Unsent Letter #3: Love Is an Ocean

Dear Friend,

Is there such a thing as love, and, if there is, what is it exactly? Love is such an overused, and misused, word that it is hard to know where to begin, so perhaps we can try to understand what Maharaj meant when he used it, which he sometimes did, generally in response to one of the frequent questions on the subject.

Maharaj said "You are He. Who to love and who not to love?" The way I understand this is that Maharaj is saying that our whole existence as "I" is rooted in duality, and that love only appears in that duality. There has to be "someone" to experience love, but that "someone" does not exist. Let's continue by dispelling some of the myth about love, even though it may sound somewhat brutal.

As long as we live in ignorance of our own true nature, love is a concept. It is just a word. We are conditioned by our culture to believe that "love" is a "good" thing and so we mechanically assume that it is some thing that can and should be experienced and acquired. This is even more true when spiritual seeking takes hold of us. We believe that love for the guru is required. We imagine that we should feel "devotion," and so we try to cultivate it, even though, most of the time, we are really just thinking of ourselves and of what we can get. The love and devotion that we imagine that we feel is false and artificial: first, because it comes and goes, and, second, because it is directed towards an external person--the Master or guru, who does not exist as an individual. We are only loving our own projections. This is always the case, whatever we believe to be the object of our affection.

You may know the story of Narcissus. In this myth, a handsome young man sees his reflection in the still water of a pool and falls in love with it. This story means that the world is attractive and absorbing as long as we are ignorant of the One who is causing the reflection. In just this way, we imagine in our ignorance that we are individuals and that we can love what we see. We ascribe independent existence to the "I" that has appeared and we assume that all the emotions that the "I" experiences are true. In fact, we are enchanted by our own projection, hypnotized by the image we find ourselves gazing at.

But what happens when we know and understand the source of our own being? Is love available then? Maharaj said "Say there is nothing bad in the world. That is love." This is the vision of the realized person. He, the divine power, is doing everything, manifests as everything, and lives in every atom of every sentient or insentient thing. When we see the world in this way, we cannot see anything bad in it. We see only oneness. There is no "inside" or "outside" anymore. Love is then experienced as the very substance of the world. Love is an ocean in which all forms are appearing and disappearing. I don't believe that anyone can explain this or say why it is so. It just is so. It has to be experienced. Everyone knows this love intimately, because it is oneself, one's very life. However, until the Master, through His grace, makes us one with Him, we do not realize our unity with this love or understand its nature.

I hope this makes my position a bit clearer.

A.