32. *Real love*

Real love is something so deep, so energizing, that you will not know it unless you experience it. Love is an expression of energy, not something that is transacted. Tell me one thing: can you love people when you meet them for the first time?

7 6 (From the audience: No Swamiji*! We don't even know them, then how can we love them?)*

Exactly! This is what you think. Let me tell you, with a little bit of intellectual understanding and meditation, you will realize that you can love anyone without a reason, causelessly! You can love the trees on the road, you can caress them and feel the energy flow from you. You can love people whom you pass by on the road without even knowing them. Love is actually your very being, not a distilled quality that you possess.

Nothing is as misconstrued as love is today. Today, love is more of a transaction. If someone says something nice to you, you love him; tomorrow if the same person falls short of it, you don't love him that much or you probably hate him.

Even your lifelong friend, with whom you chat everyday on the computer, will seem suddenly not-so-close if he says something that goes against your approval. Where is your love at this time? It has suffered temporarily!

It is just games that you play; a game in which love and hate surface alternately and interchangeably. And this love-hate relationship is not love at all. Be very clear. It is simply your reaction to a person or a situation, that's all. This is what we call love. This is not real love. It is subjective love, that's all.

Real love knows no object. It is simply there whether there is an object or not. Real love is the subject itself. It does not know any object. You are the subject and you have become love, that's all. Any object that comes in touch with it, feels it. Just like a river flows naturally and people enjoy it at the different places that they encounter it, real love exudes from a person and the people around him will be able to feel it.

There is absolutely no room for conditioning in real love. The energy in you should overflow and express itself as love. It is then that you can break through the highly knotted boundaries of relationships and express yourself beautifully, as a loving being!

In order to discover the quality of your being, that is love, two things can be done. The first thing: repeatedly listen to words like these so that they create a conviction in you about real love; so that a space is created in you for the process of transformation. Second thing: meditate so that the transformation can actually happen.

In practical life, when you go deeper and deeper into relationships, you will understand that all that you feel is not real love, but just some form of give and take. It is all just adjustment, some compromise, some duty-bound feelings, some fear, some guilt. It is all there in the name of love.

Meditation will take you beyond these mis-understandings of love. Meditation will work at the being level. That is why it is a shortcut! When you have to go through life and know it by yourself, it will take you a lifetime. But with meditation, a space opens inside you to experience these things clearly for yourself, whatever your age may be.

Just understand this one thing: when you are able to love without a reason, you will expand like anything. Your world will suddenly seem larger than life. It will be so ecstatic. You will become an energy source to yourself and to others. You will be so overflowing that the energy in you has to touch others. There is no other way. Others will be naturally drawn to you.

Q: What about love between a mother and a child? Is it not self less love?

Even motherly love comes with expectations. Many times, people have confronted me with arguments when I say this. Let me tell you, a mother loves her son alright. But at the end of the day, there is an unwritten expectation written on that love. If the son causes a little friction, the first words that would come out would be telling the things that she had done for him since childhood. A small dent in the relationship is enough to bring the whole thing out.

Real love is the expression of the Existential energy in you and this love can never think of any such arguments. It only knows to flow causelessly. It doesn't know to maintain any track record.

The moment you cite incidents from the past, it means that expectations were always there hidden behind your love and when it is this way, it can never be real love.

It is the same way when it comes to the son also. The son loves the mother, expecting her to look after him, expecting her to get up at five and pack his lunch for him, expecting her to maintain his clothes for him, without missing a single day. He adores the mother because he enjoys the care, the luxury.

A small story:

A boy was learning fractions in his school.

One day the teacher asked him, 'If there was a cake and we divided it into 5 portions and gave them to each of your family members, what fraction of the cake would you get?'

The boy replied, '2/5 Ma'am*.*'

The teacher asked, 'How? Haven't you studied your fractions well?'

The boy replied, 'Ma'am, my mother will give her piece to me if I like the cake.'

Mothers want to sacrifice for their children, alright, but the attitude with which they sacrifice is what we are talking about. They should do it out of simply an overflowing in them, not out of any hidden expectations. Events will never get recorded in them if they do it out of an overflowing. And even if they get recorded, they will not surface with a vengeance when things like this happen.

Common love always thrives on expectation. No one can deny this, although everyone may try to. The expectation in love is so well woven into it that it is difficult to perceive it. That is the problem.

Actually, as long as things go smoothly, it is difficult to believe what I am saying. But we hear of so many cases where sons and daughters are written off from the family for simple reasons! Simply because they married outside the community, or because there was some feud in the family. Where did all the love disappear suddenly?

Until such incidents happened, the son or daughter would have been loved very much. What happened suddenly? How can it suddenly disappear if it was real love? Real love can never be stopped because it is not bound by any cause-effect cycle.

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Even in subtle family issues, if you look carefully, you will understand how bound your love is. Just try to re-arrange a few things in your life, and watch how your own family will react to it.

With your children, as long as you provide for them in the name of love, they also enjoy you, in the name of love. As long as you don't rub each other the wrong way, it is alright. If either of you behaves in an unexpected fashion, the mood of the love changes; the flavour changes.

Love which is always under threat is not real love. It is just arranged love. And anything arranged cannot be total. And when something is not total, it is always under threat. Love needs to be a total celebration, not a duty.

Respect is not love

One more thing: we all confuse love with respect. When you love totally, nothing that you do can appear disrespectful. You see, when you closely observe respect, you will find that when certain people do certain things, it appears absolutely normal, while the same thing, when some other person does it, appears disrespectful. The energy behind the person doing the act is what causes the act to seem respectful or disrespectful.

When the energy behind you is total, when you are just a loving energy, you can get away with anything. When you are not sure of yourself, you will get caught with the problems of respect. I am not asking you to be disrespectful. I am only saying that when your being resonates with love, your body language will be such that your actions can never seem disrespectful.

But if you get caught with respect instead of love, you are missing the whole thing. Then instead of being loving, you will start pretending, and when you pretend, you are not total.

When you are centered in respect, you will pretend because respect is societal and it keeps changing in its definition. But if you are centered in love, then respect becomes a pleasant byproduct. So center yourself in love and respect will automatically happen.

Remember: Respect is dead. Love is alive. Respect creates a distance; love knows no distance.

People are trained to be so fearful and respectful of God. They are never taught to love God. They are not allowed to touch the idols in the temples. They are expected to stand at a distance and bow down. They are taught to be wary of God. Understand, the first thing that children should be taught is to love God.

If you cannot embrace God, there is nothing left to embrace, because God is everything! When you teach your child that you cannot embrace God, you are actually teaching him that God is different from the rest. By putting God on a pedestal, you are actually alienating the child from the whole of Existence.

Just have some social intelligence and play the game of respect in an intelligent way when required, that's all. Mind you, this kind of respect will happen with deep awareness and intelligence. It will not cause you to be less loving.

A small story:

A mother went with her child to a public function.

• Somehow, she lost track of the child and they got separated in the crowd.
• The mother got very panicky and started searching all over for the child.
• Suddenly she heard behind her a voice, 'Maria! Maria!' She turned around and saw her daughter.
• She ran to her, hugged her and asked, 'But why were you calling me Maria instead of mom?'
• The child replied, 'That would have been of no use. There are so many moms around here!'

Children are still centered in themselves and they are more alive and alert than us. Their innocence, their love, their body language speaks for them, not their words. Because of this, whatever they say or do always seems innocent, never disrespectful. Once the mind steps in with societal conditionings, this innocence disappears. Then we have to make it up with words and pretensions.

When love becomes a duty, it becomes a burden. And when it becomes a burden, it is not more a celebration; you will be under pressure always to keep it up.

Love that liberates

Parents teach children reasons to love. From a young age, love is taught with a reason. Do we ever teach them to love the earth? Do we teach them to love nature? No. But we teach them to love our relatives. We teach them to love us. We teach them to love everyone who will be of some use to them in some way.

If you teach them to embrace nature, you are sowing the seeds of real love in them. I have seen many parents who will teach their kids to throw garbage in public places and destroy the beauty of nature. The same parents who teach the children to love the family will teach them to abuse nature. If you have real love in you, you will not abuse nature. You will embrace nature and people alike.

You have to sow the right seed. Only then the desired plant will grow. When you create the right conditions for love to flower inside the child, the child will blossom. Meditation helps in sowing the seed, in creating the right space inside. Nothing can be imposed from outside. The moment it is imposed, it will be met with resistance and carried out as a compulsion, what you call duty.

The love that we all talk about is actually psychological slavery. You enslave the person in the name of love, and he feels compelled to behave in a particular fashion. With physical slavery, you at least know that you are being enslaved. With psychological slavery, it is so cunning, that you will not even know that you are being enslaved.

Why do you think there is so much guilt in all of us? It is because the love that we know always puts us in guilt. When love is total, when it is pure energy from your being, it can never bring guilt. You feel guilty only because you always feel that you have not loved enough, that you have failed somewhere. And why have you not loved enough? Because you have been taught only love that has reasons, never total love.

If you see, when you have loved totally, you will never feel guilty or sad when a person dies. You may feel sad at the physical separation, but you will never feel that you have missed anything when they were living. When I say total love, I don't mean that you should have fulfilled all others' expectations of attention and wants. I mean, you should have been centered in yourself well and exuded that kind of energizing love towards them, seeing and respecting them as part of Existence.

If you had been this way, you would have experienced them in a total way and you will not feel any guilt when they pass away. Family always instills guilt in you so that it can have control over you. Guilt is nothing but a hangover of many kinds of emotions because you did not explore the emotion in totality. Never allow guilt to possess you.

I am not saying that you can do what you please and not feel guilty about it. I am saying, live totally, from your center, with deep awareness and understanding. Then there will be no room for guilt.

True love always gives without asking. It does not know any 'take'. It knows only 'give'. And you cannot create it either. It is like this: you can create a plastic rose but will it have the fragrance of the real rose? No! In the same way, true love can never be created.

For the real rose to happen, you need to create the right condition, the right soil, the right amount of water, and then it will happen on its own. Likewise, for true love to happen, you can create awareness, clarity and a deep understanding within yourself, and it will blossom from inside you.

In a college gathering one girl asked me, 'Swamiji, was it failure in love that caused you to become a sannyasi?'

I told her that it was success in love that caused me to become a sannyasi! Failure in love will create only a Devdas, not a sannyasi! Only when you can love the whole world can you become a sannyasi. Only when you can love the whole world, it is real love.

Real love happens with no relationship. Only ordinary love happens only when there is a relationship. In ordinary love, you love your father because he provides for you. You love your mother because she takes care of you. You love your boyfriend because he gives you sensual pleasure.

Real love is not like that. It doesn't say *Oh! This is my father. I must love him…*No! It knows to keep loving everyone and everything, that's all. Ordinary love creates bondage while real love liberates. With ordinary love, there will be failure and success. With real love, there is no success or failure, it just IS, that's all. The success is in finding it!

People think that when nothing works out for you, when all love is lost, you become a sannyasi. No. People think sannyasis are renunciates who are driven by frustration. I tell you: I feel so sad when I think of the people who say these things. They are in such deep ignorance. They continuously pass judgment from such a state of ignorance. Understand: sannyas is the ultimate marriage… to the Divine!

A true sannyasi is one who is so loving and compassionate that it is said that where he walks, the grass doesn't die! This is not a story. It is true. A true sannyasi is one who exudes compassion and love towards Existence. A true sannyasi is one who knows that prayer is love and love is prayer.

When you have found real love, your prayer will be just an expression of it. What are the Meera Bhajans? They are the loving outpourings of Meera, an enlightened being from India. She just resonated with Krishna who is Existence Itself, and she poured from her being. That is why the Meera bhajans are famous even today. The energy behind them can never fade because it is the Existential energy. Ordinary love cannot be felt over so many years by so many people. Only pure love can radiate that kind of lasting energy.

And for Meera, her bhajans were her prayer. When you have found real love, there is no other way. Prayer becomes love.

The ordinary love that we know is nothing but expecting someone to satisfy your psychological image; someone who can give you psychological support.

You need someone to take care of your needs. You need someone who will boost you up when you are down. You need someone who will sympathize with you and confirm your worries for you. This is what you call love. But true love is beyond names and forms, body and mind. Only a person who can love the whole world beyond all these can become a sannyasi. Only he can become a Vivekananda!

How we complicate love

When Vivekananda says, Arise! Awake! Does it mean that we are sleeping? Of course! We are sleeping even without knowing that we are sleeping. And we pass judgments while we are asleep. We criticize when we are asleep. We condemn when we are asleep. We think we are awake and we criticize. We think we know everything about everything including love.

A small story:

A man had a wealthy old aunt whom he visited regularly.

He coveted her wealth and went out of the way to please her.

She had two cats, which she loved.

The man knew this and would look after the cats religiously hoping to win her over.

His secret wish was that she would make him a part of her will when she wrote it out.

He would come everyday, feed the cats with milk, play with them, spend a lot of time and go back.

The old lady was very pleased at the way he looked after the cats.

Soon, she passed away. In her will, she had left him the two cats.

You can imagine the disappointment in the man! He must have felt cheated!

With ordinary love, there is every possibility that you will feel cheated. People love for wealth, for the favors that they get done, for the words of advice that they get, for other people's forgetful ways, which they can exploit… and what not. Love always comes with a reason.

But people will never accept this for a fact. They don't accept it because they are deluded by their own ordinary love. They think that that is the way love happens. And they think that while they are so loving, I am simply bringing down their love.

Honestly, if you sit and think by yourself, you will understand that what I am saying is true. Do an honest enquiry on yourself and see. Just sit down and try to visualize how you would react if your father or mother or sister behaved in a slightly different way towards you. You will then understand what I am saying.

We are all the time in need of something from someone and so we are continuously paving the way to get it from them in a smooth way. This smooth way is what we call love. Don't think that this applies to getting only material wealth. Even when you expect a person's behaviour to be in a particular fashion, you behave accordingly with them. As long as both of you are behaving in this fashion, you love each other. If someone misses it somewhere, your love takes a momentary dip!

Take me for example. You all claim that you love me very much. Each one of you has got a particular idea of how I should behave

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towards you. I simply behave towards each of you in the fashion. That is what I am doing now actually. What happens? If even once I don't smile at you or I say something to you that does not fit me into your frame, you start thinking that I don't love you any more.

You start thinking that maybe I am not so loving after all. You start imagining about why I said a particular thing to you, or why I did not smile at you.

I might have been talking to someone else, or I might have simply not smiled at you, just to allow your ego to settle a bit, that's all! But you miss the whole game and start interpreting my actions with your own dictionary of love. What will happen? You will land up in deep misery.

This is how you simply complicate love. At least when it comes to me, there is no complication added to it from my side! Imagine what will happen when two of you start relating with each other in this fashion? There will be total chaos! You will simply be moving from low love to high love to low love, that's all!

People tell me, 'Swamiji, we love our children…'

When it comes to putting up with their naughty behaviour, how many times have you sworn at them? One girl was telling me at the ashram, 'Swamiji, my mother loves my children only if they behave themselves well. She wants me to bring the children to show them off as her grandchildren to her friends and then scolds me for the chaos that they create!'

When you see children, you are pulled by their innocence. That is one thing. The second thing is, it gives you a feeling of pride, an ego boost, when you see that they are your creation. And of course, you provide for them and make them happy. But what I am saying is, this love also comes with limitations and preferences. It is highly subjective to the ways of the children.

A small story:

A man was laying a concrete road.

He had just finished laying the road when a group of children from the neighborhood came running onto it leaving footmarks.

The man got very angry and swore at them.

His friend asked him, 'Hey, what is the matter? I thought you liked children.'

The man replied, 'Yes I do, but not on concrete.'

Ordinary love always comes with some condition somewhere! With some fine print somewhere. This is what I am trying to say. We love people subject to name, place, moods and situations.

The love of an enlightened being

A small story from the life of Vivekananda:

One night, Vivekananda woke up at 2 am and awakened his disciples. His disciples were anxious and wanted to know what was happening. Vivekananda said that he was feeling a lot of pain and that in some part of the world there was a natural calamity that was happening which was causing him the pain. The papers the next morning announced a terrible earthquake in Fiji islands that had consumed many lives.

He was sensitive to a calamity that happened in some corner of the world, thousands of miles away! Do you think normal humans can be this sensitive? Even if our neighbor is sick, it will not have any effect on us!

A small story:

A man called up his family doctor and said, 'Doctor, I think you should visit us and do a check-up on my wife.'

The doctor asked, 'Why? Is she unwell?'

The man replied, 'I think so, doctor. Yesterday, she got up at her usual time, had a bath, cooked food, sent the children to school, cleaned the house because the maid did not turn up, washed our clothes, brought the children back home, attended to their homework and went to bed. Around midnight, she was complaining that she was tired. Maybe she needs to be checked up.'

We have become so insensitive today! We are not able to connect to the other person who is living with us 24 hours a day and 365 days of the year. Enlightened beings on the other hand are deeply sensitive to the universe surrounding them.

What happened in Vivekananda is what you call empathy. Mind you, it is not sympathy; it is empathy. Sympathy is a very superficial word. We are all capable of sympathy. When someone tells you about their suffering, you just confirm their suffering for them; that is sympathy! If someone tells you that their husband is ill, you tell them, 'Oh! How awful, you must be very unhappy. Don't worry, everything will be alright*.*' In the name of sympathy, we confirm their suffering for them and they in turn tell us that we are so caring and loving.

Actually, they love us because we have agreed that they are enduring suffering; it is a subtle ego boost for them. They feel good that we are acknowledging that they are managing such big worries. This is what society calls sympathy.

What masters feel is not sympathy; it is empathy. Empathy is when you feel another's suffering in your own being. Then, a person does not have to tell you his suffering, but you simply know because the Existential energy in you feels it.

Masters are one with you, because they are one with Existence, and you are a part of Existence; only you see them as separate. And because they are one with you, they feel your pain in their heart. They don't know any other way. And they have the capacity to witness the pain that comes with it also.

Ordinary love gives birth to children while real love gives birth to your own real self. You give yourself a new birth, a transformation. Like how the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, man becomes a realized soul. You awaken to the energizing love that is lying dormant in you.

A master transforms you with his love. I always tell my disciples, 'When I am compassionate, I cheat you and when I fire (scold), I

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teach you.' Either way, you grow! Sometimes I demonstrate my compassion in a very loving way so that you are more malleable to my transforming fingers! Sometimes I show my compassion by simply firing you so that you are jolted into deeper awareness. In both cases, pure love for you is the only reason.'

A master is an ocean of infinite love and knows only to give. If you approach him with a bowl, you will take back a bowl of him with you. If you approach him with a pitcher, you will take back a pitcher of him. It all depends on how thirsty you are, that's all. The thirstier you are, the bigger the vessel you will approach with.

But he is there always, watching you walking up to him with vessels of various sizes and laughing to himself at your own uncertainty, at the play of your mind which you project on him!

Be very clear: I am not asking you to love God or any Master. It is very difficult for you to love something you haven't seen. But you can love all that you can see, can you not? You can love the animals, the plants, people and what not. Simply love them for no reason except the joy of loving.

Feel a deep connection with them and love them. Once you start doing this, you will develop a certain faith in Existence because Existence is the common thread that runs through all these things. Faith is something that cannot be imposed upon you. If it is imposed, you will harbour a deep vengeance towards the object of faith.

When faith happens, slowly, your love will become love towards the whole of Existence. Then, the ultimate religion will take root in you – the religion of gratitude and love.

Gratitude and love are closely related. When you experience gratitude at the core of your being, there will be only love in you, nothing else. The first step towards feeling real love is feeling gratitude. As long as there is discontentment in your system, there cannot be real love. Gratitude and love go hand in hand.