October 25, 1967 — Morning Talks, chapter 7
Love is not love that is the result of our outward enjoyments, the physical enjoyments. Everybody repeats that he loves God, that he loves somebody, but how many really know what love is? Love is the attraction of the heart to something. It is a question of heart not of head. When the heart wishes something, there will be radiation and that will react to where the thoughts are directed. So as I told you, it is a subject of the heart and not of head. Whoever has got love knows service and sacrifice. There is no question of high or low, the king or the subject. Even kings are made to sit on the floor as a result of love. Love knows giving away everything, including your body and soul. It is a matter of surrender to somebody’s will, to whom you are attached at heart.
Love is innate in our souls. God is Love and our souls are the drops of the Ocean of all Love, which is also love personified. But love knows attachment. The love of the soul which should be attached to the Oversoul, or God, has been attached to the physical things and outward enjoyments. That very love has been turned into attachment.
You go where?
Where you are attached. That thing within your mind is where you are attached, the love of which you have got in your heart. If you have got love for worldly things, naturally you will come again and again to the world. If you have got love for God or the God-in-man, then where will you go? — where He will go. If He is not going round and round on the Wheel of Transmigration, how will you go! He comes from the Father and goes back to the Father. He comes with a commission to take souls back to God.
So love is love if it is directed to God, otherwise it is attachment. We have just to think deeply in our heart what we want, with Whom we have got real love. Real love is not a business, mind that. It knows surrender and dedication of everything to Him.
How is real love developed?
If you love somebody, you will naturally have sweet remembrance of him always in your heart. If you want to develop love, then just have sweet remembrance of God all the day and night. The most effective way is to sit by One who is over-flowing with the love and intoxication of God. His soul is intoxicated with the love of God.
In whatever company you sit, you will have the same radiation. If you sit by a wrestler, you will develop a real love for strength. If you sit by a learned man, your love will grow for literary things. If you sit by somebody who is overflowing with the love of God, naturally you will have that same love by radiation. The Koran of the Mohammedans says, “For every lover there should be some Beloved.” We are souls, conscious entities. Our beloved should be the Oversoul, who is All-Consciousness, who is God. We have made the world our beloved and naturally we come again and again. So our love should be for God. It should be developed, but it can only be developed if you sit in the sweet company of the God-in-man, who is overflowing with Godhood. Then naturally, you will have love by radiation. Your soul will be injected with love. Love knows service and sacrifice, no will of its own.
I was just telling the story of a king, who had four wives. He was going to some foreign land and asked his wives what present they would like, what he should bring for them. Every wife had something of her own liking, but the youngest was the greatest lover of the king. She wrote to him, “Well, I want you only, and nothing else. You come back.” So naturally, when the king returned, he sent the presents to his other wives and he went to the youngest wife.
This is only to show that what you really want, that you will be given. There is a saying of the Masters that God has promised to give everything that a man wants, what his soul really desires. We simply say superficially that “O God, we want You,” but at the bottom, we want worldly things. If you have got real love for God in your heart, God will come to you, He will manifest to you. But generally, we want only worldly things, here and hereafter. Those who care for the love of God don’t hanker after the worldly things, nor the wealth of the other worlds. They don’t even want emancipation. They would like to have only one thing. No heaven, no earthly things, not emancipation, only to be with God, that’s all. If we have really got that hankering in our heart, then naturally we must meet God. God will come to us. If we take one step that way, He will proceed one hundred steps to receive us. We have to decide what we want at our heart of hearts.
Are we here only for the worldly things? Are we here only for the name and fame of the world? Are we here only to have things of the other world, or heaven? Are we really after emancipation from birth and death?
A real lover wants none of these things. He wants God and God alone. This is the highest ideal that we can achieve in the man-body, and in no other. So you have to decide by an honest searching of your heart, what you want. If you want God, then God will meet you, sure and certain. If you want something else, you will have it, that’s all. You will get nothing short with whatever you want. But why, when you go to a King, do you want ordinary pebbles and stones? So we should judge how we stand, day by day. The result of reading scriptures, doing penances, performing this or that, ritual, or doing one pilgrimage or another, all depends on the amount of love that you have got in your heart of hearts. If you have developed love for God, well and good. If not, then . . . ? you must be going round in transmigration. It is a matter of only directing your attention, this way or that way.
Bulleh Shah was a Saint of India. When he came to his Master, who was working in a garden at that time, putting some plants here, some there, Bulleh Shah asked Him how God could be met. “Oh it is very easy,” replied Bulleh Shah’s Master, “it is just like taking one plant from here and putting it over there.”
So you are to divert your attention from the world to God, that’s all. God is already within you, He is not living in the Heavens. He is the very Power that is controlling you in the body. So this is what is wanted, just see where you stand. If you want God, or the God-in-man, you will have Him. These are things we have to check daily, where we stand. We have been doing one sort of practice or the other, or joining different schools of thought, for years and years.
What is the fruit? What is the net result? Have you developed love for God? If so, you have made a true profit from your man-body. If not, then . . . ? You have made the preparation to come back again and again.
So love needs no performance, rituals or outer labels. It does not even want your body. It is a matter between you and God. The man-body is given to you as a golden opportunity in which you can direct your soul to God. You will go where you are attached. Very simple, no philosophy required. If you are really attached at heart to God, or the God-in-man, naturally you won’t return. You will go where He goes.
Masters do not want any man to change his outward forms or rituals. Remain where you are. You are souls, conscious entities. You have been endowed with this golden opportunity of man-body. Just direct your soul towards the very Power that is controlling you in the body. The body is the true Temple of God, in which you as well as God reside. Outward forms or rituals, or labels of one school of thought or another, make no difference. The Master looks at you from the level of the soul, not from the label that you are wearing on your body. He looks to you as man, as soul. The same Controlling Power is active in your heart.
Have you understood what is love? It is a subject of heart, not of head. A very learned man may be devoid of heart. Love overrules head, but sometimes head stands in the way of love, of the heart. These are the things that we have to judge day to day, how far we have developed love and in which way, this side or that side. To the world or to the Word.
W–O–R–L–D spells world. If you take out “L” from the word WORLD, then it becomes WORD. When you lose the ego of “I-hood” by becoming a conscious co-worker of the Divine Plan, you are Word. GOD is WORD.
“The Word was in the beginning,
the Word was with God
and the Word was God”.
— John 1:1
Spirituality is not difficult. It is I think, a most natural, most easy way. In the worldly things, you have to make a hypothesis and put in years and years of study. Even then, you cannot boast that you know everything of the worldly things. But by doing the other way, you come to the root of all Creation. It is only to direct your attention from this side to that side. This is the way to God, now you can judge what you want. You will have everything that you want in due course, but why not want God, that you may be His and He may be yours? Nobody else to intervene, neither body, mind or anything in the outside world.
So Masters always give this advice or wise counsel to the people at large, irrespective of whether they belong to one school of thought or the other. To the Masters, there is no difference whether you reside in a church, a temple, a gurudwara, or a mosque. These places are meant for worshipping God, to develop love for God. Merely attending these places is not sufficient. You must see what you have developed as a result. All these performances boil down to what? Just that a man is taken away. In conscription, I would say, a man is taken by force. He has to labour all day long, and in the evening he gets no wages. At the time of birth, you are helpless and neither do you get anything when you leave. So what is the use?
The fruit of all outward performances, reading of scriptures, doing practices, penances, is to see how far you have developed love for God.
The best way to develop this is to meet somebody who is overflowing with the love of God, with the intoxication of God. This intoxication can be had where? Eyes are the windows of the soul and the soul peeps out of them. In whatever way a soul is imbued, you have the same radiation through the eyes. When we went to bow down to Him, our Master said, “What is down there? Look at me!” So the eyes are the most effective way of having that radiation. You will forget everything, your body, the world, everything. Judge every day how far you have developed love for God. This is the highest thing you can develop in the man-body, and in no other body.
These things are not only for reading. You have simply to see what love you have developed in your body. One saint said, “If you have not developed love for God, you have simply laden yourself with books, with scriptures, laden over like an ass.” You have filled libraries in your brain, not a drop of it in your soul. Once a student, who was carrying a book under his arm, went to see Ramakrishna Paramhans and was asked by him, “What is that book that you are carrying?” The student replied that it showed how to make water. Ramakrishna Paramhans laughed and said, “All right, squeeze some of the pages of the book and see how many drops of water ooze out.” You follow what he meant?
So simply reading books is a first step. It is not all. How many drops of water could be squeezed from the pages of the book? You speak of God, speak of God-in-man, speak of love of God, but how many drops of love have you got? This is to be considered. We don’t care for these things. We simply stick to the outer things. We lay down our life for them and that is deterioration, I would say. Make the best use of them.
Know that you are to develop God consciousness, and to be aware of how much love that you have developed for God. So I would say, step by step, this is the highest thing to be attained. When you are attached to the church, ritual, penances, this and that thing, sometimes God is forgotten, and they take the foremost place. We have laid down everything for these outward things and have forgotten God. This is deterioration. Further deterioration comes when you forget God, even the church, everything. For selfish ends, you become the protectors and the contractors of the cults of the schools of thought which you have professed, and so there is dissension and strife. You follow now, what they lead to?
So just see how far you have developed. With all that you have read, with all your carrying in your arms, in your brain, what is the result? Do you remember God, or when you hear the name of God, does your heart become full and tears flow down your cheeks? Then it’s all right. It is something on the way. There is hope. As when you see clouds there is hope for rain, or when there are blossoms on a tree there is hope for fruit. Otherwise, excuse me, all is fruitless. After all, for good things you will have reactions of good, but that will not bear the true fruit to reach God.
I have no rituals, no forms, nothing of the sort here. No temple, no church, no mosque. Why? because what I am telling you is the highest thing. Remain where you are, you are not to leave your religions but to make the best use of them, and see how far you have proceeded, advanced, progressed on the Way. So that is one of the reasons why I have no church, temple or anything. I take them as the elementary steps. People are stuck fast to them. They don’t bear the fruits of performing the rituals or methods of outward performances. Here we have no forms, we do not care what label you are wearing, or what school of thought you have belonged to. We never care for it, we want just to enjoy that you are a man, you are a soul. The same God is within you.
You must rise in that God consciousness. This is the main purpose of Ruhani Satsang (Science of Spirituality), what we are after here. This is what the world needs today. Do not judge on outward appearances. If there is a mound of filth, over which a silken cloth is spread, do you mean to say that there will be no odour from it? So we can deceive the world, but not the God within us. Take to your heart what is being said. See how far you have changed, or if you are the same man with the same low nature. Outwardly you are very good, your dress is very neat. Outwardly you are making obeisance and paying homage, but the heart is not changed.
What did Christ say? He said, “Change your hearts, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Change your hearts, this is what all Masters say. We don’t listen to their words. We simply go on with the outward things, or do not seek further than the worldly things that we require. How many are there here who have come only for God’s sake? If they have come for God’s sake they will have Him, sure and certain. If they have come for some other thing, then . . . ? They will have only that thing, not God.