Whenever we look at something, the first thing we do is to calculate what we can get from it. It can be a person or an object, that doesn't matter. Our thoughts start functioning either through fear or through greed to calculate what there is in the situation for us. Our attention is centered on that object or person.

It is possible to turn our attention towards our own inner space and ask, 'What can I contribute?', 'What can I add?', 'How can I enrich others?' If the process is only to ask, 'What can I get out of it?' then it is driven by lust. If the process asks, 'How can I enrich it?' it is driven by love! Lust is an energy that demands. Love is an energy that gives.

To tell you honestly, it is very difficult to define love exactly. Mere words cannot express it precisely. I am trying to use a few words here and there so that some word will click within you.

Love is an intense experience in one's inner space. Many of us think love is a choice. We think experience and expression of love are a choice. We think that if we want to, we can handle love; otherwise we can let it go. No! It is not a choice as we think. It is a basic necessity of life.

When I say life, I don't mean just breathing and staying alive. I mean being alive at the innermost being level, as a live Consciousness. If you can express love, if you can experience love, that is the only way of being alive as a Consciousness. If you don't experience and express love, you may inhale and exhale, but you can't say you are a live being. There are so many animals, plants and other things that breathe day in and day out. You will continue to exist like them, that's all.

A small story:

A disciple asked a Zen master, 'Does an enlightened master speak?'*

The master said, 'No, an enlightened person never speaks. Only a person who doesn't know enlightenment speaks.'

Then the disciple asked, 'So does an enlightened master keep quiet?'

Zen - Japanese Buddhist practice. Derived from dhyana, meditation.

Whether it is energy, time, talent or pleasure, only when you are overflowing can you really share it.

The master said, 'No, an enlightened master never keeps quiet. If he keeps quiet, then he

is not enlightened.'

The disciple was puzzled. He asked, 'You say he neither speaks nor keeps quiet. What does he do?'

The master replied, 'He sings! His being sings. He neither speaks, nor keeps quiet. His very being sings.'

Love is the ultimate experience of a human being. When the experience happens, we will not be able to possess the experience, only the experience will possess us! That is what the master means. When the experience possesses us, whatever we do will be like a beautiful song. Any word that comes out will be poetry. Our being will be so light. We will simply float. Our walking will be a dance. Our body language will radiate grace. All our expressions will be of great service to humanity.

All human beings are born as loving beings. A newborn baby radiates causeless love. Does she know anyone around her at birth? No! Her energy is causeless love. As we grow, society instills fear and greed in us and we orient our love based on greed and fear. Then it is no longer causeless love. It is love with a reason. It becomes suffocating. We start feeling other emotions like jealousy, fear and anger. We experience only love with a cause, a reason. But with a little awareness and awakening, it is possible to reclaim our original love.

Love can never be made to happen with just our logical decision. Our mental setup itself should be created in such a way that we become love and our actions speak love. Our logic should start radiating a love that is beyond logic! When real love happens in us, we will not even be aware that we are loving. Only others will be aware that we are radiating love.

When real love happens, we overflow with so much energy that we will have the courage to share whatever we have with others. We get tremendous confidence because we know it has happened in us! Whether it is energy, time, talent or pleasure, only when we are overflowing can we really share it. Similarly, love happens only naturally, never through compulsion. If we try to create love, it will be like forcing open the petals of a flower to make it bloom. Can it be called flowering? No. Love is a flower that blossoms deep within your being and sends out a sweet fragrance that we share with others.

The word 'love' is loaded with so many different meanings, interpretations and commentaries. First, let us leave out the idea of selfless and spiritual love. Let us first consider the normal, simple love with all its possessiveness, jealousy and all the side effects it causes! Even that love can do a lot of good for the body and mind. Later we will discuss selfless, spiritual love or mature love.

The other day I was reading an article in a magazine. The title was, 'Live Forever'. I was amazed to read it. It gave eleven techniques to extend your life by at least twenty years and it was supported by statistics and survey reports. All the eleven techniques were related to love. It said that even caring for a pet animal releases a hormone in us that allows us to live at ease with our body. If caring for our pet animals does so much, surely caring for the husband or for the wife will do a lot more!

The article also spoke of how people die early if they are single or widowers and how life is extended with love. It also spoke of how chances of getting cancer or depression are less when you have love in your life. Even what we call ordinary love, simple infatuation, can do miracles for our body and mind. It can give us a deep feeling of healing and wellbeing.

According to Tantra * , five types of restlessness happen in a person and all of these can be healed by ordinary love, by the simple caring for one another. Once again, I am not speaking of spiritual love or devotion or selfless love. That comes later.

A small story:

A school boy fell in love with a girl from his own grade.

One day he was kidnapped by an extremist group and sent to a camp across the border for training. A few months later he came back to his homeland to spread terror.

He entered his village to find that the family of his beloved was killed by terrorists.

He met the girl and they started talking. She told him how much she hated what was happening and begged him to stop what he was doing. She told him she would marry him only if he surrendered to the authorities.

Tantra - Ancient vedic tradition of achieving enlightenment through spiritual techniques or practices, meditations and ritual worship.

Whenever you express love you become a channel for healing energy.

The boy immediately surrendered and joined the army fighting

the insurgency while carrying a photograph of the girl in his pocket all the time.

Let us first talk of simple, practical love that you share with someone for some reason, either because the person will support you socially or support you when you face some difficulty or just because you want to maintain a good relationship with that person. For any of these reasons you may show love. Even this type of love heals you from the following five kinds of restlessness.

The first kind of restlessness happens due to your circumstances. Sometimes, in a particular place or situation you feel restless. If you move from that place or situation, you feel more settled. Even under uncomfortable circumstances, if you just show a gesture of love to someone, or if someone shows a gesture of love to you, things can become instantly better for you! It can heal you.

The second kind of restlessness is physical. Physical restlessness is nothing but a constant tension in your body for no particular reason. It is said that all such tension can be released when you express love to somebody. You may ask, 'How can love take away physical restlessness?' You can see for example, a mother who has a child to look after will feel continuously rejuvenated in spite of the child driving her crazy! Because of the love element, she will cope with the tension. Otherwise, taking care of children is not an easy job!

The rejuvenation happens because of the love and care the mother feels for the child. Any tension or restlessness in the body disappears when you care for somebody, when you smile at somebody, when you express love in your body language, even if it is just once.

When you express yourself through your head, it is called intelligence. When you express yourself through your heart, it is felt as love. When you express yourself through your being, it is experienced as energy. When you relax into your being without expressing, it is bliss! Each one is the same energy but expressed in four different ways.

So whenever you express love, you express energy also. Love is concentrated, caring energy. So naturally, whenever you express love you become a channel for healing energy. When you are a channel for energy, you not only heal others but heal yourself as well.

The third form of restlessness is mental. Any mental restlessness can be healed by love. Research indicates that when you care for pets or play with children, you reduce the possibility of heart attacks and also reduce the risk of fatal diseases!

The fourth form of restlessness is emotional. Mental restlessness is different from emotional restlessness. Mental restlessness is purely intellectual and can be controlled easily. But emotional restlessness cannot be controlled by just a few words of consolation. It can be healed only when you express love. When you start radiating love, it floods your being with energy. When your being is opened to such higher energies, it heals the emotional restlessness.

Ultimately, we come to spiritual restlessness. There are so many people who can sit with others, who can sit with the television, who can sit with newspapers, but who can't sit with themselves. This is what is called spiritual restlessness. Spiritual restlessness means that you cannot sit with yourself. You can give appointments to everybody else but not to yourself!

Your love for the teacher or the master can heal your spiritual restlessness. Many people come and tell me, 'Swamiji, just sitting in your presence puts us in a calm state but when we go back home, we are not able to remain in that calmness. Why is it so?' When you are in the presence of an enlightened person, you start relating, you start expressing your love towards him automatically. This heals your spiritual restlessness.

Your love for the teacher or the master can heal your spiritual restlessness.

If you observe when I speak,

I often give long gaps between words. The gaps are actually used to bring down your spiritual restlessness. When you sit in front of the television, you are able to sit so comfortably because information is just pushed into your being without a break. You aren't given a chance to experience your restlessness. So while your restlessness is actually supported and increased, you don't experience it and you feel very comfortable.

But here, if you have the patience to sit and listen to these words with the gaps, your spiritual restlessness will come down and the tendency of your mind to ask for the next thought will also come down. You automatically become receptive and these words will not only touch your head, but they will directly touch your heart as well. If you are totally relaxed and at ease with yourself without too many thoughts, your being will open, taking in everything and be healed.

If your mind is calm, just listening is enough. There is no need to even meditate separately later. The very listening itself can create the experience in you. If your listening is not proper, then it is difficult for the experience to happen. J. Krishnamurti * , the famous philosopher says, 'Listening is god.' Deep and total listening without restlessness is divine. That itself is god. If you look deeply into your being, the very presence of the master that causes love to happen in you heals the spiritual restlessness.

So even simple, normal love heals all five types of restlessness.

A beautiful incident happened in the life of Ramanuja* . If you study the life of Ramanuja* , you will see how he used every step of his life to move towards enlightenment.

When his teacher initiated Ramanuja , he gave him a special chant. The teacher told him not to pass on the chant to anybody and that if he did so, he would go to hell. Ramanuja asked him what would happen to the others with whom he might share it. The teacher said that they would be led to salvation.*

What would we have done? Naturally we would have kept quiet, thinking, 'Why unnecessarily go to hell?'

Ramanuja immediately stood on a platform in a temple and called out to the whole village. He loudly pronounced the chant given by his teacher and told the people, 'Let you all go to heaven! I am not bothered about me going to hell. Let you all reach heaven!'

When you are deeply in love, you feel as if your whole being is open and you are ready to go to any extreme for the sake of anybody. You are ready to go to any boundary, as there is nothing to protect within your being. Your being is totally open. You don't feel insecure when you are wild with love. That is why people who are in love always do risky things. They take the risk because they feel they have nothing to lose. There is no insecurity about anything. They feel so expansive. Love gives tremendous courage and energy. It opens you up. It makes you finally available to yourself. As of now, you are not available to yourself. Love can make you available to yourself.

When the teacher saw what Ramanuja did, he admitted that he learned a lesson from

J. Krishnamurti - Renowned Hindu philosopher.

Ramanuja - Founder of the Vishishtadvaita or modified duality principle. Along with Adi Shankara and Madhva, considered to be one of the three great teachers of Hindu philosophy.

his disciple and declared that Ramanuja had reached greater heights than him. He told Ramanuja, 'You are in a different space now.'

If you observe, you will have a very definite mental setup towards the people you live with everyday. You will practically know all the dialogues that might happen between you and them. You will know exactly that if you start the conversation in a particular way, in just what way the other person will respond! If you start the dialogue in another way, you will know exactly how the other person's response will change. You have a virtual script of all the possible everyday dialogues in your head.

Only if someone comes up with a new dialogue or behavior are you a little shaken or disturbed, and you don't know how to answer or react. Those are the only few minutes you start wondering about how to respond. Otherwise, you know the dialogue for the whole day. You know how it should start, when it will take a turn and how it will end. It is a dead dialogue. There is no life in it.

The problem is that we have all practically become philosophers. We don't understand that life is not philosophy. It is spontaneous flowing energy. It is new every moment. Philosophy is all about repeating the same old things in different ways, that's all. There's nothing fresh in it. Life is fresh every moment. Philosophy robs life of the freshness.

A small story:

Ten philosophers were imprisoned in a country. They were kept together in one cell. They decided that somehow they should escape from the prison. They sat and made a big plan. They got the mold of the prison door key and made a duplicate key.

Finally, they chose the date of escape. The whole plan was clearly laid out. They decided that on the particular night, two of them will open the prison door with the duplicate key and signal to the others. The others would escape and these two would follow after locking the door behind them.

The day of escape dawned and two of them went to open the door. The rest of them waited for the signal. They waited and waited but never got any signal. Three hours passed. Suddenly the two who had gone to open the door came back and said, 'We have to drop our plan to escape. It can't happen today. We will have to do it some other day. We will have to reschedule our escape.'

Love is really a success of the heart that every individual should experience.

The others asked, 'Why, what happened?'

They replied, 'What to do? The foolish guards forgot to lock the prison door!'

Those who philosophize cannot think of anything new! It has to be the same old mental setup. If there is some change or some new situation, they cannot think creatively to deal with it, because they are not open. They are like a closed circuit.

We have also become like philosophers when dealing with our lives. We are stuck in patterns of the past. We are never in the moment. If anything new happens, we are at a loss.

The person who experiences the 'ever living presence' experiences life in its freshness. He is also the one who is open and available. He constantly experiences the oneness with everything around him. Understand, being open means respecting every thing as equal to you. It means considering each other as equal and being open to change. 'Available' means that you are clear that the source of everything in this universe is Existence and that you are available to it every moment. That is the meaning of being available. It is recognizing the profundity of Existence of which all things are part. If you are open and available, you are no more a philosopher. You are ready to open up to life with love.

With philosophy, you have fixed ideas, and you become very assertive. When you are too assertive, you can't love. Assertion is an aggressiveness that does not allow love to come in. When you are too sure and filled with preconceived ideas, then where is the space for love to enter? Love needs beautiful space in order to blossom.

With philosophy, there is no room for love to settle in its existential state. If you really want to experience the taste of nectar, can you experience it through just a set of ideas about it? No! You need to taste the nectar yourself, give it some space, allow it to fill you and settle in its existential state. Only then you will know its taste. In the same way, to experience love, just a few ideas alone will not help. You need to allow it to grow in its existential state in your inner space. Then you will know it. Allow it to happen in your heart, not in the head. Decide to be with the heart. Then it will grow and happen.

What was once a failure within the head can become a success within the heart! Love is really a success of the heart that every individual should experience. It is easy to stay in the head. It is, after all, a mundane and familiar intellect. It requires courage to come down to the heart, because with the heart nothing is familiar, everything is fresh. At the head level you have a solid identity and familiar patterns. At the heart level there is no identity, no pattern. It is an open space. To enter into it, you need tremendous courage. That is why love is fearsome for many people. It is an unfamiliar zone. With the head, there is comfortable familiarity.

If the cosmos is a grand ocean, we are all part of it. We are one with the ocean, not individual drops in the ocean. When we think of ourselves as individual drops, we feel separate in our boundary and in our feelings. This is what is called ego. We become driven by feelings of 'I' and 'mine'. As long as this separation remains, we never experience the energy of the ocean that is love, we can never experience that causeless and surging love.

As long as we remain a drop in the ocean, we say 'no' to life. We neither love nor trust. We don't feel blissful either because bliss is possible only for those who know how to love and trust. It happens only to those who know how to feel part of the ocean. Bliss is possible only when our heart says 'yes', when the 'no' completely disappears from our being. 'No' is darkness, 'yes' is light. 'No' is ego, 'yes' is egolessness. 'No' is the way of the unconscious person. 'Yes' is Love is being in the flow with Existence, to be totally with it.

the way of the awakened one. All the conflict, all the suffering in our life is because of our saying 'no'. 'No' is a fight, a war with Existence. 'Yes' is love, peace with Existence. 'Yes' is deep accord with the totality of who we are – the ocean. Bliss is another name for that accord, that harmony.

The way to be in bliss is to dissolve into the ocean, not to be a drop but to merge with the ocean. To be a drop is to be with ego. The ego is the root of all misery. When the ego is absent, bliss reaches us from every nook and corner of the ocean of existence, as if it were just waiting for the ego to disappear.

Ego is a closed state of consciousness. All the windows and doors are closed. Life itself becomes insulated and encapsulated. Our ego surrounds us like a capsule. Our ego is like a sealed capsule; there is not even a small gap to allow anything to enter. It closes itself due to fear and shrinks into itself. That is how we create misery for ourselves.

Love is being in the flow with Existence, to be totally with it. Ego is like frozen ice. Love is like liquid water. Only when we are liquid do we become part of the ocean. Then we don't have any private goal or

Consciousness can do two things. It can create ego or it can create egolessness.

destination. Each moment is blissful, incredibly ecstatic, just

going with the plan of the cosmos.

The mind is part of the ego. It knows how to close, but it does not know how to open. To love means to open up, to surrender. It means opening up to Existence, to the flowers, to the bees and to the stars. How do we open to this beautiful music that fills the whole of Existence? How do we open up to this celebration that goes on and on – flowers dancing in the wind, trees enjoying the wind and the stars, always in a state of bliss? Except for man, everything else seems to be in harmony.

Man falls out of harmony because he has what is called 'consciousness' which is not present in other living creatures.

Consciousness can do two things. It can create ego or it can create egolessness. If it creates ego, we live in hell. If it creates egolessness, we live in paradise. The whole world is in paradise without knowing it. When man enters paradise, he enters knowing it fully. That is the grandeur and beauty of man. That is the danger as well, because it is easier to fall into the trap of the ego and not enter into paradise than to enter paradise knowingly.

The problem is that we have forgotten who we are and for what we were created. We are emperors of love, but we dream that we are beggars. We have the whole kingdom of Existence within our being and yet we continue to beg for mundane things. We keep collecting mundane things not knowing that we have infinite, inexhaustible treasures within our being. We are oceans, yet we are thirsty because we have become disconnected from our own selves. But no matter how disconnected we are, no matter how much we have forgotten and how long we have forgotten, it can be remembered in a single moment and we can become connected immediately.

Love is the connector.

Bliss arises from love. Love is the poetry that connects you back to Existence. Love is the sword that slays the ego and merges you with the ocean. When the heart is full of love, your whole life is transformed from prose to poetry, from noise to music and from discord to harmony.

It is such sheer joy to simply exist. Just 'to be' is enough. But we need to be sensitive to feel the joy of being. We need to grow feelers. The feelers are what we call love. Love feels the joy of just being. When you grow the feelers of love, life is no longer made of independent thoughts but becomes a continuous feeling. Then the ego starts to dissolve. Once we have moved from thinking to feeling, there is only one more step and that is from feeling to being. That is very simple.

The first step is difficult, to move from thinking to feeling. The ego has trained the mind to think so much, that's why. The second step comes almost automatically. There's nothing we need to do for it to happen. From feeling to being, the distance is nothing at all. It can happen at any moment. The poet can become the mystic at any moment. He is almost there. The real problem is how to get out of our thinking and get more and more into feeling.

Just follow the heart. Just love more, that's all! Feel more. Enjoy more so that you can feed your heart. Watch the sunrise, sunset, clouds, rainbows, birds, flowers, animals, rocks, and people, and watch them with awareness. Look into their eyes. Existence is so multidimensional. Look into every dimension like a poet. Praise it. Feel it. Be ecstatic! Expand your consciousness and experience every single detail of Existence with love. Slowly, the ego will lose its hold and disappear.

The only barrier to love is fear. When things start happening, we become fearful because with love we enter into a merger. This threatens the very basis of our ego. Ego is separateness while love is a merger. The fear we feel is nothing but the fear of the dissolving ego. Let the fear be there. It will hang around for a while. If we simply ignore it, the ego will leave us. It is a From feeling to being, the distance is nothing at all. It can happen at any moment.

great day when fear of losing the ego leaves us. From then on growth becomes simple, easy and spontaneous. Then we are not, only love is.

Encounter any situation in life with deep love. Soon you will become pure love. Whether it is a person or your work or a passerby or god or anything, just encounter it with deep love for love's sake. If you are a painter, just be completely in love with painting. If you are a dancer, be completely in love with dancing. If you are working with your computer, treat it with utmost love and become lost in it. Just be completely sincere and completely in love every moment.

If you are painting and at the same time thinking about which gallery to put up the painting in or how much to sell it for, then be very clear, you are not lost in love. You are in love only with some particular thing, which is money in this case. If you are dancing while calculating what you will get once you finish the dance, then be very clear you are not lost in love. You create

Real love keeps you in the moment.

more and more bond-

age by doing this. Even when a master happens in your life you do the same thing to him.

I tell people, 'I am showing you the moon by pointing at it with my finger. If you look at the moon, you will experience what I experience. Instead if you cling to my finger, you will neither see the moon nor will you relax!'

If you become lost in every moment, you become love. Then, when you work you work with the utmost focus because you are in deep love with it. This way, your very life becomes a deep meditative love.

Then you start feeling, relating and respecting everything as a living being, just as you are. You even start feeling the other person's thoughts. You start responding and relating to the other person without him or her opening up to you. You feel the cosmos as a translucent, ever-living presence. You have tremendous intelligence. You know exactly how to connect to things. Such is the power of love.

Real love keeps you in the moment. It gives you tremendous awareness. That is why it is so powerful. Nothing is as intense

Sufi - Mystical dimension of Islam.

as being in the moment. Love is experiencing life moment to moment, in its totality. And it is not about two persons or any object. It is just love for love's sake, that's all. If you get a glimpse of real love experienced in the moment, you can nurture it within you and make it grow to fill your whole being and life. That spark is enough!

Then you become a wonderful creator because love energy is also creative energy. That is why poets express such creativity. They lose themselves in love and become blissful creators. Out of the freshness of the moment, the creativity happens.

The Sufi* mystic Jalaluddin Rumi* says, 'Wherever you are, whatever your condition is, always try to be a lover!' The whole of Existence is in a deep romance with itself. You are part of it. So it is your nature to be a lover every moment. Only by being that can you experience the real fulfillment of your original nature.

The big problem today is that most people don't love themselves. Society never teaches that it is possible to love ourselves.

Jalaluddin Rumi - 13th century Persian Sufi poet.

Understand that unless you love yourself, you cannot possibly love another person. Only when you lose yourself to yourself can you lose yourself to others. We are taught that we can only love even ourselves if we have a reason. If we perform well, we love ourselves. If we fail, we hate ourselves. We apply the same logic to others. We love them only because of something, never without a cause or a reason.

When you don't love yourself, you become cynical and negative towards life. When you were alone in your mother's womb, you were completely loving and blissful. In your aloneness in the womb you experienced your loving self. That is why you will see that you assume the fetal posture whenever you lie down with insecurity. Blissful aloneness is your original nature. Once you came into the world, society conditioned you to believe that you needed people and television to be loving and happy. It never nurtured your original quality. Your original quality is blissful aloneness. If you get back in touch with that, you will settle down and feel peaceful and relaxed within yourself.

For a few minutes every day, just sit by yourself and feel overflowing love towards yourself. Feel what a wonderful being you are. Feel how much you have taken yourself for granted. Feel yourself as part of Existence and love yourself for it. Melt with the feeling of love for yourself. If you practice When you don't love yourself, you become cynical and negative towards life.

this everyday you will see that where you were once hard and self-centered, now you have become soft and loving.

When you deeply settle down within yourself with peace and love, bliss will explode in you. When your nerves are clean, when your nervous system is cleaned by peace, bliss will explode. You will start expressing the same bliss that is expressed in the master's body language.

Then when people love you, you don't feel guilty or unworthy because just as they love you, you love yourself too. You become ready to receive love from others. Usually when others show love to you, you feel guilty or unworthy because you don't feel you are worth being loved. Once you settle within yourself with deep love, you will receive others' love with joy.

Existence is not a thing. It is a living energy being. Every single tree, every single stalk of a plant responds to your love and hate, your every thought.

Cleve Backster* , a polygraph expert, has conducted several experiments to examine the response of plants to human emotions and thoughts. He discovered that plants would respond to human thought in a way similar to how a human being would respond. A simple thought by a person about burning the leaves of the plant would register erratic movement in the polygraph recording of the plant! Backster* called this response 'Primary Perception' the ability of plant, animal and human cells to perceive and respond to any thought.

On one occasion, Backster recorded graphs that registered a flat line that suggested the plants were in a state of shock. He asked the owner of the plant if she had done anything to hurt the plants. The lady told him, 'I roasted a few of its leaves to get their dry weight!'

When you start loving Existence, it begins responding to you in beautiful ways. You start rising above all of the differences around you - differences between people, situations, emotions, between anything and anything. Everything merges into unity. And that is the truth. Everything is part of one Whole. And love is the only thing that can make you realize this truth.

In Bharat, there is a tradition of spiritual wandering where people walk by foot the length and breadth of the country, visiting many temples and pilgrim centers. I used to wonder how they were able to do that, especially going through forests, sleeping with wild animals and begging for food. The secret is that they start feeling connected with nature so completely that nature protects them beautifully. Whether it rains or shines, the animals and trees, everything, takes care of them. Even though this may be logically difficult to understand, it is the truth.

If you begin to live with a little respect and love for Existence and all its creations, you will be able to recognize these things happening in your own life as well. Nature will simply reciprocate your love in many beautiful ways.

Very often, love is confused with respect. From a young age, children are brought up to always show respect but never to show love. You can hear people teach the children, 'You should respect your elders.' You will hardly hear, 'You should love your elders.' That is the problem.

Respect sows the first guilt in you that you are something inferior. It makes you feel separate from the other person to whom you show respect. On the other hand, love sows the seeds of joy and unity in you. It makes you feel connected with the other person and with everything in Existence. With respect, there is fear. With love, there is authentic respect as well as the scope for deep understanding to happen. With respect alone, not much understanding is possible. With love, there is a possibility for tremendous understanding and transformation to happen. Love by its very nature is transforming. It softens and melts you.

The scholar Professor Nicholson, composed a Sufi verse on love:

'Love, Love alone can kill what seemed dead,

The frozen snake of passion. Love alone

By tearful prayers and fiery longing fed,

Reveals a knowledge schools have never known.'

Any stone heart can be melted with love. Only love can melt your hardness. Only love can keep you porous.

Respect creates distance between you and the other. Love bridges the distance between you and the other. Only because people themselves have not experienced love, do they give

respect as the rule of acceptable behavior. Respect is easier but not real. Love might be difficult only because not many know how to go about it, but it is real. With love, respect is automatic and authentic. With pure respect, the appearance of love is forced and may never be authentic.

Love is the original religion. It is the root of all spirituality. All other religions are offshoots. Love is like the root of the tree and all religions are like leaves or branches. Even the greatest religions are only big branches compared to the religion of love!

Love has no temple or scripture. It is like the roots that lie beneath the ground but provide the nourishment for life. Without it, the whole tree dies. Through love many branches and leaves are created. But what do we do? We cling to the branches and leaves instead of clinging to the root. When we cling to the root, we get the direct nourishment. When we cling to the

Love is the secret of all religions. There can be no logic about god, there can be only love.

branches, we enjoy only one dimension of the nourishment. When you

become more loving, you will enter the invisible temple of love.

Tree roots contain the information about all the trees in this world, just like a dewdrop contains information about all the oceans in the world. If we understand the structure of a drop of water, we will understand everything about all the oceans on earth. We will understand the compound called water itself. Water anywhere cannot be anything other than its chemical composition. That composition is ingrained in the smallest particle, and that is the dew drop.

In the same way, man is an atom of love. And love is nothing but the quality of Existence. If love is known, the whole of Existence can be experienced. Understand that the composition of man is not physical, chemical or even psychological, it is spiritual. Nobody can teach us what it is. We must experience it on our own. All other knowledge is transferable: physical, chemical, scientific and psychological. All such knowledge is easily transferable. Only spiritual knowledge is not. It cannot be taught as such, but it can be experienced!

A small story:

One day a master asked his disciples how they could tell when the night had ended and the day had begun.

One of them said, 'When you can look in the distance and tell whether the animal is a cow or a horse.' The master said, 'No.'

Another disciple said, 'When you can look at a tree in the distance and tell if it is a pine tree or a mango tree.' The master again said, 'No.'

They asked the master, 'Then what is it master?'

The master replied, 'When you can look into the face of any man and recognize your brother in him. When you can look into the face of any woman and recognize your sister in her. If you cannot do this, then no matter what time of the day it is, it is still only night time.'

The master can give a few hints, little hints here and there. Then we must find our own way carefully, cautiously. Love is just a hint, but if we follow love slowly, very slowly, we will be surprised that god becomes more and more of a reality. He is no longer just a thought, no longer simply an idea, but something that we can feel. The deeper we go into love, the closer we come to the feeling. The day we dissolve into love we merge with unity.

Love is the secret of all religions. In spite of this, people are lost in logic and theology. Theology is as far away from religion as anything can be. There can be no logic about god, there can be only love. God is in poetry. He is in music and in dance, but never in logic.

God is not an idea that can be arrived at through logical processes. He is an interior experience, so deeply interior that one must go there absolutely alone to discover it.

From time immemorial, the conclusion of many mystics has been that matter is glued together with love. An invisible force keeps atoms and molecules together. They do not fall apart because of this invisible force. Science has yet to discover this ultimate energy. It has detected a few of its manifestations such as gravitation and electricity but these are only gross manifestations. The day that science discovers love will be the day when religion and science will commune with each other in the same language.

For now, just rejoice because love is possible. Be joyful that love is your inner potential. You can rise to the ultimate heights with love. Nothing is impossible with love because love can transform itself into god.

Three types of Love and

Nothing is impossible with love because love can transform itself into god.

their integration

Many people confuse lust with love. This is one of the greatest tragedies. The person who thinks lust is love remains confined to the physical plane. He never rises higher than that. He has no idea that there is a higher plane. He remains in the basement of his house. Sex is the basement. It is not the place to live in. You can use it for other purposes, but it can't be your home. Your home is above it.

Man has three planes of being, which are animal, human and divine. First is the plane of lust, which is the animal plane. It is a crude form of love. It is not that love is not present there. Love is mixed or polluted by gross greed and desire, that's all.

As our being becomes more refined, we enter the second plane, ordinary human love. Human love has traces of possessiveness and jealousy. Since human love is grounded in greater understanding than animal love, one does not simply use the other person for his or her own gain. Human love is capable of seeing the other as an end unto itself.

If the object of love is removed, then the whole world becomes the object.

The third type of love is divine love. It is love in its highest form,

almost like a prayer. There is no possessiveness. There is nothing earthly in it. It becomes an invisible but powerful force. This is when love becomes prayer and we feel restful contentment for the first time. I say restful because the other two types of love always keep reaching for more or keep missing something. There is no restfulness in them. When the third type of love happens, even sex becomes a deep and divine act beyond mere physical pleasure.

In Bharat, people consider the place where three rivers meet to be sacred. It is a metaphor because man is a meeting place of three forces: physical, psychological and spiritual. When these three forces really meet, there is great joy and bliss.

Ordinarily we live in compartments. Our body lives in one compartment, our mind lives in another and our soul lives in a third compartment. The body is unaware of the mind. The mind is unaware of the body. The soul is not known to the mind. The body is oblivious of the soul. They are together but they don't know each other.

The first step of meditation is to bring them closer together, to introduce them to each other and link them in a deep friendship so that a merger becomes possible. When all three dimensions merge into one point, the fourth dimension is born. Out of the meeting of the three, the fourth is born. That fourth is god or Existence or Divinity or whatever you wish to call it.

The whole work of spirituality is to create an alchemy in which the body melts into the mind, the mind melts into the soul, the soul melts into the mind, and the mind melts into the body. By and by, slowly, very slowly, they become one integrated phenomenon. Love is the outcome of it.

People tell me they feel such exuding love towards me. I always tell them, use that flowing love as a gateway to jump towards the whole of humanity. The love towards the master is like food. If you digest it, you become energetic and you radiate the same energy in your life.

THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM says, 'I live in the commune.' He means, 'Don't direct your attention towards me. Direct your attention towards the whole world.' If the object of love is

removed, then the whole world becomes the object. Then you will never enter into suffering.

The first thing we need to understand is that relationships can happen causelessly, without any reason. Only then will we understand that the experience of love is much more important than the object of love.

You must have at least one relationship in your life that exists for no reason. If you don't have such a relationship, be very clear, even if you have money, deep down you are still poor.

From today onwards start relating with someone for no reason. There should be no monetary or physical benefit from the relationship. If you experience causeless love once, after that, if the money is shared, if the body is shared, it is okay. The quality is totally different. I am not against money or against marriage. I am not against the physical relationship, but if it becomes the center of your life, you are missing something very important. That is what I want to convey here. You miss a major dimension or energy center of your being.

I am reminded of a small story:

There was a blind girl who hated herself because she was blind. She hated everyone except her boyfriend.

The girl told her boyfriend that if she could only see the world, she would marry him. You should not have any benefit from the relationship. Only then you will understand the word 'love'.

A few days later, her doctor told her that someone donated a pair of eyes to her. She underwent the surgery and she opened her eyes to see everything, including her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend asked her, 'Now that you can see, will you marry me?' The girl was shocked when she saw that her boyfriend was blind. She said, 'I am sorry but I can't marry you because you are blind.'

Her boyfriend walked away sadly. He told her just one thing, 'Just take care of my eyes, dear.'

That is why it is said that you have to create your being. You have to awaken the center of love in you. You should have at least one relationship in your life from which you do not expect anything beyond just the relationship. You should develop one relationship in which you do not receive any utility from that relationship, be it monetary or physical comfort or name and fame. Have at least one relationship… it could even be with a tree or the moon or the sun. The criterion is that you should not have any benefit from the relationship. Only then you will understand the word 'love'. Only then the love center in you will be awakened.

I always tell people, 'Do some work for half hour everyday that does not bring you money or name and fame. Just for half an hour, go to some temple or church, clean and sweep the floor, offer some service. Don't plan to become a committee member in that place! Don't think that it will fetch you good credit and a place in heaven… no. Don't look any further than that work for half an hour.'

Initially you may think, 'This half hour is a waste of time!' After a few days you will realize that only in that half hour are you really alive! Only for that half hour you are not driven by fear or greed. You smile at the people around you without any calculation. You feel strangely sincere in a way that you never felt before.

If you observe yourself at other times, you will see that you even smile only after some mental calculation. Even before laughing you will see who is the person next to you. Based on that, you decide how many inches to open your mouth, how polite you should be, how you should project yourself. To overcome these conditionings, just for half an hour try this technique that does not bring you money, that does not bring you name and fame, that does not give you any social position, that does not give you anything in return. Then you will understand what I mean by the words 'causeless relationship'. You will see that soon only that half hour becomes the real life for you!

As of now, every action of yours is driven by fear and greed. You are fuelled by fear and greed. That's why you feel lonely and tired.

If you try this technique, you will suddenly see that your body and mind start functioning without the need for fear and greed! Once you learn this simple knack of how to move your body without fear and greed, be very clear, you can enter into love. You learn how to tap into the energy of love. You learn how to run your life on the beautiful energy of love. Only then will you know what is meant by the word 'love'.

A new center will be awakened in you. A new energy will start radiating in you. Then you will understand how loving and causeless relationships are possible.

As long as love is conditional, hatred and love are opposite sides of the same coin. Love can flip into hatred the moment we feel that our expectations are threatened. In love of this type, it remains love only as long as the conditions remain as expected. The moment the conditions change, the love also changes.

Often what we believe as love is actually related to time and space. So long as the distance between the lovers is large and the time of contact is minimal, they feel love towards each other. However, once they get closer and spend more time together, they feel that they are not so much in love after all! That is why they say 'familiarity breeds contempt'. Familiarity can also convert love into hatred. To transcend both love and hatred, we first need to drop expectations. Expectation is the first enemy of love.

We all go through several stages of relationships in our lifetime. If you observe very closely, whichever stage we are in, when we ask for love we are actually asking only for the other person's attention. When we say a person doesn't love us, we actually mean that the other person doesn't give us enough attention. The basic need for any human being is attention from others. The attention-need, along with our dependency on others for survival, is what we experience as love.

The dependency on others might be psychological, physical or spiritual. For example, when you expect someone to lend you a shoulder to cry on, you are dependent upon him or her psychologically. When you expect someone to provide you with money or fulfill your bodily pleasures, you are To transcend both love and hatred, we first need to drop expectations. Expectation is the first enemy of love.

dependent upon him or her physically. In whatever way people may fulfill this dependency, what it boils down to is the attention that they give us! The whole idea of love is nothing but getting the attention of the other in some way.

In the first session of our meditation camp, I ask people to make an honest list of at least one or two persons in their lives who they really love. Usually in the beginning, people come up with a big list: husband, wife, father, mother, brother, sister and so on. They include people whom they would like to please or need to please in order to be happy themselves. As they hear me talk about real love, they start crossing out names from their list one by one! Understand, if you cross out something, then it was not truly there in the first place.

Many people include certain people in their love list because these people give them a 'feel good' feeling. What do I mean by a 'feel good' feeling? It is a certificate saying, 'You are good. You are this, you are that' etc. We love anyone who pays us compliments, is it not? We think twice before arguing with them. We secretly nurture our good name with them in the name of love. If they go back on their approval of us, we might fall into depression, so we continue to please them and love them. Like this, there is always some hidden reason for our love.

Some people tell me, 'No Swamiji, I don't love my son or daughter for any of these reasons.' I ask them, 'Alright, if your son suddenly starts to make his own decisions, if he suddenly doesn't fit into your framework, if he doesn't follow your guidance, if he doesn't live according to your rules, will your love for him be the same?'

They tell me, 'No, it will not. My love will be reduced a little!'

What does this mean? We love our next generation as long as they are extensions of our life. As long as they fall into our pattern of thinking, as long as they live in accordance with our conventions, we love them. We simply fulfill our own desires through them. We fulfill our lives through them. Whatever we couldn't accomplish in our youth, we try to accomplish through them. We use them as an extension of our own lives. If we wanted to be doctors and couldn't for some reason, we inspire them to be doctors. As long as they act and live as an extension of our life, the relationship is beautiful. But the moment they start deciding on their own, the moment they feel we are suffocating them, the moment they stand up and say 'no', the relationship takes a different turn.

A small story:

There were three grownups having their morning tea together. Their children were playing on the floor. They were discussing what they would do if danger threatened, and all of them declared that the first thing they would do was pick up their children and escape.

Suddenly, the safety valve of the pressure cooker burst, creating a steam explosion in the room. Within seconds, everyone was out of the kitchen – except for the children playing on the floor!

Our love is not as great as we claim it to be! Even we don't know the real depth of our love, that's the problem. We say and do a lot of things in the name of love. But reality can be shockingly different from all that. If we integrate the love emotion in us, it can become a highly sincere and authentic expression of our original nature.

Children feel that they are adults only when they say 'no' to their parents. It is a basic instinct. When they say 'no' they feel that they are established as an individual. That is why, all over the world, youngsters always rebel. Whether it is in the West or in the East, in all the countries all over the world, in all the cultures, the youth say 'no'. When they say 'no', they feel they are strong.

But our love is dependent only on 'yes'. As long as we receive 'yes', our love also is 'yes'. When we get a 'no', we also start saying 'no'. This is called horizontal love. It starts and ends horizontally. It starts again and ends again. It always ends with some reason or other. There is another love called vertical love. It never ends because it never starts. It is always there in the form of energy. It is consciousness. Vertical love is when we suddenly realize that we are living inside everybody just as we live inside our own body!

There is a beautiful example given in the Upanishads* :

A master asked his disciple, 'Do you enjoy all your five senses?'

The disciple said, 'Yes.'

The master asked, 'What if one of your senses was missing, would you have the same amount of joy?'

The disciple replied, 'No, it would be twenty percent less, and if two of my senses were missing, it would be forty

percent The master Enlightened people experience themselves as the whole universe.

suddenly

less.'

said, 'What if you had five more senses?'

The disciple answered, 'Naturally my enjoyment would be a hundred percent extra.

If I am given one more body, naturally I will enjoy everything twice as much. Or if I am given five bodies, naturally I will enjoy things five times as much.'

If you are able to experience yourself as being alive in all the bodies of this world, imagine how much joy or ecstasy you would experience! It would be immeasurable, eternal and ultimate. That is what enlightened people experience all the time. They experience themselves as the whole universe. They experience tremendous ecstasy. That is why they don't need anything from the outer world. They are enough unto themselves. They are established in the highest form of love energy.

In Krishna's* life, the whole happening of Ras Leela* is one of causeless love, the

Divine love that permeates the entire universe. Ras Leela* is misinterpreted by many people as Krishna* having a physical relationship with the cowherd women. Understand, Krishna* is a superconscious being and Ras Leela* happened when Krishna was around eight years old! It is in no way related to any physical relationship. It was a pure and causeless spiritual happening.

Radha* , Krishna's beloved, was attached to Krishna, but she never really experienced pure joy. She had constant mood swings with possessiveness and jealousy. During Ras Leela, Krishna, as a superconscious being, gave her the experience of seeing him simultaneously with every single cowherd girl present there. He wanted to show her that he is in every physical form, not just in his own form. Such is the manifestation of divine loving beings!

There is another beautiful poem by Jalaluddin Rumi* , the Sufi* mystic. He writes,

One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.

A voice asked, 'Who is there?'

He answered, 'It is I.'

The voice said, 'There is no room for Me and Thee.'

The door was shut.

After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.

A voice from within asked, 'Who is there?'

The man said, 'It is Thee.'

The door was opened for him.

In real love, there is no duality. There is just oneness with everyone and everything. That is the ultimate stage of love.

As long as our love happens towards a particular object, even if the object is a person, we will try to reduce that person only to the level of an object. That is exactly what we do when we feel possessive or attached to another person. In the way that we try to possess furniture

or a house or any object, we try to possess the person also. We want the person to be just how we want him or her to be, which means we are actually reducing the person to sheer matter.

So understand, whenever our love or our attention is towards something in particular, we will be only materialistic, we will be creating suffering for ourselves and for others. We will only suffocate the object or person. Instead, if we turn our attention towards the experience of love itself, we will be liberating the object and we too will be liberated from the object. That is the beauty of love that happens just as love and not for the sake of any object.

When you start possessing someone, you bind yourself also. If you are walking holding your dog's leash, be very clear that you are also bound. Don't think only the dog is bound. You are also bound. Don't think that only the dog cannot run away, you too cannot run away! You may be thinking that you are holding the rope and the dog may be thinking that he is holding the rope. Who knows?

We always place our attention in the wrong space and miss the truth. When we place our attention on an object, we miss the inner experience of love that happens. We misunderstand that the excitement and the joy of love happens because of the object. We don't understand that the excitement or the joy of love happens not because of the object but because of us. It is an energy that happens in us. If it was

Excitement or energy is related to the experience itself, not to the object.

because of the object, then whenever the object came in contact with us, we would have the same excitement, am I right? But it does not happen that way. Even if the object continues to be there, the temperature of the excitement comes down after some time, which means that the excitement or the energy is not related to the object. It is related to the subject, which is us. It is related to the experience itself, not to the object.

A small story:

An art collector traveled to a village. He saw a cat drinking milk from an old antique saucer outside a small tea shop. The art collector recognized the value of the saucer and wished to buy it.

He approached the shop owner and asked him, 'Sir, can I buy this cat for two dollars?' The shop owner refused saying he didn't want to sell the cat.

The art collector said, 'I want a cat because my house is haunted by mice. Please sell the cat to me. I am ready to pay ten dollars.

The shop owner said, 'Fine, sold! Have it!'

Now the art collector said, 'I will take the cat but can you give me the saucer also? Then I don't have to buy a new saucer. The cat will be happy since she is already trained for this saucer. Why don't you give me the saucer too?'

The shop owner said, 'No! That's my lucky saucer. Only because of that I have sold sixty eight cats in the last one week!'

The art collector wanted to get the saucer but got only the cat. We too miss what has to be really experienced in life because we go after the object and not the subject.

The next time you are with someone, when you are with your friend with whom you are completely open, remember to practice this technique.

Just sit next to him or her. Don't bother about what you are going to do or what you are going to say. Just sit, that's all! That is the technique. Actually, speaking is nothing but avoiding the other person. Because you cannot look into the other person's eyes, you go on speaking. That is the truth. The other person listens so that he can start speaking whenever you take a break! If a person is listening to you, it means that he is either thinking of something else or he is preparing for his turn. He sits there so that he can start once you finish.

Now if you try this technique, it can take you to a different space altogether. When you are with the master or your friend or your beloved, whoever you feel deeply connected with, whoever you are very open with, you can try this technique. It will straightaway lead you to enlightenment. Be very clear, I am not teaching this technique for you to have better relationships or for you to develop your personality. No! I am giving it to you to straightaway experience the pure love that can lead you to enlightenment.

The big problem is that you never sit in a relaxed way. Either you are driven by greed, meaning you are in a hurry to say or do something, or you don't know what you are doing and so you are caught with fear. You just try to finish your job and escape! Either you are in greed or you are in fear. But for now, just relax. Be neither in fear nor in greed.

Just sit in the present. Just feel the other person's presence. Accept the other person as he or she is, as that being is, and feel what happens inside you. Try this for a few days. Suddenly you will see that you will experience a different space, one you have never before experienced in your life.

This is a technique from the Shiva Sutras, a collection of techniques for enlightenment delivered by Shiva. This technique will take you through a quantum jump from the form to the formless, from possessive love to causeless love.

You may be attached to your beloved or god or master or friend or whomever. To move from that attachment, to move from the form to the formless, this is the technique. You can take a quantum jump into love with this. With this jump you will see that love happens not as an attachment to a particular object but as an overflowing energy that doesn't look for any attachment in the outer world. It is just your own overflowing that you share, that's all. It happens irrespective of whether the object is there or not.

When love happens as causeless overflowing, you simply liberate yourself and the other person from your own attachment and possessiveness, because possessiveness as you know it, binds not only the other person but you as well. It tortures the other person as well as you! Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you and the other person. When I travel around the world, people ask me, 'Did you sleep well last night? It is a new place for Real love simply liberates both of you. It gives freedom to you and the other person.

you.' I tell them, 'Only when you have attachment to a particular house does another house become a new place for you and you struggle. When you don't have attachment to any house, you feel at home wherever you go!'

I never feel any place is mine or not mine. I feel totally at home anywhere. The comfort is always within us, never outside us. When there is no comfort within us, we look for comfort outside us. Feeling comfortable within us is the result of the causeless love energy. When we don't feel attached to one home, we feel at home in the entire world. We are totally relaxed anywhere in the world.

People ask me, 'Swamiji, how are you able to travel so often and not feel unsettled?' This question comes mostly from people who travel for business. They say, 'If we go to one or two places and come back, it takes one week to recover, settle down and

Shiva Sutras - A collection of teachings of enlightened master Shiva in epigram form as techniques. Includes Vignana Bhairava Tantra, Guru Gita, Tiru Mandiram, etc.

Shiva - enlightened Master from Bharat who delivered the universal Truths in the form of scriptures like Shiva Sutras.

Real love doesn't look for utility. It operates on sheer trust, is beyond space and time.

get back into our routine and feel comfortable, to feel like

ourselves again. How do you travel so continuously?' The secret is the same thing I told you earlier. I don't feel attached or connected to any one house, so I feel connected to the whole world! There is a deep feeling of being at home with the whole world. With this feeling, wherever you go, you will experience a deep, relaxed bliss and ecstasy because that bliss doesn't come from the outer home but from the inner home.

In real life, we always look to express our love towards others in some tangible way. Only if love is demonstrated in tangible form, it is considered to be love nowadays.

True love is like a communion. It is a resonance between two beings. It can be felt without any expression. It doesn't need communication because it is already happening as a communion.

If you really love a person, then your very body language will show it. It will be too much to express in words. You will feel that words are inadequate and will only bring down the love that you feel. But if you are using words, then somewhere the love has not really happened. When you have to speak to express love, then somewhere there is a lie in it! You are using the words just to decorate the lie.

Real love liberates because it doesn't compel you to express it all the time. It just is. Real love also gives you the freedom to freely express what you want to express. You can easily express anything like disapproval or anger and it will not be mistaken for reduced love.

Not only that, with real love, there will be no domination or power play in relationships. Each person will be like a beautiful flower that has blossomed to radiate its unique fragrance, that's all.

With real love, there will be no fear or insecurity either. In normal love, physical distance between two people causes a lot of insecurity and a lack of trust.

A small story:

A young soldier went to his senior officer and said, 'Sir, my friend is not yet back from the battlefield. I request permission to go out and get him.'

The officer said, 'Permission refused. Your friend is most probably dead. I don't want you to risk your life going there.'

The young soldier went all the same and came back mortally wounded and carrying the corpse of his friend.

The officer was furious. He shouted, 'I told you he was dead. Now I have lost both of you. Tell me, was it worth going out there to bring a corpse?'

On the verge of dying, the soldier replied, 'It was, Sir. When I got there he was still alive. He said to me, I was sure you would come.'

Real love doesn't look for utility. It operates on sheer trust and is also beyond space and time.

These days I see people gifting each other with so many things to show their love. Gifting has become an expression of love. If the gifting happens as causeless overflowing, it is okay. But if it is a condition to be fulfilled, it becomes a problem! Then it becomes a poor substitute for real love.

As long as real love is there, no relationship can become boring. Understand, as long as love is there, every object or person is unique. For example, if the coworker in your office dies, nothing will really stop you in your life. Along with the others, you will console his family members and continue with life, that's all. But what happens if you are in love with the same coworker who passed away? Life will never be the same again, am I right? Whenever you are in love with some object or person,

Causeless

or somebody is in love with you, the whole relationship overflowing love is always total in its expression.

becomes unique. Love makes things unique.

One of the ashramites asked me one day, 'Swamiji, everyday you see all of us, all our mistakes and confusions. It is the same thing for you every day. Are you not bored by us?' It was a very honest question! I told them, 'For enlightened beings, just because of their very love, they feel everybody is unique. They do not look at people as mere numbers. They see each one as unique.'

That is why, with so much patience, masters continue to work with everybody. If it were just a matter of numbers, it would be very different. When you have this love, your inner space is such that there is no logical reason behind your actions. You will just feel connected and you will radiate love, that's all!

Not only that, causeless overflowing love is always total in its expression. It doesn't carry the usual dilutions of greed or fear. So any person whom you love, you will love totally without any reservations. Irrespective of the way he is, you will love him. When you love this way, even if the person leaves your life, you will not grieve.

Ashramites - Residents of ashram.

Part 2: Living Enlightenment (Gospel of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM)

When a person passes away, you grieve only because you regret not having loved him completely. You can love him completely only when your love itself is complete. It doesn't have anything to do with the other person. It doesn't matter what kind of person he is. That is the beauty of real love. It loves for the sake of love, not for the sake of the other person.

If you are grieving for the loss of a person, be very clear, you are grieving because you missed loving him in totality. If you had loved him in totality, you would say goodbye to him with complete restfulness, not with grief. You grieve only because you missed something somewhere. Even if it is your own father or husband or wife, it is the same. If you had radiated your causeless love to them when they were alive, then when they left there would not be any regret. But if you had loved them with rationalizations, then when they left, the incompleteness of your love towards them would create a hangover, and that hangover is what you feel as grief.

Sit down comfortably by yourself and close your eyes.

Focus on your heart region. Exclude everything else. Focus only on the heart.

Visualize your heart as an endless reservoir from where blessings can flow.

Feel every heartbeat deeply. Let every beat resound throughout you.

Between the heartbeats, feel the energy of love happening.

In the deepest parts of your body, mind and soul, the love energy is waiting to be acknowledged.

Invite the love energy of the heart to flow and fill these deepest parts of your body, mind and soul.

Slowly open your eyes.