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!

Feeling like your world is collapsing?

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

If you have seen children play, you might have seen them building castles with cards. They will place the cards at a certain angle to each other and build several layers of such patterns in a pyramid shape. It will be beautiful to look at. But if you remove even one card from the castle, from anywhere, the whole castle will collapse! The higher the castle, the more the chances of collapsing.

Just like this, we build our own self-image like a castle, out of people’s opinions of us. We collect certificates or signatures from our father, mother, boyfriend, girlfriend, teacher, friends and what not, and arrange all these certificates and build a castle to form our self-image. The image will look beautiful and we will feel happy. You will feel in ‘love’!

But if even one person withdraws their certificate, what happens? The castle collapses! You start feeling miserable about yourself. You feel depressed. You feel that the whole world has come to an end, that nobody loves you!

At least in the case of the children, they build their castles with their own cards. But we build our castles with others’ cards, with others’ certificates!

The solution: start investing a little more time and energy in knowing yourself. Give yourself an appointment from time to time! This way, you will never get deceived, and you will never depend on others to feel in love.

Drop 80% of your problems!

Adapted from "Guaranteed Solutions" on Love

80% of our problems is due to this asking for attention or approval. If you just sit and write down, in a day how many things you do to get a good name, to maintain your reputation in family and society, you will see.

You will find that all the 24 hours, all your lifetime, you are involved in getting approval from others. All your life, you are on a signature campaign, getting approval signature from family and society.

In a big register you make a column: Good Father, and for everything that you do for your children, you expect their signature of approval under that column! Then you go to your wife, to your boss, to your friends. You prepare columns with suitable headings like Good Husband, Good Employee, Good Friend…etc, and wait for them to sign under it.

Of course, all these people also come to you for your signature! You too need to sign on their registers under the columns applicable to you!

We spend so much energy in maintaining our certificates of approval. Why? Stop it, that’s all. 80% of your problems will wash away. You will see, your life will suddenly feel so light and free!

A small story: Love Wealth and Success

Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success

Once an old woman saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in front of her house. She did not know them. She went upto them and said ‘I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat.’

‘Is the man of the house home?’, they asked.

‘No’, she replied. ‘He's out.’

‘Then we cannot come in’, they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.

‘Go tell them I am home and invite them in!’

The woman went out and invited the men in’

‘We do not go into a House together,’ they replied.

‘Why is that?’ she asked.

One of the old men explained: ‘His name is Wealth,’ he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, ‘He is Success, and I am Love.’ Then he added, ‘Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home.’

The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. ‘How nice!’, he said. ‘Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!’

His wife disagreed. ‘My dear, why don't we invite Success?’

Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: ‘Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!’

‘Let us listen to our daughter-in-law's advice,’ said the husband to his wife.

‘Go out and invite Love to be our guest.’

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, ‘Which one of you is Love?
Please come in and be our guest.’

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: ‘I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?’

The old men replied together: ‘If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!

Are you psychologically handicapped?

Now, what happens when we don’t get the attention from the other? How do you feel?

Just imagine waking up one morning, and your spouse totally ignores you. Or if you said I love you to a dear one, and you get no answer back… We feel down, depressed, low on energy.

But if we do get the attention, some nice words, ‘I love you!’ Then we feel good, we feel high and energetic.

What happens when we depend on the others to feel in good spirits? When you are dependent on external sources for energy, you become psychologically handicapped. When you need physical support, you are physically handicapped. When you need psychological support, you are psychologically handicapped.

With a physical handicap, you know that you are handicapped because you can see it clearly, but with psychological handicap, you don’t even know that you are handicapped. When you are not aware of it, you will not know the consequences that it can give rise to. When the real consequences or dis-ease happens, you will wonder what the reasons are.

Meditation is the best way to become free of this handicap. Look for 'techniques' in this blog!

True meaning of love

A Devotee's perspective

Right from childhood, we are programmed to believe that certain morality helps create a good life. Even the new age self-help promotes the idea that whatever we give to the universe comes back to us. We are taught being loving as in being kind to others and helping others is a way to live a good life. However, to be honest, how often does helping others doesn’t leave us feeling used? The kind person is actually a victim of manipulation? On the other hand, even if we succeed in serving others it adds to our ego and arrogance. Isn’t it a paradox?

During my days of teaching school students I realized that whenever I was lenient with students, encouraging and motivating them, they used to take advantage of it and although, harsh treatment would get good results, guilt of ill-treating small kids was the price to pay for it. It was a double-edged sword.

Why is it that love doesn’t work in our lives? How long do we need to ‘try’ and ‘make’ these truths work for us? And if these are the ‘truths’ they should work automatically.

Swamiji explains the basic flaw in our approach in this video.

People’s attention is our energy booster!

Whatever we do, whatever we think, we are seeking concurrence and approval from the people around us in some subtle way. We are very keen that we should earn a good name from everyone. We may not do this in a very obvious fashion, but if you analyse deeply, you will not be at ease without the appreciation and endorsement of the people around you. This endorsement, this approval, is what we call ‘attention-need’.

Why do we bother so much about others’ opinions about us? Why can’t we judge ourselves by our own strength and continue to do our work? Why are we deriving strength from others?

All this is because of two things: one, we don’t know anything about ourselves. We know ourselves only through others’ opinions of us, only through others’ certificates. Second: when others give us their approval and attention, they are actually giving us energy to move on. Attention IS energy! That is why we feel so boosted when they give us attention.

I want you to understand that attention is nothing but energy, which keeps us in good spirits. It is a subtle form of energizing ourselves, and we are not even aware of this. When we need something, that something is not love; it is attention. You don’t need love; you are love yourself. So when you say that you need love, when you say that you need to be loved, you are really in need of attention, not love.

Using Love as a Gateway to Higher Consciousness

A Devotee's Experience

During our NSP in Chennai, it was as if we could see Swami in each one of us. The energy in the space was so high that there seemed to be no boundaries. We all used to meet even before the program, but it was strange to experience such profound connection with the devotees, each radiating energy. As we start getting in touch with the peace and clarity inside us, we start merging with others around us. There was no judgement, each one looked like a flower.

On the last day of the program, it was very sunny and warm. Soft clouds spread on the sky and cool breeze caressed us the way it would caress the flowers. As we were gathering for the evening session, it started raining heavily. At once, we were one with mother nature.

Life changed after the program, there was deep peace inside us. Even while talking, words emerged from a placid zone. It was becoming increasingly beautiful to the point of being unbelievable. Being good, nice and harmonious as a natural expression was becoming a way of life and not forced courtesy. There was no need to be alone in order to feel peaceful, and even the most difficult people seemed easier to handle. A new vitality had replaced all pervasive tiredness. The fear of not having enough for our fulfillment, the greed of possessing as much as we could gave way to an undercurrent of an unknown energy. It was then we realized that the journey to Chennai was infact a journey from lust to love. The constraints of being confined to our boundaries were no longer there and we learnt the secret of expanding.

What is love?

All the energies which move the cosmos, the very force, very life, very energy, which is cosmos, can be called as love.

I will talk about different dimensions of love – how love has become this matter and how the love resides as energy inside this matter and how love activates as energy the matter and how love makes matter to move.

I can say, the beginning and continuous flow and end, everything is love.

The very life force is love. The different levels and different dimensions of love, if we understand, you can understand in which level you are. In which dimension of love you are experiencing, in which level we need to move, which dimension we need to experience and how our being can become more and more blissful and spiritual, experiential. That is the main thing.

The first reason why we don’t experience the experience in its purest form is the senses are impure. Please understand, all our senses have lost its purity. You can see in your life, the ability to smell is lost, how the animals have the ability to see in the night is lost. See, human system is the best possible system which has all possible intelligence put together. Even animal is able to see in the night. If our system is much better than the animal system, why we are not able to see in the night? Slowly, slowly, we started moving away from the eyes. Even though you think you are seeing through the eyes, there is many layers of conditioning. That is why only when you feel hungry, you will see the restaurant boards.

Either you are taught, if you love you will be caught in bondage or if you love, it will lead to suffering. What was the formula taught to you about love, that is a very major important thing how your love is going to end. Please understand, if you are taught right formulas about love, you will not have conditioning. If you are taught wrong formulas about love, that very wrong formulas will not allow you to relax in love.

Radiating Love

What we normally understand and express in our life as love is just a pseudo frame that we have constructed around a few emotions which we have wrongly named as 'love.' Actually, true love can only be effortlessly expressed by us even without our knowledge about it. People around us will automatically experience it. Pure love manifests as clarity and overflowing energy from us.

Just like how a rose bud flowers into a beautiful rose when it grows in the right kind of soil, with the right mental set up, our innate loving energy flowers within us naturally & effortlessly. Just like how a lower metal lead turns into gold with the right kind of processing, with the right kind of attitude, the lower energy forms in us such as lust, greed, and anger can be transformed into high and intense loving energy.

Love is consciousness

Love is consciousness and consciousness is Love. Basically, when we work on increasing our awareness, we expand. When we operate from our head with awareness, we express intelligence. When we operate from our heart with the same awareness, we express loving energy. And when we operate from our very being with this awareness, we express blissful energy. Thus, love, intelligence and bliss are all manifestations of the same consciousness or awareness! Alternately, this means that when we experience and express loving energy, our inner space and our consciousness expand. And when our consciousness expands, we naturally experience and express intelligence and bliss. Therefore, increasing our awareness and operating from our heart results in expanding our loving energy and this in turn is a direct key to increase our intelligence and bliss!