AN OCEAN OF DIVINE LOVE

 
Love is all pervading in the universe but the types of love differ.

The love that pulsates in the inanimate things in creation is mere attraction — like in a magnet. In the animal kingdom there is love among animals and birds, but it is passionate, full of desires and carnal. Carnality signifies bodily wants — eating, drinking, procreation and fear. Suppose a tiger pounces on a deer, kills and eats it; this is also love, but it is of the lowest type.

Consider to what mean level love descends in an animal that is hungry and wants to satisfy its hunger by killing another innocent animal. And consider also to what length the lover (tiger) haunts his beloved (the victim, the deer) by following it stealthily.

In human beings, love is also sometimes passionate. If a person is hungry, he first thinks of a favorite dish; his mouth waters and he longs to eat it. If sweet laddoos are there, the person wants to fill his stomach to his throat: this is called laddoo love. Once he is satisfied and his stomach is bloated, he is finished. One or two good belches and no hunger and no more laddoo love.

There are people whose desire for name and fame or money surpasses their reason, so much so that they lack hunger and sleep. Thus greed too means a type of love — money-love, name-and-fame-love, greatness-love. This is not the case with animals.

But a true hero longs intensely for the nectar of divine love and he is an exception. Such pure love is not found in the ordinary run of mankind. This love is not inborn; it is given and imparted by a Master.

Love is therefore one, but it is of several kinds. The lowest is attraction. It develops with progress in evolution and transforms into real love, which is like a stream flowing silent, serene, passionless, eternal, perfect and pure.

Divine love is the highest of all, but it is not silent. It has terrible longing; it is not peaceful. The winds of evolution, reincarnation and involution blow the stream of attraction through the inanimate world, turning it into a river in the animal and human kingdom and finally transforming it into an ocean of divine love upon Realization.