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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.
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