgive myself, I cannot forgive anybody else.

If you love life, life will love you, which means that for such a person there is immortality, because his life will not want to leave him or her. It is not enough that we love life. Life must love us to such an extent that the life that is within me, should say, "I shall not leave this fellow. I love him so much." But you say, "Yes, this is corrupt," and He says "Don't worry, leave that to me, you do your job. You get better and better and you become more and more fit for me to exist in you." We have to make ourselves fit enough for the Self within us to continue to exist within us. For such a person, there is no death.

So learn to love thy Self - this is the first law of spirituality. Forget the neighbour, because if you are able to do this - why only the neighbour? The man in the next city, the man in the next country, the man in the next planet, the man in the next galaxy, we will love. Then universal love becomes possible, because I am loving that in me which is universal. Not an individual, incremental love of one plus one plus one - but at one stroke, I love Him who loves all, He is in me, therefore I become capable of universal love.

Love, to be loved
When I give love, I receive love. Now love is something I cannot give back. Money I can give back, things I can give back. I cannot give back life. When I am dying and someone gives me some medicine which restores me to life, I cannot give him anything except gratitude. Can I say, "Here, take back the life that you gave me?" Therefore these are debts which we can never repay, except with love.

Therefore when we give love and we receive something of extraordinary value, of extraordinary bliss, what can you give more? You can only give something more from yourself. Having given yourself, it is still possible to love, though you don't exist there to love. This is the secret, you see. Many abhyasis ask me, "But I find my love growing, how can you grow in love when you are not there yourself to give any more?" Because love is never given. Only things can be given, facts can be given, but not love. Therefore it is as if having given myself away, my love continues to grow in a no place no time situation. It is as if you have planted a tree and given it to the Master and even after the tree is cut, He is able to still get fruits from that.

So you see, this is the secret of love. And this is what we are dealing with in spirituality. This is the sort of love we talk about when we say, "Having given, you cannot give again." This is the sort of morality of which we speak, that having given once to someone, you cannot give it to somebody else again. It is not something you can deal with as if it is a thing, you see, to be broken up and divided. A heart is given whole or not at all. It cannot be cut up into pieces, a hundred and two pieces to be distributed to a hundred and two different individuals. It cannot be even given piece by piece to one person and claimed that this is morality, because I have only given it to the same person. It is given once wholly, or not at all.

The way of yoga is nothing but the way of love, sublimated beyond the physical, sublimated beyond the mental, sublimated beyond the intellectual, emotional to that pristine purity of love where there is no more love of person to person, but love of heart to heart. So the way of yoga is nothing but the way of love. And you cannot have love without giving love. It is something of a mystery to me that in the modern life, more and more people are leading loveless lives. They say, "I want to be loved, but nobody loves me." The first question I am tempted to ask is, "Do you love anybody?" Unless you love, you cannot be loved.

So you see, if you cannot love, you cannot get love. For an echo, you have to shout, then the echo comes back. It is a law that, "Give and take." We are leading loveless lives precisely because we have lost the capacity to love, in most cases. In the rest of the cases, we are afraid to love. Love is a commitment. You cannot just love and throw your lover aside and walk out. That is, first, not love; secondly, if it is love, you are going to suffer all your life.

Lamps give light, but just by sitting near a lamp I will not become a lamp. I must allow myself to be burned, as Babuji Maharaj used the example of the candle. It consumes itself to illuminate everything. You cannot illuminate anything without consuming yourself. You cannot create love in others except by consuming yourself with that love, allowing yourself to be burned up in that love. People want today to get fulfilment in love. They want to get in love. They cannot. It is against the law of love, it is against the nature of love, it is against the divinity of love. One who loves has to give, not to take. It is impossible to take from it.

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 praise Him, it is so that we may be able eventually to praise ourselves. If we respect Him and regard Him, it is so that we may respect and regard ourselves. So, what is at stake? The stake is 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.

So, let us understand, that if we are not progressing, it is because we create problems inside ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. If I love my self, it would result in evolution; from myself to my Self, the other 'Self' being Him. If there is a lack of love, it is again a lack of ability in me to love the Self, the Self being Him. So you see, the ultimate destruction, the ultimate loser is myself! I lose myself in the process if I disregard the need for etiquette, for morality, for sound and regular practice and consider these as obligations imposed on me by my external Master who is visible before me. The path becomes very easy and acceptable and simple and natural, if I say 'yes' to the fellow who is inside me, and what is inside me is my Self and now it is no external authority which is enforcing these things on me. It is I myself who am telling myself, "Be disciplined, be regular, be loving." Then the whole thing becomes easy.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about love - love means this, love means that. Love means nothing. Love only means love your Self, as you would be the highest thing you can ever find, because you are a jewel, hidden by a great deal of filth and it is your love for your self, which must melt that filth away, and when that filth is melted away and the inner glory shines, you will find, it is both you and your Master.

Love should not be bartered with
When we meditate, thinking that, "We are doing something and he is bound to give us something," we are behaving like labour and management. My statement of demands - "Master, I have been meditating one hour everyday regularly; I have been cleaning everyday regularly; I have been devoted to you, I have loved you; where is my reward?" It becomes a commercial transaction. Love cannot be a transaction. So I asked Babuji, "If even love cannot bring something, then what is the aim in loving that Master too?" He said, "You have a right to love, you have no right to expect to be loved in return." It applies to human love; it applies to Divine love; it applies to all love. Especially our western brothers and sisters should note this. The law says: "You cannot get what you give." You cannot say, "I give you love, you give me love." Then, what are we doing? We are just exchanging love, you see. "I give you a shirt, you give me a shirt; I give you a shaving brush, you give me a shaving brush; I give you a pair of chappals, you give me a pair of chappals." What is this nonsense, you see.

And this is most dramatically expressed in a family relationship between father and son. A young man becomes a father at a young age. He spends all his life bringing up his children, educating them, putting them in jobs, giving them his money. It is unnatural to expect. They can only love him. Any father who expects, that his son should feed him, give him hundred rupees a month and keep asking, "How are you daddy?" He is doomed to disappointment, because the law says: "What you give, you cannot get back." You will get back in some other way. If you give him education and love, he will give you love and something else. Like you take water from the river, you cannot give water back to the river. You take water because you need it. Can you say, "Yesterday I took two handfuls of water, today I am returning it to you, O Ganga! Take it back." The river will laugh at you! Now what we should do is to just pray to the Almighty. You give thanks to the Creator, "Thank you, Lord, for looking after me and for providing me all that I needed." In one short prayer everything is covered.

See, the greatest sin is the ingratitude for what we receive from the Master. We receive so much and yet we say, "Sir! I have been meditating for twenty years, I have felt nothing, got nothing." It is ingratitude of the highest order, and spiritually speaking, it is the highest sin. There is an equally big sin, and that is to love and expect something in return. How foolish it is! The sun is shining on us. Suppose it says, "Please shine on me!" Or the rain says "Please rain upon me." The rains will be happy if your fields are ready and you make use of the rain, when it rains. Varuna's [rain god] efforts have not gone in vain. Similarly, Master will be happy, more than happy, when His grace is received by us, in a tangible way, knowing way, alert way. We make use of it to become like Him.

Grihastha life - make it a temple of love
A family requires parents and children and, in a family, they are all united very naturally by the bonds of blood. It is a blood connection. We call ourselves blood brothers, blood sisters, things like that. In human society, in human life, the blood connection has enjoyed very considerable support and strength. We normally think of love as a merely personal thing, something uniting two, perhaps three, sometimes four persons. But here is a concept in Sahaj Marg in which we have to replace blood by love, and this love is both personal and universal at the same time. It is as if the two extremes of a magnet are brought together to meet in the centre and produce what, in science, they say is impossible - a unipole! Such a love is directed towards one and simultaneously towards all. In other words, such a love is a unity and also a multiplicity. In a sense, this is also the definition of God that he is one and he is many; that he is the creator both within his creation and also outside his creation! How something can be inside and also outside the same object, is something which defeats our imagination, but the coexistence of such extreme opposites is only possible in a spiritual pursuit.

It is only in a spiritual family that we can have love united with discipline; where we can have love uniting people of many races, many tongues, many professions, because there is the silk thread of love that runs through us and holds us together! In the Gita, one of the descriptions that God gives of Himself is that He is the thread that goes through the string of pearls and keeps all the pearls together without falling off! The human beings or the family of human beings need something together to form a grand necklace around the neck of God himself, if that is possible. According to Master this can be done only by love.

So if a couple wants to keep this divine, delightful flame of love burning through marriage too, one technique is to stop making demands on each other. Because only that which is present can make a demand. So it is another aspect of love that when we stop making demands, love grows. Because love does not depend on which level of evolution we are at. It is a universal thing. Not only universally human, but universal in the real sense. So if that lesson is learnt properly, then there is no presence and no absence. Love becomes truly eternal. The Beloved becomes truly present all the time whether he is there or not, and we begin to realise that his love for us is also eternal whether we are here or not. So this is what we should try to bring into our lives as a veritable truth, and experience it in our lives, by His grace.

I have often advised prospective mothers who are bearing the child in their womb to speak to the child with love. Speak to it as if it is already there. It is there. Welcome it, love it. But on the contrary we have only hatred, attempts at abortion and that child grows up knowing it is unwanted. It is disgraceful. It is hated.

What is the prize in grihastha life? It has a prize. You know there is a beautiful story I once read of three brothers who were sons of a king. Young people you know, youth and when their father died, the nobles just threw them out of the empire, because they were too young, and took over. They were probably 12, 10 and 8. The 12 and 10 year old boys went off somewhere, the eight year old just crossed the border, went into an inn and with his few copper coins in his pocket, he managed to eke out an existence. And then slowly he got into the heart of the owner of the inn; one day he married the latter's daughter and after 20 years he owned the inn. He had a nice wife, a comfortable life. He was in every way a contented, balanced person.

One day he saw a huge mass of dust to the east and, surprisingly, a few hours later, he saw another huge mass of dust towards the west. And as the evening approached, the clouds of dust came closer and closer and he saw this was a huge caravan, hundreds of horses and camels, fully laden, and a man with a highly caparisoned horse, richly dressed himself, got off and he was the owner of that caravan, a multimillionaire. And he sought accommodation in this small, cheap inn. And then the other dust cloud approached and it was an army of hawkish, well trained persons mounted on the most beautiful Arabs, and the two met. And they found that this rich man was the eldest brother and the leader of the army was the second brother, and here was the third fellow, standing at the gate of the inn, wondering what to do. "Here are my two brothers both with huge entourage with hundreds of persons here and thousands of persons there, and I have a small inn with 2 ½ rooms and 2 ½ kids on my hands. What should I do?" Anyway he managed to put up his brothers.

The next morning the miracle happened. The two brothers confessed that the rich man had been plotting all night how to buy off the other army with his wealth, kill the brother and assume command of both the army and what was left of the wealth. And the second brother had been plotting all night how to murder his brother or use his army to plunder the whole caravan and take hold of all the wealth. But when they saw the youngest brother in the doorway, with his wife by his side and his 2 ½ kids with him, so content, with bliss on his face, they said all this is a mirage, a waste, you see. So the next morning the rich man used all his wealth to pay off the army of the other fellow, disbanded it and sent it away, and so all settled at the inn.

See, one epitomising power of raw or physical power, the other epitomising the power of wealth, opposed to each other-misery, bloodshed, vice, corruption; and here the power of love, nothing but a simple man's simple love for a simple woman creating a simple family in simple circumstances with unbeatable bliss, unbeatable contentment. The essence is "seek a simple life, don't look for ecstasies, it doesn't exist". All the erotic literature in the world is produced precisely because there are some people who expect fantasy in these excitements, or in drugs for instance or in alcohol. But if life is lead naturally, there are no peaks, no depressions. There is only a blissful calm, a sort of a level curve - it is not a curve any more. It is a straight line.

Love the enemy as well
We have the famous example of Dharmaputra in our tradition; we have the Christian tradition. Always this is the same, you see: "Love them who do not love you." To love those who love you, it is very easy. Any fool can love somebody who loves him. But to continue to love somebody who hates you, who wants to destroy you, is it possible? Only a divinised person can do it. So, those among you who are capable of this, know you are sufficiently advanced on the path of my Master to be able to forgive and forget.

We are not here for the friendship of our friends, or even the enmity of our enemies; because we have no friends, no enemies. We have the Master, we follow Him; like a well- trained dog, it follows its Master. There are biscuits here, there are other dogs there. It will not look left and right. So, because we are following the Master, we have no friends or enemies; therefore no special love for anybody, no special hate for anybody also. Master says, "Love them," we love them. If the Master ever says, "Forget them," we have to forget them also. Then we cannot go and fall at His feet and say, "But Babuji, you said love them, today you are saying forget them." He will say, "Yes. I told you to love them, you love them; today I say forget them, so forget them. Are you obedient to me or to your instincts?"

If you love, you obey
If you ask the several thousand abhyasis of this Mission why they follow Babuji Maharaj, few will tell you that they wanted spiritual growth. In fact, the true abhyasi never went to him for spiritual growth. It was the love for him that made them continue with him, which made it possible for them to follow him, and what is most important, obey him. Following and obeying are not synonymous. Many are the followers but few are obedient. Unthinking, automatic obedience comes only from love. Without love for the Master, there cannot be this obedience. Because then we start thinking, "What is he saying?" Why is he saying it? Should he say it? Should I obey it? And my humble suggestion is, such abhyasis will soon lose their way.

So it is my growing conviction that the process is given to us as a matter of discipline, to make us obedient. And as we grow more and more obedient, it shows an increasing love for the Master. We don't love Him or obey Him because of authoritarian domination by Him, but because we love the man. And when we love Him absolutely, we obey Him absolutely. So one sure index of your love for the Master is the degree of your obedience, there must be absolute love behind it. With absolute love, there is absolute dependence. With absolute dependence, there is absolute surrender. Then it is His problem, you see, what to do with this guy. He won't leave him alone.

I am tired of hearing people say they love the Master. If it was so easy, we would all have been saints. When is that possibility going to come, I do not know. But surely He will bless us with that. So what is the other way? Obedience. When we obey Him we work for Him, He has to love us. It is not important whether I love the Master or not. The important thing is whether my Master loves me. You see, no child, when it is born, loves the mother. Its existence is ensured because the mother loves the child. Later on, the child learns to love its mother. The mother loves naturally; the children have to learn to love by association. Similarly the Master loves us naturally; we have to learn to love the Master. And when we obey Him without question, then we find the miraculous unfoldment of His powers. Because I, being nothing, can yet do everything He says, because it is His order! You see, how being nothing, He makes us everything, by the simple act of obedience? And the more we see this miracle, that we are what we are, but we can do more what the Master is doing, the more the humility comes, the more the wonder of the Master comes. Then only love begins. No longer is the self important - He alone is important.

It is love which is praised beyond even effort, beyond even everything else, because love for the Master alone can give you obedience to the Master. One who loves, obeys. That one who obeys need not love. There are servants, policemen, there are military officers who obey rules without having to love the people who give those rules. But when you love totally, your obedience is total, that means it is surrender. So love alone can make surrender possible. Love alone is the ticket from here to eternity. Carry it in your hearts, because that is the safest place, as pockets can be picked, purses can be stolen, hand bags can be lost. After all, one loves with the heart, not with the stomach or with the head.

Love, suffering & discipline
Love must have discipline behind it - discipline in behaviour; discipline in words that we speak; discipline in the things what we do; discipline in what we offer. You cannot love a sick child and offer it a biscuit which is going to kill it. You cannot love your wife and trouble her when she is suffering from headache or something else. You cannot love the Master and pester Him for sittings and fall at His feet in the dark and perhaps make Him fall and break a bone. Babuji was disgusted with these superficial aspects of so-called love which was selfishness parading as love for Him. It is hypocrisy of the highest order to say, "I love you," and to try to cut the throat at the same time. I have known preceptors telling their children, when Babuji was sick, to go and sit before Him. "Master cannot be sick. He is divine!" It is a shameful thing, and I was heartbroken when I heard this from the so-called senior preceptors - "Go and sit before Him. The divine cannot be sick. It is a drama for our benefit!" I have known people saying this also to their children: "We do not know how long he will live. Go and take from him what you can while he is yet alive with us." This is still prevalent today, which is an unfortunate thing.

He suffered before us, so that when we suffer, we can sort of wonder at this Guru who is a source of suffering, who is suffering incarnate. People talk of Him as love incarnate. No doubt it is true. But I look upon Him, my Master, as suffering incarnate. Because love and suffering are synonymous, too. When you love your children you suffer for them. It is the suffering which is the exhibition of your love which the public can see, which anybody can see. She suffers because she loves her son. "Why do you love your son?" Is it not crazy? "Well, I love him because he is mine. Who else will love him?" So you see, those who claim to love must also be willing to suffer; must be prepared to suffer, must accept suffering; must seek suffering. This is what one of our ten maxims says: Accept miseries as blessings.

Unless there is love between the abhyasi and the Master, there cannot be true spiritual growth. Because it is the Master's love for us which makes Him suffer with us, struggle for us, create a discipline for us, makes him capable of bearing our tantrums, our rebellion, all because of his divine love for us. And if we have that love for him, it makes that discipline acceptable, knowing that it is his love which he gives us, not his harshness, not his humanness. But it is his divine love that makes it possible, makes it available for us.

That is why, especially in the Sahaj Marg tradition, there is so much emphasis on love. It makes confidence possible. It makes faith possible. Ultimately it makes surrender possible. Because, to my mind, this progression from belief to trust, and on through to faith, and finally to surrender, is only a greater and greater appreciation in us of the love of the Master for us, by which we grow ourselves into an understanding of what love means. And to me, it has always appeared that love is a planting of a seed and allowing it the freedom to grow into a tree, and to permit it to putforth its own seeds in due course. And this is the grand unfolding of the spiritual existence. And I think this is what Babuji meant when He said, "I do not create disciples or slaves, I create Masters." It would be tragic to misunderstand Him as saying that everybody can be a Master. But everybody can be like the Master in every aspect of his functioning.

So we find that it is the love of the Master which makes him sow the seed. What is his seed and where is it sown? The seed is himself, and the plot of the land in which he sows it is our heart. And it is in our heart that this divine plant, this divine existence, must grow and become big, and ultimately flower and seed in its turn. So you see, love gives us enormous benedictions, the benediction of the divine, but it also casts a responsibility on us, that it is a treasure which we receive to distribute again to all the people in the next generation. Because that is how the divine stream must grow and branch and branch out into the eternal existence of the Infinite.

Therefore, I have always felt, you see, that discipline is only an expression of love. Without love there is no discipline. And that is why we have this very fascinating example of parents who have thrown their children to the winds, letting them run loose, you know, like dogs let off the leash. Nevertheless, they feel so guilty about it that they pamper their children, "What do you want? You can have it!' What they could not do with love, they are trying to do with bribery. I tell the children here, the younger generation, "Beware of parents who give you things too easily. Love the parent who will ask you, 'Where are you going? Why are you going? When will you come back? With whom are you going?" You must love such persons, because they love you enough to ask these questions to make sure you are safe. Because to such parents, their children are an investment in their own love.

But this, again, is a tragedy of modern society, you see, that children are not so much products of love as a casual liaisons. And the children know this. They feel it. They rebel against it. They hate it. Therefore you find, even in well-ordered societies, the children running riot, becoming hooligans, dropouts, drug addicts. It is not that they want to do these things, but they want to show their parents, "If you could have done it, we can do it one better than you." I think it is a way the children take revenge on their parents. And when it pervades a whole section of society where all the younger generation are like this, you have this rebellion between the elder generation and the younger generation. You find this especially in the American cities, you see, where the people most feared are the youth gangs. If you talk to them individually they are very nice children, but they are so disgusted with the elder generation.

So discipline, like rain, like grace, must come from above, in the sense that disciplined parents produce disciplined children. Loving parents create loving children. So this is a lesson to the parents, you see. It is the old question of invertendo. We are talking of child indiscipline, student indiscipline, youth indiscipline, when the real source of all that indiscipline is in the parents. And it is never too late because, like children can change, parents must also be willing to change. And when we recognise this, I mean, when the parents recognise this and they are willing to change, you find their children hug them and kiss them with such love as you have never known in your life.

So we have to come now to the next stage of love, you see, that love means disciplining ourselves first before we can discipline others. And that is why parents have to be disciplined before they can discipline their children. So you see, it is like, again, a river. A river cannot be a river if it did not have two banks confining the water within them. So what is discipline but giving your existence a shape and a form in which you can grow. And it is love which makes that discipline available to us because, if he did not love us, he could not care less. Only when you love someone, can you jump into a river, or jump into a pond to pull out somebody who is drowning.

Now a Guru may be capable of loving you like a mother. He must be capable of disciplining you like a father, must be capable of instructing you in spirituality, looking for your progress, guiding you up to the destination. So, that is the love of the Master for his abhyasis, for humanity, because the only difference I see between those who are abhyasis and those who are not abhyasis is a very simple difference. He loves all equally. The abhyasis are those who have voluntarily accepted His love in the form of His discipline. The others have accepted His love without His discipline.

Love and sacrifice are two sides of a coin
We have a saying in Hindi, "Love! That is to say, be loving! It doesn't matter how you show that love." To a child, we bring a toy, to a guru, we carry a gift of what, a fruit, a flower. To the beloved, we may take something that pleases her. It is all an expression of our love. So in the oriental tradition of taking gift, it is to find out how to express this love. It need not be expensive, it need not be wrapped up beautifully. It must be able to express my love for him to whom I am carrying something. My Master once told me, "When your dog comes to you wagging its tail, it brings you a bone from the garden. To the dog, the bone is the most precious object. It loves bones." Now if you say, "No, no, I am a Brahmin, I am a Hindu, I won't touch a bone," you cannot react with the dog. Accept it, throw it and make the dog fetch it again. And the dog's day is made, your day is made.

So you see, all gifts must be gifts of love. I was profoundly influenced by a story I read long ago, The Gift of the Magi. I don't remember who wrote it. It was about a young couple in love, very poor, living in an attic, with an attic window through which they could see the stars. She had lovely, long, golden hair, and she used to see in the shops a pair of combs which she craved for. He had a lovely watch, and he used to see a fob, a golden chain which he wanted for his watch. Christmas was approaching and between the two of them, they had two and half pennies. They needed thousands of such two and a half pennies to buy the gifts that they each wanted to buy for the other.

On Christmas eve, they both went that morning to work, came back in the evening, and both were shocked. The girl had cut off her hair and sold it, and she gave her beloved a present. He opened it and found the chain for his watch, the fob. He packed it up nicely and put it away. She said, "Why don't you put it on your watch?" He said, "Darling, we will do it later." She said, "Why not now?" He said, Because, if you open your package, you will find out." In the package were the combs she had wanted for her golden hair. He had sold his watch to buy the combs for her, she had sold her hair to buy the chain for his watch. Then they fell into each other's arms, wept together in joy, in love, at the sacrifice that each of them had made.

Sacrifice means giving up myself for the sake of some other person, some other self. Now when Babuji came to us He was very ill, He was very old, but he sacrificed His comfort, His home life, so that He could come to Europe and be with us for our benefit. That can rightly be called a sacrifice. So sacrifice really means giving up my own needs, necessities, comforts, even my existence, for the welfare of others. This sacrifice is essential in spirituality and this the sacrifice that Sahaj Marg, my Master, everybody, speaks about. And when Babuji said love and sacrifice are necessary, it is an extension of this thought.

Three types of sacrifices: It is my opinion that love and sacrifice are two sides of one coin. Because where there is no love there cannot possibly be any sacrifice. Because we only sacrifice for either persons we love, or for places we love, or for ideals that we love. Three things you see. For persons we love, it is very common - a mother sacrifices for her children, a father sacrifices for his children, brother sacrifices for brother, this is a very common idea, it need not be explained. For the places we love, well, the most common idea is patriotism. We are prepared to sacrifice our life for our country. Why? Because we love our country. I wouldn't sacrifice my life for some country which doesn't belong to me. I wouldn't like to die for something in Nicaragua or Uruguay. But if there is an attack on India and I have to fight and I die, people would say he sacrificed his life for the love of his country. But if I die for my house nobody calls it a sacrifice. So there is a distinction, you see, the place must not be such a small thing that I died for my home, that I sacrificed my life for my home. So behind the sacrifice of life for a place there is a vaster concept than something which I possess, which I own; it's an idea, and that is patriotism.

That brings us to the third thing, sacrifice of our life for ideas or ideals, and this also is very common. People have given their lives, let us say, for their religions. We know the wars which took place in the name of religion, and everybody thought he was sacrificing his life for his religion. Those on the other side also thought they were sacrificing their life for their own religion. Here I would suggest there is not much the element of love behind that sacrifice as fanaticism. It is a group frenzy which is created by a few people. They say, "Oh, we must rise up in arms to save our religion from the infidel," or whatever it is. I don't think anybody loved his religion so much that he would sacrifice; but it is a group frenzy, a group manifestation of some sort of madness leading to violence. But nevertheless, it is recognised as a sacrifice and very often rewarded by society. One of the greatest sacrifices, according to the religions, was the crucifixion of Christ. He is supposed to have voluntarily accepted death on the cross to uphold the truth, the necessity for truth, sticking to one's ideals of mercy, charity, compassion, upholding the truth and things like that. It could be construed as a sacrifice of his life for the ideal of freedom of thought, that a man or a woman should be able to worship in the way he chooses, what he considers to be the truth, the way, the light.

Now we find a certain difference, that when a mother sacrifices her life for child, society does not reward it. You don't give medals to mothers for dying for their children. Why? Because it is considered natural. After all, we love our children, it's a very natural thing and when we die for them or make enormous sacrifices for them, it is, I think, a very just idea that whatever reward we should get for that sacrifice we have got already by the fact of our loving them.

Now to sacrifice one's life for one's country, obviously, judging from society's reaction to such a sacrifice, is not so natural. Not everybody is willing to die for his country. Therefore, those individuals who die for their country are rewarded. They are given some meritorious activity medals, or something written on a piece of paper and signed by the president, or a pension for their family, things like that. In such cases, the reward is not because the sacrifice is really a sacrifice, but because it is rare. It is the rarity of the sacrifice that is rewarded.

Now when we come to the third idea, the highest; dying for an ideal - if the ideal is big enough - the reward is not conferred by society but by humanity itself. Such a person is revered through hundreds and thousands of years by humanity without distinction. That is the reward, that such a person gets.

So we see the various ways in which we can think of sacrifice. Essentially the people who die, die because they have such a reverence for the ideals that they cherish, that they are willing to give their life for it, and this arises out of the love for that ideal - whether it be a child, whether it be a nation, or whether it be the highest ideals of freedom, mercy, charity or things like that. That is why I venture to suggest that love and sacrifice are but two sides of the same thing, they are not two different things. But for the understanding of us, ordinary human beings, they are separate, so Babuji said love and sacrifice are necessary for spirituality. That is why we do not expect sacrifice where there is no love and we know that where there is sacrifice love must exist behind that sacrifice.

This brings me to what I consider an important aspect of life: that where we cannot sacrifice and feel that we have sacrificed something, perhaps it in some way interferes with the flow of love itself - because the highest expression of love is the ability to sacrifice. Therefore when a rich man gives two hundred million dollars for a charity, well, we just say, "O.K., good, he's a nice fellow." But when a man gives his life for something - he gave his life so that we may live hereafter. And what is a life worth? If you go to the Orient, a man's life is no better than a dog's life. But yet, when you sacrifice your life, it has some meaning, because what else can you give which is higher than your own life? Therefore giving your life is the highest expression of your love for anything that you love.

Therefore we love our Master so much. When He came to us we knew that for Him His life had no more any meaning; it was placed at our disposal, and that if He lived, it was only to serve us, if He ate and went to sleep, it was only to serve us. And He had to be forced to eat, otherwise He was willing to sit with us and talk with us. He had to be compelled to go to bed, "Babuji, it is eleven o'clock." He said, "Yes, I will sit with you ten more minutes." So this is the way we felt His love. Now in the normal human love we expect to be loved, but that is too ordinary and too low a manifestation of love, that a person who loves - loves. It's like saying, water is wet, therefore I am grateful to water. Well, it is only expressing its naturalness. But when that love manifests as a concern for you and not for Himself, then we are able to talk of the highest expression of love, where we like this idea of sacrifice with it. To put it very simply, He did not love us in the way we understand love, but we felt His love for us in the sacrifice He made for us. So that was the secret of His love and that was why we all felt His love because it was not individualised. As I said love should not be individualised, it has to be universalised.

Now that brings me to one other point, a last point, that the idea of sacrifice must go. I don't think Babuji had ever ideas that He was sacrificing His life for us. It would have been unnatural. Therefore our love for Master is expressed in the only way we can express love: giving him flowers, sweets, some donations. His love for us is expressed in the highest way: a human being can express love - in sacrifice. Very often abhyasis ask me how to know whether their love is growing for the Master. There's a very simple index. If your love has gone beyond the ordinary expressions of love and is now involving sacrifice on your part for the Master, your love is growing. And when a stage comes that you are also prepared to sacrifice your life for Him, then your love is total.

No love, no progress
As our gratitude to the Master continues to increase, and as we are able to perceive the ever-increasing grace that is flowing from the Master, love for the Master begins to dawn in our hearts. I sincerely believe that only when such personal love and devotion for the Master begins, our real spiritual journey also begins. Upto now it has all been the mere play of Master's power arising out of his transmission and, in a sense, it can merely be called a tamasha [fun]. The real progress comes only when there is love because, as Master has repeatedly said, he himself is a mirror and only reflects what he sees before him. Therefore when we love the Master, the Master begins to love us and thereafter our spiritual progress no longer depends on us but on Him. It is like the child being carried by its mother and very literally from then it becomes the Master's responsibility to take the lover as His own and to take him wherever He wishes to. In this part of India, God is represented as love. In Tamil they say, "Anbe Sivam," meaning God is love. But I believe God only loves those who love Him, and perhaps the second half of the phrase has been left out deliberately or by mistake.

So this is the secret of spiritual sadhana and spiritual progress that if the link with the Master is maintained unbroken and the fire or the flame of love is kept fed with renewed impulses of devotion, that love alone is enough to bring us up to the goal, because His reciprocal love starts flowing. He says, "Aise mohobbat karo Malik se, ki who tumhe mohobbat karne lagen, phir to bhai, tumhara kam ban gaya". (Love Him in such a way that He starts loving you. Then, brother, your job is done.) These are Master's words.

Transmission is nothing but love
Once when I was alone with Master, it was midnight on a very cold night in Shahjahanpur. He was unusually moody and distressed about the progress of abhyasis, and he casually said something, the significance of which I did not realise at that moment. What he said was, "People say God is love, and it is true. But yet when God comes to us, we are unwilling to receive His love." Later on I understood that this love could be what transmission is. It is the love that God has for us that is transmitted, and it is that love which makes us grow. And this also answered for me a very important question, why there is no compulsory discipline in Sahaj Marg; because love cannot demand or force; love must evoke. Therefore even the Ten Maxims tell us only what to do and leave it to us to do it when we have developed sufficient love for the Master and for our goal.

Always it has been my experience that, in the final sitting of an utsav, a celebration, the transmission is full of love. It is something always very unique; the final sitting is very unique. I have seen this through my almost twenty-seven* years with Sahaj Marg. It is as if the Master is giving us a promise: "You are going now, the celebration is over, but my love for you continues." Celebrations end, but love does not end. I think it is a message for us: "Love each other. Through love conquer hatred, conquer dissension, conquer differences. Where love exists, nothing of these things can exist." But unity is impossible without love.

So organisation is necessary only to distribute love. Kitchens are necessary to cook food, to distribute food. Satsangh is necessary to distribute grace. Otherwise all these things are meaningless. A sanstha [organisation] is a crazy thing unless it can do what it is there for: to make the Master's grace, His benevolence, His love, available to one and all without any categorisation, distinction of anything, any nature.

Love received must flow like a river
It is love that begot us; love nurtured us through the initial years of our life; love strengthened and fortified us as we grew into adulthood; love makes life possible thereafter, and brings into our life a flowering and fragrance that warms our heart and cherishes us and fortifies us to face life to its very end. Every one of us participates in this divine play of love. In a sense each one of us is a tiny rivulet given birth by love. Each of us is a rivulet capable of, and with the potential for, becoming the mightiest of rivers. As each rivulet merges into another, and as a stream thus formed of many rivulets merges into a river, and as that river too merges in its turn into a mighty river, which ultimately flows placidly into the ocean, we too in our lives must merge in a total manner into something greater, mightier than ourselves.

We are attempting to do this. The love that we receive fortifies and strengthens us. But then what is it that holds back fulfillment? We are all too willing to let other loves merge into us, into our self, and swell it, but we are unwilling to allow this accumulated love to flow into the ocean of Master's Universal Love. In effect we are not rivers of love, even small ones, but merely small ponds which tiny streams flow into and stop there! Stagnant water in time stinks and becomes unfit for any use. So we too become stagnant. The love that we receive stagnates in us. And thus we too become unfit for anything, even useless to ourselves, unless we allow the accumulated love in our lives to flow into Him, and thus bring life-giving flow and power into our lives.

By surrendering the love that we receive, we keep uninterrupted the cyclical flow of love. When we surrender this to Master, the mighty ocean of His love is swelled, ever more and more, until it too merges into the Universal repository of Divine Love. From there the Universal power of the Master showers it abundantly back on all humanity of which we too are a part, and we thus derive our love-sustenance from it! Thus a cycle of love is established by which we derive increasingly more and more of the love that we surrender to Him - provided we do not selfishly treasure the love that we receive and lock it up for ourselves in our little hearts in miserly fashion. If, unfortunately, we do this, then the love that we receive stagnates and finally corrupts us and thus does a disservice to those who had given us generously of their love.

The acme of surrender, is therefore, the surrender of the love we receive, and it is this which brings about a state of spiritual surrender in us. It is not merely a duty to surrender all the love that we receive to the Master, it is the real way of surrender itself! This is true surrender.

Universal love
Love must grow and embrace more and more within its orbit of expression. Love for one's wife must enlarge into a deep love for the family resulting from such love. Familial love must grow to include neighbours, for, after all, if a neighbour is sick, notwithstanding the marvels of modern medicine, we are likely to be the next victims; if the neighbour is poor, his poverty affects us; if he is the victim of gangsterism and hoodlum attacks, we are sure to feel the repercussions. So our neighbour's well-being is a matter of immediate concern to us. Thus, slowly, as love matures, it must widen in scope until ultimately it envelops the entire universe within its sublime embrace. My Master has said that the only way of approaching the Ultimate is through love.

Now how to love everybody else? So it is manifestly impossible to love everybody in that sense in which you can love the Master. Now this seems to, in some way, be an obnoxious concept of love that one can love exclusively one to the exclusion of everything else. My Master put this in a beautiful phrase in Munich, I think some years back, when he said in answer to the question, "How to create Universal Love?" there the question was how to create Universal Love, not just love. He said "Love Him who loves all." So in some mysterious way, when we love Him who loves all, there seems to be a canalisation or a channelling of the love resources of the entire human potential, the human race, into one vessel, into one receptacle, which being totally unselfish, being totally concerned with the total universe as such is able to mobilise those accumulated resources for the welfare of all. I am giving this in the terminology of, let us say, capital formation to help social growth where the petty savings of the individual are mobilised in banks and then released in large streams of capital for welfare, industrial development, social development, educational development, health development, any resource of development. So in that sense we come from creation of love through Constant Remembrance of the Master to loving Him exclusively.

It was Kabir who said that the path of love is so narrow that only one can walk. Even two lovers cannot walk through it or walk on it. So what is the meaning? Carry the beloved in yourself. So, in that sense, loving perhaps means putting into your heart him or her whom you wish to love. Here it is the Master. So we have to learn to love the Master in such a wonderful way that He becomes the occupant, the tenant of my inner self, my heart and eventually by loving Him to the exclusion of everything else, we forget to see anything else. We see only Him. Our entire existence becomes centered on Him. He now becomes, instead of the tenant of my heart, the Master of my heart. He takes over my existence and then we find this miracle that the qualities of His heart become the qualities of my heart, and then only the miracle happens that I have created love in my heart not by creating it in myself but by bringing love into my heart, as embodied in the Master. So the only true way of creating a sustained, sustaining, self-sustaining, ever pervasive love, which can transcend the barriers of even mortal existence and go with us to the hereafter, is to bring the source of love into our hearts.

Now if you are interested, I can add a certain codicil to this answer, that I often wondered how it was possible for my Master to love everybody equally, because He didn't know any of us. He didn't know most of us. Then I found one day, looking at the Sun, it shines on everybody equally. It has no friends, no foes, no loves, no lovers. Similarly the Master is Love. He is no longer someone who loves, but He has become Love and then that Love pervades through the Universe itself. This, brothers and sisters, is the creation of love in our hearts!

This is the miracle that we are attempting in Sahaj Marg and we have largely achieved too I should say, by the Grace of the Master. Because, with this love He not only welded together two or three or five, He welded together thousands of abhyasis of different nationalities, cultures, languages, tradition, antipathies, sympathies, varying, sometimes widely varying, tendencies. Yet we achieved that miracle of forming a brotherhood out of a diversity of human beings, which we see today in a small way here, which we shall see larger in the coming days. And how was that possible? Not because we love each other, I mean, can it be possible that we can love twenty thousand or fifty thousand or in the future one hundred thousand abhyasis? Every one of us loving each other! Is it possible? Where is the time? Where is the opportunity to meet one hundred thousand people and love them? But if we really love the One, we love Him who loves all, and therefore with that love for Him who loves all, we are able to love them whom He loves. He said one half of it. "Love Him who loves all". I would like to complete, with respect to my Master, that, when we love Him who loves all, we love them whom He loves. Now if this does not happen, if the second part of it does not happen, our love for Him is a lie. It is not possible to love the Master and not love those whom the Master loves. This is my humble submission, which is a thing you should think over. How is it possible to love the father and not his children, the other children that he has?

Now we have love which has expectations of our beloved ones, or it is limited love, personalised love, individual love. But a love which expects nothing of anybody else whatsoever, it loves all and everything in the universe, that is universal love. And according to Sahaj Marg that is also divine love, love for God because we expect nothing from God Himself.

Love - the instrument of transformation
Every new expression of Master's Divine love strengthens us in our love for him. This is the secret of Master's magnetic hold on all those who come into contact with him. Time and again I have seen strangers come into his presence who, when they leave after even a brief chat with him, leave as lovers of the master. Many have confided that even after a few minutes with Master they have felt as if they have known him all their lives. My Master's spiritual aid is his invincible love in its purest, holiest form - and what is there that can stand up to it and be unconquered? Others may use power, fear, or temptation as instruments to bind their disciples to themselves. My Master's sole instrument is his Divine love for all mankind which demands nothing in return - or if he at all asks for anything it is nothing but our hearts.

I think that because Master's love is so pure and holy, his devotees are able to love him for himself alone. Master's love is so pure and undemanding that abhyasis are able to develop a reciprocal love, purer and undemanding in progressively increasing degrees. As this love develops in the abhyasi, a stage comes when the idea of 'transactions' cease. There is no more the question of love for, or with an aim. Love is there because one can no longer live without that love for the Master in the heart. It is a strangely surprising and beautiful thing, but at this stage the idea of being loved by the Master seems to lose its importance. What becomes all-important is the love in one's own heart for the Master. As this love grows and grows, a stage comes when it seems as if the heart would verily explode. I consider the growth of this Divine Love to be the greatest miracle in the spiritual development of a person. There is no longer even the faintest thought of what Master can give. Even the Divine gift of liberation, which Master can bestow by a mere glance, loses its importance. All that the aspirant yearns for is to be with his Master, his true beloved. As we bestow our love, Master bestows his love on us, and this is grace, this is liberation, and this is the total realisation of the aim of spiritual sadhana.

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. It is the same with everything else. But if you create love in your heart, then the reaction is also of love and love alone - and see, your job is done! So create love. It is with love that our ancient rishis were able to live in jungles with wild animals all around them. Love conquers even the wild animals. I am telling you one thing. If there is love in your heart for the Master, then the Master begins to love you. If you can bring this about then your work is almost done. The important thing is to knock on the door of his heart so vigorously that he is compelled to open it to you. Then what to say of progress, everything is there for you.

What is the abhyasi's real duty? In my opinion he must do everything to make the Master turn towards him - and once that is done the abhyasi can sit back and let the Master work for him. Who can resist love? As the abhyasi's love grows, so also the Master's love grows. And the Master now begins to think what he can do for the abhyasi. It is no longer necessary for the abhyasi to ask. What is there to ask for when the giver is himself thinking about what to give and when? Really speaking, a true Master is nothing but a mirror. What the abhyasi places before it, is reflected by it. You understand this? In the Master himself there is nothing. You only take from him what you yourself put into him. Now, I am telling you something. There are people who accuse the guru of being partial to one or another of the abhyasis. Do you see how wrong this idea is? And it is also dangerous, for the idea of distrust and hatred may grow, and these also will be reflected. So we must create love and then see its working. I say it is the most potent power of Divinity."

In my own experience I have known this love of Master for the abhyasi working miracles. Master's love has brought about transformations in the character of abhyasis which no threat or use of power could have brought about. When we are afraid of our Master we do not really change or permit transformation in ourselves.

How does his love work to transform us? When we know that Master loves us, we begin to feel we must deserve that love. This is the first step in self-evaluation which automatically creates co-operation in the abhyasis. We go on and on, on the spiritual path. To be tempted, or to have to face temptation, is common to all of us. But one who is loved by the Master is immensely superior in his equipment to face trials. At every turn of life when temptations pose a sore trial we ask ourselves, "Would Master approve of this if I did it? What would he feel if I should succumb and fall? Would I not be the cause of much sorrow and disappointment to him if I fail him now after he has bestowed so much labour and love on my spiritual development?" Such questions addressed to ourselves put the matter in clear perspective and, even in the very process of asking them, the temptation is gone. When we realise this, that the trying situation no more challenges us but seems to have disappeared almost like a mirage, then gratitude wells up in the heart for the Grace that averted possible disaster. This in turn strengthens the love in the heart, and so it goes on, every temptation no longer a danger to us, but merely an instrument for strengthening our love for the Master, and making it more and more part of our very essence. Thus love achieves what fear never can, and never will, achieve. Love does not merely strengthen us, but transforms us into vessels containing Divine love, as it were.

God is love
Our approach to God is one of fear. All religions say that God is love. But in no religion is there a man who can approach his God with love. I know because there have been instances when people have had to spend a night in a church or inside a temple and they are aghast at the very idea of having to sleep inside a temple. They worship and offer prayer and sometimes make fantastic offerings of their wealth, but one night in a temple, I cannot yet find a person who will sleep there for one night. If your God is there who is Almighty, all-powerful, all love, who is our protector, what is this fear that makes us stay away from this place? We are therefore afraid of God, in all religions without exception. I often tease my friends, and say, "Well, suppose the particular God to whom you are praying whether it be Christ or Krishna, or anybody else, suppose He were suddenly to manifest Himself in front of you and say 'what do you want,' you will run scampering. There will be a massacre perhaps. But God is love!"

Spirituality tries to put the approach back in its right perspective that we must love God because He is inside us, He is not something external to us waiting with a rod in his hand to punish us for our transgressions. He is inside us and being inside us if He punishes us, He has to endure that punishment Himself whether he likes it or not. Because that which is inside must suffer as much as that which is outside does. When my skin suffers, my body suffers; when my tooth suffers I suffer with it, and I do not see how God can escape that suffering. So when we turn our mind inwards and approach Him with this love, then there is no question of suffering and there is no question of punishment. The Godly heart, then begins to be fanned by the breeze of our love, and as it grows, the voice of conscience begins to develop again. We call this the flowering of the consciousness. Love breeds communion with Ultimate, that communion makes Him grow in us. This breeds ethical and moral living, and we find that as we progress, increasingly higher states of consciousness become ours.

Spirituality deals only with love. Because God is love, love is the total and ultimate perfect condition where you don't love, but you become love. Now how can you become love if you are throwing it off like fire throwing off sparks all the time? It must be contained, it must be allowed to mature.

Master is love personified
My Master too frequently refers to the need for love in one's life. One of his most revealing ideas is that love is a godly or divine thing, and therefore not to be spurned. Love is to be diverted to its proper and natural object, God! What the human individual is required to do is to divert his mind so that the love in the heart can be diverted to its real goal. My Master's personal life is the expression of his inner love for all mankind. His is a pure and divine love, universal in its scope and yet individual in its manifestation. 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.

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 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, 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."

Like you have a rose, a flower, it has thorns, it has petals, it has perfume. This thorn is painful, the petals are soft and nice, you can also eat them, but it's the fragrance which is the most important thing. It has no substance, it goes anywhere. Isn't it? So similarly the person is like the thorns, the heart is like the petals, what comes out is love. And it must come out without individuals, you see. A saint should not say, "I love so and so, or her or him." He loves, he is love. Like the sun shines. If you are there, the sun shines on you.

To say that the Master loves me is the wrong thing. He doesn't love anybody. He loves only His Master. But by becoming perfect, He has become love. Like it has become honey, it is sweet to everybody. You cannot say, "Oh, the honey is sweet for me and not for her". Love has become His nature, His existence, His self. So we feel as if He loved us. But it's a mistake to think the Master loves. The Master can love only one, and that is His Master. But He has become like, you know, I used once somewhere this astronomy example, dust clouds, they become condensed and the gravity becomes so much that the more they condense, the heat is developing and it becomes a sun - it is now a sun, therefore it illuminates everything.

We are to receive - He has not to give. In the human life, if I am to receive your love, you must love me. Isn't it? I cannot receive your love unless you love me. But in spirituality it is not like that. In spirituality He is always loving, but I don't receive. When I become receptive - I feel His love. And then I say, "Master loves me." But He also loved me before I received it. That is the difference. Here, one day you hate, one day you love. There it is always love, because His existence is like that.

So you see, the lover need not have a body or a heart. The beloved need not have a body or a heart, provided that when they were both present physically, this love had become established. I think it is for this reason that the Master comes physically. If he had never appeared, we could never have loved him. I mean, can you imagine a Master and love such an imaginary Master? It's not possible. So, I think it is for that reason that all this happens, the Great Personality comes before us, shows himself to us, talks to us, laughs with us, jokes with us, eats with us, so that we can learn to love him and of course, His love is always eternal. So the important thing is not that he has to learn to love us, because He can love us from wherever he is. By appearing before us as a human being with the enormous lovable qualities, also many foibles, quirks, you know, or funny characteristics like spitting or things like the hookah, he gives us, or presents himself to us, to evoke our love, very much in the fashion that a child can only ask for a toy which it sees, or a man can only love a woman he sees. There is no man born who can love an abstract woman, nor can women, with all their capacity for love, love a man who has never been present before them.

So the presence is necessary to start this process of lover/beloved happening. Like a matchstick is necessary to light the candle, and having lit it, the matchstick is unimportant. It is now the candle which becomes important. Perhaps like that the Master is a matchstick, a Divine illuminant, always alight in His own realm, in His own sphere coming down to set us alight, set us aflame. So that, that love which is in our hearts, cold, icy, selfish, he sets it alight and sort of makes it melt, and then his job is finished. He says, "Au revoir. Now you do the job which I have done for you." We too have now to remember one very important thing: He comes with His Divine love, the Divine flame of love, sets our hearts afire, makes us also burn like Him, and then we have to transfer this to the following succeeding generations. If we think it is for enjoyment, for intimacy with the Master, it is betrayal of his love for us. So you see, he comes to love us, not because he needs our love, he comes to teach us how to love so that, in our turn, we may teach others how to love. And then some day it is possible that the whole world is full of love, which is what we are looking for. So this is the problem, or this is the purpose, for which a Master appears before us.

Spirituality, I think, is a big word, too many letters in it, ten letters I think or eleven letters. Love has only four, and what are these four to symbolise? Him, me, his love for me, my love for him. Now, generally, we want his love for us. How are we to love him? So this receiving aspect of love alone seems to be still very human, you see. We are still very human. And we would rather be loved than love. This is the common, what shall we say, the cry of the human heart, you see: "Nobody loves me." This is a very common thing. Now why on earth should anybody love you? I mean, there is no logical reason why somebody should be loved, you see. The occasion when you can say nobody loves me is when you deserve to be loved and you are not loved. Now the Master does the opposite. No one here deserves his love, but he loves us. But when it comes to our loving others, as he wants us to do, we say, "Oh, he is not deserving, she is not deserving, I only love those who are deserving.' Then how can we become like him?

So becoming like Him means being like Him, loving like Him, no distinctions. He loves anybody who is there, not only before Him but not yet born perhaps too, because a love like that cannot have limitations of space and time. So he loves us before we come into existence, he loves us when we exist in his presence, and he loves us when we are out of this existence again. Not only is His love eternal, we are in some way eternal in His presence because for His love there is no death, there is no life, there is no afterlife. Therefore his love for us really proves that we too are eternal like Him. And all this living, dying business is a play of the senses, a play of the consciousness.

And all that we have to realise is, "If he can love me before I am born, I must have been there in some form for him to love me." When I am alive, of course, I am present before him for him to love me; when I am dead I must again be there for him to love me in some form or the other. So what is the continuity of me which survives the past, the present and the future? It must be that which he loves. And if I have it, what more do I need? Because He is eternal, our love for each other is eternal and all this dance/drama of meeting and parting, it is a play to awaken us to this reality. That, "Human being that you are, don't allow yourself to be clouded by your senses and your desires. Your life is not from what you consider your birth to what you consider your death. Therefore don't try futilely to compress all the pleasures of existence into this 60 to 70 years. In any case what you can do with your body is a very very gross thing compared to what love can do at its subtlest. Learn this from me," he says, and comes to teach us.

When a child is born - when you have a baby, does the baby feel it is new in its mother's hands? And does it feel that it has to get used to the mother? Or does the mother feel, "This is a new baby, I must get accustomed to the baby?" I never felt like that. You know, I felt as if I was going home to my Master. And therefore, you know, I could just go and sit with him, talk with him, no difference, right from the beginning. Other people usually take a few years to come nearer and nearer and nearer the Master. Same thing with the Master, because essentially the relationship between a master and a disciple is a love affair, at the highest level. So there should be no shyness holding back, you know, all this nonsense. So… you don't mind if I say what the conclusion is, that where there is hesitation, and all this reserve about coming to the Master, there is no love.

So when we talk of the Master and our love for the Master, at the real stage of love you should not even be conscious that you love him. That is the final stage. So we should work towards that. So you see, love really means going beyond the human figure, the human form, the human qualities.

I remember once Babuji wrote to me a letter in reply to a letter of mine where I had said, "I do not know how love can grow and grow and grow. It seems to grow without limit." I meant the love of the disciple for his Master. And he wrote back and said, "It is true that there is this enormous love and I love you too but I should not repeat this." Because love, when it is exposed, is like cutting a seed to show the life inside it. If it is cut, it is dead. So all the young people here should remember this. Why? So that at least the next generation, you know, can reestablish love as a citadel of hope, as a citadel of eternity, as a citadel of completion, of perfection, of creation. That is the first lesson. The second lesson is, love cannot change. Once we love, we love forever. It should apply to human relationships. It should apply even more to the divine relationship. Otherwise, again it is, excuse me for saying it, all over the world they say it is like French love, love bought and sold, love bartered, love bargained for. I do not agree with that term. But it is how the world looks on France.

Love for the Master
We are grateful to Him, because He is now the connecting link between me and my original home which we call our destination. Gratitude begins to come. Because of gratitude we now go to Him with tears in our eyes, with longing in our hearts. He is now no longer a human being, He is at least one who has reminded us of something which we have lost, and that remembrance of what we have lost and which we have to regain, makes us go to Him more and more, seek to be closer and closer with Him and He is able to perform that miracle of awakening the impulse, reinforcing that impulse, strengthening that impulse, and then we find, out of gratitude love comes. What can you do but love a person who is giving you so much?

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 someth