Love operates on trust

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.

Love and Sacrifice

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.

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.’

Love gives tremendous courage and energy

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. 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. 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.

Power of Thought and Prayer

Another real incident from history:

When India was under British rule, the British soldiers found that when they carried water from England to India in their ships, the water got spoiled even while on the ship. But when they carried water back from India to England, the water not only stayed fresh through the voyage, but also remained fresh until they consumed all of it back in England! When scientists studied this surprising phenomenon, they found that this fresh water was from the sacred river Ganga in Calcutta which was worshipped by millions of people from around the world. It had the natural properties of neutralizing harmful bacteria and purifying itself.

Billions of people have been praying to Ganga for over thousands of years. Naturally they have left their prayerful thoughts as imprints on this water which is so energizing and self-healing.

Even in Egypt, the river Nile has been studied by the Egyptians over thousands of years by measuring its flow, level, turbulence etc. They have found that many times these parameters reflected the calamities like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis, that have happened or are about to happen in even distant parts of the world.

Imagine the effect of words of love on each of us then!

The perfect wedding gift

Adapted From "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

A husband and wife were celebrating their fifty years of marriage. The wife presented the husband with two shirts. He was very touched and declared that they would go out for dinner instead of cooking at home. It was a very tender moment for them.

He freshened up and to make his wife happy, wore one of the gift shirts and appeared from his room. As he came down, she looked up and smiled, but soon her expression changed and she asked, ‘So the other shirt is no good?’

We always want to make sure we wont deceive anyone. We go out of our way trying to satisfy everybody. You can go on maintaining certificates, but understand that ultimately, you can never satisfy everybody!