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Become Love
He comes to us because of His divine love for us, and we begin to go
to Him only when we start to love Him. Therefore we find that as long
as an abhyasi is concerned only with spiritual progress, spiritual benefit,
he doesn't bother to go to the Master. And it is true that they can
get a great deal of benefit by staying where they are. Because that
is the benefit that the teaching and the practice gives. But if an abhyasi
wants to become like the Master, he has to go and live with the Master.
Now I would like to give you the example of a candle. The candle goes
wherever there is darkness and illuminates it. That is the Master going
round and round to illuminate us, our hearts. But can the darkness ever
come to the candle to be illuminated? That is what the Master waits
for when the abhyasi comes to Him. And that miracle can happen only
between human beings, not between darkness and light. And it is made
possible only when love comes into the heart of the abhyasi, because
then all ideas of benefit, of growth, of getting something from the
Master, they go. And when love takes their place, then the abhyasi thinks
what he can do for the Master, what he can give to the Master.
Now this is another thing we should all examine very carefully, because
even at the human level there is a great deal of confusion about this
love. We think love is getting. But if we understand it correctly, we
find love is giving, and the more one gives, the more one loves, and
we can therefore say with confidence that one gives totally when
one loves totally. And this is what the Master gives. He comes to
us totally Himself and gives Himself totally to us in an endeavour,
in an effort, to make us like Himself.
The Master's presence is an expression of his total love for us. What
he gives us, totally without any reservation, without anything being
asked for in return, is Himself. And this is the thing that he has to
teach us also, that we become like Him - not by spiritual progress,
you see. I am quite certain about this, that spiritual progress is only
a lure to draw us to Himself, like you take a fish line and throw it
and bring in the fish. You see, his real effort is to make us divine
lovers like Himself. Lover means, one who loves. And a divine lover
is one who loves divinely, that means, without reservation, without
limitation, without anything to restrict it. That is why it is called
universal love. We have heard so often universal love does not mean
loving everything in the universe. That can never be possible. But it
is a love which is universal in its effulgence, in its outflow from
the source, and therefore we say God is love. We don't say God loves,
we say God is love. And this is the real effort of the Master, that
He wants to make us also divine lovers.
When He comes and gives us the teaching and the practice, they are the
first steps in this emancipation of ourselves from ourselves to the
divine stage. You can understand it by saying that when human beings
love each other, they call it human love, and divine love can be possible
only between divine persons, divine beings. And, per contra,
when there is divine love between two persons, both must be divine.
So when we are able to love the Master as He loves us, it means we have
become like Him.
So love, as a typical human value, as distinctive human emotion, is
not something that we use, it is something without which we cannot exist.
Now, all that we do in spirituality is to widen the scope of that love.
The capacity for love exists. It is directed at one or two persons.
Spirituality says that, like everything else, it is not for you and
your wife or for your daughters and sons alone. Enlarge it, widen it,
make it universal. So, that to my mind, is the function of human existence.
And all that talk of goals and God realisation is nothing else but learning
to become love, yourself.
And the essence of being a human being is to become love. All these
transactions of loving and being loved, you see, where there are already
two involved, or more than two involved, it is a situation where you
are dependent on someone else. And perfect peace, perfect happiness,
is impossible where this dependence exists. So my Master used to say,
"Do not love. Do not seek to be loved. Try to become love. Because
when you become love, everybody will come to you like bees go to a flower."
I have never seen a notice outside a farm saying, "Honey available
here." But the bees find it. So when we become love, all of humanity
will have to come to us.
It is love alone which can make service possible. Through service, growth
possible. Through growth, love possible. You see all interrelated. And
a love which will not serve others, which seeks seclusion, isolation,
loneliness, is not love. It is suicide. It is fear of the self, manifesting
itself in its most ugly form, wanting to imprison itself in a cage of
its own construction. So avoid it like the plague. Try to start loving
in this real way - becoming love, until there is no distinction between
the Master's love and your love for Him. And then, there is another
potential Master.
Please understand that love doesn't exist where sacrifice doesn't exist.
In fact somebody was asking me a question. "What is negation? I
think negation is nothing but negation of the self in this aspect that
as we become first capable of loving, then become love itself, the self
ceases to exist. So true negation in that sense is where a person becomes
love, he no longer loves; she no longer loves; the person himself becomes
love. And this is perhaps one way of looking at the Ultimate itself!
We say God is love, and where love exists nothing else can exist. So
the self doesn't exist and if the self doesn't exist he has no mind,
no power, no force, nothing, you see. So that is the Ultimate sacrifice
where the self itself ceases to exist, leaving love alone existing there
and for this we should all aspire. I think it is also one way of looking
at the culmination of spiritual practice that instead of finding the
Self, we become love. Therefore we become HIM who is all love.
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