Love Is the Key

by Sant Darshan Singh Ji Maharaj


Love is the golden key that opens the door to the kingdom of heaven. Without it, nothing has ever been achieved nor can be achieved on the spiritual path. But it is difficult to understand the meaning of love, its purpose, and scope. In reality, it is as boundless as God Himself, and to know its full meaning is beyond our limited intellect. Love is innate in our soul, for we are, in reality, drops of the ocean of all love that have been separated from our Source since the beginning of creation. Having originally come from the eternal kingdom, we cannot know lasting peace and happiness until we are reunited with our Source.
If we wish to be successful on the spiritual path, we need to rediscover the love which is already within us. Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth Guru of the Sikhs, said: ¡§I tell you all, only those who love can know God.¡¨ Similarly, in the Bible, St. John said: ¡§He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love¡¨ (1 John 4:8). In fact, love is the essential theme of all the saints and mystics, for it is indeed the passport to the kingdom of heaven.
Let us then analyze the path of love and see how we can gain this gift ourselves. It is the nature of love that it seeks to be attached somewhere. Although love is innate in our soul, we have not directed it to the proper object. We are caught up in the world of the senses and are driven helplessly by our desires. Our love has been directed to that which is transitory. As a result, we have forgotten our true nature. We are thus in a state of delusion, fast asleep as it were. God, the fountain of all love, is within us, yet we are blind to the presence of our divine Beloved. The Gurbani says that the whole world is fast asleep. Our parents, brothers, sisters, friends, and relations are all asleep. We cannot awaken ourselves, and those who are themselves asleep can ot awaken us. Only one who is himself awake can do so. We are like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be rescued from our slumber by the magical kiss of the prince.
We can develop the love innate in our soul and attach ourselves to its Source only by coming in contact with someone who is an embodiment of love, and such a one is a living Master. He has tread the divine path, and having merged in the ocean of all consciousness, he overflows with love. He is the one who can give us the gift of the passport of love. He is the one who can act as our guide and traveling companion on our journey to the eternal kingdom.
Love is not a business; it is not a commodity that can be purchased or sold. It cannot be bought, and it cannot be taught. It can only be caught like an infection from someone who is infused with it. A Master is such a being. He radiates love to all around him, and whoever comes in his presence is infected with it. Our love is only reciprocal. It is he who first loves us, and his love draws us to him. When the soul is filled with longing and anguish to return to its True Home, the Lord responds. He sends someone who can act as a guide and arrange for the soul¡¦s journey Home.
The means of transport is the vehicle of Naam or Word. This Power has created and continues to sustain all the universes. When God manifested, He assumed two forms: Light and Sound, which together we call the Word. If we can contact this power within, we can travel on its current and follow it directly back to the Source. In this way, a Master books our passage on the transport of Naam. He does this at the time of initiation when he teaches us how to invert our attention from the world outside to the world within. This process is known as meditation. The Master grants us a firsthand contact with the divine power of the Word, and endorses our passport with the seal of love. The meditation which he teaches us enables us to transcend this world, rise above body-consciousness, and traverse the inner stars, moon, and sun. As we proceed on this journey, we cross the astral, causal, and supracausal realms. We first merge in the Master, and ultimately merge in the Creator.
On the path of love, the Master is indispensable. How can we, in our present state, develop love for God whom we have not even seen? God is the subtlest of the subtle, and to see Him we must rise to His level. But the God power manifests in one who has merged in the Lord. When we put a light bulb in a socket and turn on the switch, it is the light in which we are interested. But unless we have the bulb, we do not see the light, even though electrical power is all around us. Similarly, the Master is that bulb through which we can see and experience the Light and love of God.
The first step in arranging for our journey is to find someone who is overflowing with divine love. Such a one is known in Persian mysticism as the Cupbearer. He pours forth from his eyes pitchers of divine wine. He inebriates us with his lyrical love glances. In the terminology of the Sufis, ¡§wine¡¨ refers to the intoxication of spirituality. As I have said in a verse:
What does it matter if we never regain our senses?
This day, O Cupbearer, pour forth as much as we can drink.
Christ used the image of the grapevine and the branches in speaking of one¡¦s relationship to the Master. He exhorted his disciples to abide in him. To do so is to merge in the Master, to become one with him. Such surrender is a difficult task indeed, for it demands the transcension of our own petty ego and a complete acceptance of the divine will. The path of love is not as easy as we may think. As the poet, Robert Bridges, expressed:
When we first met we did not guess
That love would prove so hard a master.
But difficult as it is, surrender to the Beloved is necessary on the path of love. St. Paul referred to it when he said, ¡§I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.¡¨ In order to attain complete self surrender, the Beloved must become the ruling passion of our life. We must have one aspiration, one desire¡Xthe love of the Beloved. As the Sufis put it, ¡§Love burns up everything but the Beloved.¡¨ In other words, it makes us oblivious of the world. An incident from the classic romance of Laila and Majnu illustrates this well.
The princess Laila was on her way to meet her lover when she happened to step on the prayer mat of a Muslim priest. He scolded her for the sacrilege. But unmindful, she went on her way. On being told that the veiled woman he had rebuked was none other than the princess, the priest was terror stricken. Upon Laila¡¦s return he fell at her feet and begged forgiveness. But the princess remembered neither the sacrilege nor the scolding. She said, ¡§While going to meet my earthly beloved I was oblivious to all else. Had you been communing with your divine Beloved, you would not have even noticed me!¡¨
Tulsi Sahib has said:
Cleanse the chamber of your heart
So the Beloved may enter within.
If we stopped to introspect ourselves, we would find that we are filled with vanity and the desires of the mundane world. How can we begin our journey when we are in a prison house? We must be freed first. At present, we are chained to the material world by our mind and senses. We are so preoccupied with our job, our family, our finances, our friends, and name and fame, that we think of them constantly, even while we sleep. Our mind, dragged into the world of matter and pleasure by the senses, is ever restless. If we try to sit quietly to concentrate our attention and still our mind, we find that we cannot do so. God, the fountain of divine love, resides within us. If we could divert our attention from the world outside and still the mind through the process of meditation, we would be able to enter the realms within. But we are helpless before the powerful flow of worldly thoughts that constantly flood our mind and which bind us evermore tightly to the ephemeral world of time, space, and matter. On our own we are, indeed, unable to extricate ourselves from our present condition. How then can we be freed from this prison of our own making? The mystics answer this question by saying that we must be prepared to sacrifice everything, to surrender all, to pay any price.
If we can surrender ourselves to the Beloved, we can be free of the baggage and attachments of this world and be ready for the inner journey.
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Consider what is required to tread the path of love. A Sufi poet has said, ¡§I have given my life, I have given my heart, I have given my faith, and still I am grateful to God that I have received love in return. This is a priceless bargain.¡¨ If a disciple is fortunate to receive the love-laden glance of the Master, he or she will surely attain ineffable bliss.
The way of love is paradoxical. On the one hand, the Master distributes spirituality as a free gift, like all other gifts of nature. On the other hand, he takes away everything: our heart, our soul, and all our attachments to the world. When we drink deep at the Tavern of Love, we become absorbed in the intoxication of the Cupbearer, and we become oblivious even to our self. In that state of ecstasy, we are bereft of all that is worldly; only that which is spiritual remains. We merge in the very source of love, and the lover becomes the Beloved.
As we progress towards our goal, a great secret is revealed. We discover that love is the beginning as well as the end of our journey. For love is not only the passport to the kingdom of God, it is the destination itself. ¡±

WOW!
Thats a long but very worthwile read.

I disagree with only one point: "it (love) cannot be taught."
I feel that we teach our young people, our childern how to love.

I guess if you mean by "teaching" sitting down in a classroom with books and such thing as love can never be taught.
But love can be taught by example.
 Wouldn't you agree?

P.S Thank you very much for this post!