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Love - A Narrow Path
In the Christian tradition they say, "God is a jealous
lover." He wants to be alone in you. There, two is company; three
is a crowd! It does not apply only to human situations. God says, "You
love me. I am your beloved, you are my lover. Then let us be alone.
Only you and me. No third person!" Because then (with a third person)
it is no longer sacred. A love which can be looked upon by a third person
is no longer love, you see! It is brought down to the level of the market
place. And I don't think any lover would want his beloved with him,
when any third person is there. That means, when we are keeping our
hearts with other persons in it, we are not really His lovers. We are
making up stories, fooling ourselves, trying to fool the Master.
Love when it is personalised towards oneself, becomes selfish - love
of the self for the sake of the self. When this is thrown outward, it
becomes universal love, where we can love each other, with a pure impartial
love; there is no partiality in it. I cannot serve somebody because
he belongs to my community or to my village or to my nation. A human
being is a human being wherever he may be born, and by virtue of being
a human being, he or she is my brother or sister.
There are numerous ways for developing Divine love for which many bhavas
[attitudes] are resorted to, such as that of father, mother, friend
or master. But in my opinion the conception of God as beloved is better
and more convenient. If we think ourselves to be the lover and Him as
the beloved and proceed on with the same feeling, the course would be,
that God himself shall become the lover and we the beloved.
They say that one must love his guru as much as he loves God. In my
view that is quite impracticable for there can never be two parallel
objects of love. The human heart is not a caravan sarai (wayside inn)
where any and every one may come in to have his stay. Love admits of
no dual loyalties, not to speak of multiplicity. It has no room even
for the duality of the lover and the beloved.
"When I was there, thou wert not;
Now thou art there, I am not.
The love-lane is very narrow and
Cannot contain two [I and Thou].
Such is the path of love. That means we have to ignore either of the
two.
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