Love that liberates
Parents teach children reasons to love. From a young age, love is taught with a reason. Do we ever teach them to love the earth? Do we teach them to love nature? No. But we teach them to love our relatives. We teach them to love us. We teach them to love everyone who will be of some use to them in some way.
If you teach them to embrace nature, you are sowing the seeds of real love in them. I have seen many parents who will teach their kids to throw garbage in public places and destroy the beauty of nature. The same parents who teach the children to love the family will teach them to abuse nature. If you have real love in you, you will not abuse nature. You will embrace nature and people alike.
You have to sow the right seed. Only then the desired plant will grow. When you create the right conditions for love to flower inside the child, the child will blossom. Meditation helps in sowing the seed, in creating the right space inside. Nothing can be imposed from outside. The moment it is imposed, it will be met with resistance and carried out as a compulsion, what you call duty.
The love that we all talk about is actually psychological slavery. You enslave the person in the name of love, and he feels compelled to behave in a particular fashion. With physical slavery, you at least know that you are being enslaved. With psychological slavery, it is so cunning, that you will not even know that you are being enslaved.
Why do you think there is so much guilt in all of us? It is because the love that we know always puts us in guilt. When love is total, when it is pure energy from your being, it can never bring guilt. You feel guilty only because you always feel that you have not loved enough, that you have failed somewhere. And why have you not loved enough? Because you have been taught only love that has reasons, never total love.
If you see, when you have loved totally, you will never feel guilty or sad when a person dies. You may feel sad at the physical separation, but you will never feel that you have missed anything when they were living. When I say total love, I don't mean that you should have fulfilled all others' expectations of attention and wants. I mean, you should have been centered in yourself well and exuded that kind of energizing love towards them, seeing and respecting them as part of Existence.
If you had been this way, you would have experienced them in a total way and you will not feel any guilt when they pass away. Family always instills guilt in you so that it can have control over you. Guilt is nothing but a hangover of many kinds of emotions because you did not explore the emotion in totality. Never allow guilt to possess you.
I am not saying that you can do what you please and not feel guilty about it. I am saying, live totally, from your center, with deep awareness and understanding. Then there will be no room for guilt.
True love always gives without asking. It does not know any 'take'. It knows only 'give'. And you cannot create it either. It is like this: you can create a plastic rose but will it have the fragrance of the real rose? No! In the same way, true love can never be created.
For the real rose to happen, you need to create the right condition, the right soil, the right amount of water, and then it will happen on its
True love always gives without asking. It does not know any 'take'. It knows only 'give'. own. Likewise, for true love to happen, you can create awareness, clarity and a deep understanding within yourself, and it will blossom from inside you.
In a college gathering one girl asked me, 'Swamiji, was it failure in love that caused you to become a sannyasi?'
I told her that it was success in love that caused me to become a sannyasi! Failure in love will create only a Devdas not a sannyasi! Only when you can love the whole world can you become a sannyasi. Only when you can love the whole world, it is real love.
Real love happens with no relationship. Only ordinary happens only when there is a relationship. In ordinary love, you love your father because he provides for you. You love your mother because she takes care of you. You love your boyfriend because he gives you sensual pleasure.
Real love happens with no relationship.
Real love is not like that. It doesn't say Oh! This is my father. I must love him…No! It knows to keep loving everyone and everything, that's all. Ordinary love creates bondage while real love liberates. With ordinary love, there will be failure and success. With real love, there is no success or failure, it just IS, that's all. The success is in finding it!
People think that when nothing works out for you, when all love is lost, you become a sannyasi. No. People think sannyasis are renunciates who are driven by frustration. I tell you: I feel so sad when I think of the people who say these things. They are in such deep ignorance. They continuously pass judgment from such a state of ignorance. Understand: sannyas is the ultimate marriage… to the Divine!
A true sannyasi is one who is so loving and compassionate that it is said that where he walks, the grass doesn't die! This is not a story. It is true. A true sannyasi is one who exudes compassion and love towards Existence. A true sannyasi is one who knows that prayer is love and love is prayer.
When you have found real love, your prayer will be just an expression of it. What are the Meera Bhajans? They are the loving outpourings of Meera, an enlightened being from Bharat. She just resonated with Krishna who is Existence Itself, and she poured from her being. That is why the Meera bhajans are famous even today. The energy behind them can never fade because it is the Existential energy. Ordinary love cannot be felt over so many years by so many people. Only pure love can radiate that kind of lasting energy.
And for Meera, her bhajans were her prayer. When you have found real love, there is no other way. Prayer becomes love.
The ordinary love that we know is nothing but expecting someone to satisfy your psychological image; someone who can give you psychological support.
You need someone to take care of your needs. You need someone who will boost you up when you are down. You need someone who will sympathize with you and confirm your worries for you. This is what you call love. But true love is beyond names and forms, body and mind. Only a person who can love the whole world beyond all these can become a sannyasi. Only he can become a Vivekananda!