Our life cannot move an inch without love; it has sprung from love, it moves in love and culminates in love. Behind every desire there is love. Yet, we see that love comes with a tail called problems. If you love objects more, it becomes greed, if you love people more, it is entanglement, if you love yourself too much, ego and arrogance manifest and if you love someone too much, then jealousy comes behind it.
Whether jealousy, greed, lust, anger, there is love present in all of them. Love, when it ferments, becomes hatred and when it gets distorted, becomes fear. Every problem on this planet is caused by love.
There cannot be life without love. The spider makes its own web and gets trapped in it, yet there can be no spider without the web. Human life is in a similar situation. It cannot exist without love. Like the spider weaves its web from its own saliva, we weave our world with our own love and get trapped in our own world. Love takes away your freedom and the innate tendency of human life is to be free. Hence you search for a love that does not take away your freedom, a love that establishes you away from all imperfections and upholds life in its pure essence. That love is called bhakti or divine love.
How do you get it? Who has lived that love? The quest for answers to these questions is the beginning point of any spiritual journey. The spiritual journey is not a fantasy of attaining something different; it is the fulfillment of life’s ultimate aim or goal, which is bhakti, the Divine love. If you do not know love at all you cannot understand Divine love. Fortunately, there is not one creature on this planet that doesn’t know what love is.
Love has many manifestations, such as affection that you have for those who are younger than you, friendship with those who are your age, honour and respect for those elder to you. Similarly, you have love for objects, animals, trees, food and music. Your likes and dislikes are also based on love.
A person who cannot hear, cannot be made to understand what sound is. You can only make one understand what one already knows. Some may not be able to see, some may not be able to hear, but everyone can feel love. Even stones and animals can feel love. Dogs express their love. They run around you wagging their tail. They jump all over the place. Cats come near you and they purr. If you are away for a couple of days and come home they go mad. Just looking at you they don’t know what to do. They run all over you. So, we all, without exception, have the ability to feel love.
You cannot miss love in your life. Love is non-changing and it is immortal. This is what divine love is; it can never change, it is undying, unconditional and non-changing. These are the characteristics of that ultimate love where there is such a deep longing in you, a deep urge in you.
There is a story about Mullah Nasruddin. He was in love with a girl but he married somebody else. Someone asked, “I thought you were in love with someone else?” “Yes”, said Mullah, “I don’t want to marry her because then my love will disappear.”
We fall into love and we fall out of love because we do not know what is the ultimate love, what is bhakti. Attaining bhakti alone makes you perfect.
There are three levels of perfection. Perfection in action, perfection in your speech, and perfection in your being, in your mind. Some may do their action perfectly, but their feeling and their word, may not be so perfect. Some have good feelings, but their actions are not perfect. You’ll find in tropical countries people feel very good, they say nice, speak very nicely. But when it comes to action it doesn’t get done. In the cold climate countries people, action gets done but inside it is very rigid, stiff, sometimes angry and upset. But Siddha is one who is perfect in the feeling, in the speech and the action.
You can never be hundred percent accurate in the action, but you can be hundred percent accurate in the being, that is called Siddha. And love alone can bring you such perfection.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is a humanitarian leader, spiritual teacher and an ambassador of peace.
There is a story about Mullah Nasruddin. He was in love with a girl but he married somebody else. Someone asked, “I thought you were in love with someone else?” “Yes”, said Mullah, “I don’t want to marry her because then my love will disappear.”