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 vaporise 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.

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